PETMiner-A Visual Analysis Tool for Petrophysical Properties of Core Sample Data

The aim of the PETMiner software is to reduce the time and monetary cost of analysing petrophysical data that is obtained from reservoir sample cores. Analysis of these data requires tacit knowledge to fill 'gaps' so that predictions can be made for incomplete data. Through discussions with 30 industry and academic specialists, we identified three analysis use cases that exemplified the limitations of current petrophysics analysis tools. We used those use cases to develop nine core requirements for PETMiner, which is innovative because of its ability to display detailed images of the samples as data points, directly plot multiple sample properties and derived measures for comparison, and substantially reduce interaction cost. An 11-month evaluation demonstrated benefits across all three use cases by allowing a consultant to: (1) generate more accurate reservoir flow models, (2) discover a previously unknown relationship between one easy-to-measure property and another that is costly, and (3) make a 100-fold reduction in the time required to produce plots for a report.