Bertrand (senior advisor), Author at VERDAZO

April 20, 2020 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Analytics Checklist – Surviving Low Commodity Prices

When commodity prices fall and capital programs for drilling and completions get cut, its time to turn your attention to analyzing your data and making decisions that will minimize the negative consequences of these times. That’s why Verdazo has given all their clients unlimited licenses to help them dig into their data and find the opportunities that will help them the most. Today I’m going to offer a bit of a checklist and some suggestions about what you could/should be looking at. Essentially what you’ll be doing is a detailed asset review. A typical asset review would be looking at every well and assessing its performance from three perspectives: Production Performance, Financial Performance, and Performance to Plan. A typical asset review would be answering questions like these on a monthly or quarterly basis: Are we on plan? What’s the variance & trajectory? What wells are losing money? Why? Are there identifiable patterns? What are our top performing assets? What’s our strategy to keep them that way? What are our bottom performing assets? What are we doing about it? What cost/downtime reduction strategies are we exploring? (e.g. change in chemical treatments, new workover strategy, equipment changes) What’s our shut-in plan if...

April 1, 2020 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Waste disposal: what comes up must go down

More than 2.9 billion barrels (465 million m3) of wastewater were disposed of in Western Canada in 2019. That’s the equivalent of more than 42,000 dispatched truck loads per day. Waste disposal, and associated trucking, is one of the largest operating expenses (from 5 to >50%) facing the oil and gas industry. Verdazo works with clients to analyse their operating costs & target achievable efficiencies. In today’s blog we’ve partnered up with local startups Galatea Technologies & Labsite who work with some of our clients. Galatea has waste disposal decision optimization software and brings waste disposal domain expertise to this blog. Labsite works with clients to optimize completion effectiveness and helped us answer some questions about frac fluid recycling challenges. Go to the end of this blog to learn more about these startups. Our last blog “The White Elephant in the Room” outlined the massive volumes of wastewater that are produced in Western Canada. In this blog we dig into how much wastewater we inject back into the subsurface and the challenges that operators face. Waste Disposal In 2019 North American oil and gas producers spent approximately $41 billion annually on oilfield waste transportation and disposal. $37 billion is spent...

March 2, 2020 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

The White Elephant in The Room

The title of this blog combines two concepts. A white elephant is a possession whose cost to dispose of, is out of proportion to its usefulness. The elephant in the room is a metaphorical idiom for an important topic, problem, or risk that that everyone knows about but no one wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable. With this explanation in place let’s ask a question. Question: “What produces 1.1 trillion litres of water per year in order to extract a marketable commodity?” Hint: 5.4 barrels of water are produced for every $50 worth of this marketable commodity. Answer: Canada’s Petroleum Industry. Some might say this is a water industry with a petroleum by-product. For over 20 years in this industry I have been aware of water produced in conjunction with oil & gas, of increases in water cut as wells mature, and the significant percentage of operating costs that trucking and disposal represents. However, I didn’t appreciate the magnitude of produced water that the industry contends with… until now. Produced water is water that is co-produced with petroleum products from a reservoir at significant depth. Produced water is non-potable water, saline, and often contains undesirable...

September 10, 2019 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

GLJ Acquires Verdazo’s Machine Learning Technology & Consulting Practice

GLJ Petroleum Consultants has acquired the machine learning technology, software and consulting practice from Verdazo Analytics. Verdazo will continue to focus on its Business Intelligence software and services, and support clients by serving up machine-learning-ready data. In a recent partnership with GLJ on the Spirit River Machine Learning Study, it became increasingly evident that the need for consistent regional geoscience analysis was a challenge for most producers, particularly given staff reductions in a challenging commodity market. GLJ is well equipped to support companies who need a depth and breadth of geotechnical expertise to integrate into their reserves, development and completion optimization efforts. “The biggest opportunity in the industry to leverage machine learning is also its greatest obstacle… you need consistent regional geological interpretations to take advantage of machine learning’s ability to build understanding and inform completion optimization opportunities.” said Bertrand Groulx, President of Verdazo Analytics. “The breadth and depth of GLJ’s engineering and geotechnical expertise can really help companies accelerate new insights and capital efficiencies.” “Acquiring the machine learning software and methodologies from Verdazo gives GLJ a head start in incorporating machine learning technology into our reserves workflow, fully considering the impact that geology, reservoir and completions collectively have on...

Presentations

Machine Learning: Usability, Stability & Interpretability

Machine learning in the Oil & Gas industry has met with varied success and no shortage of hype. Barriers to success in the industry include data challenges, inflated expectations, and a lack of trust from those who stand to benefit from its results. In this presentation, we will be showing the bulk of our Spirit River Study from the SPE Subsurface Workshop, plus a whole lot more. We will explore trust-building approaches that include feature selection, interpretive visualizations, stability considerations, “What’s a good R2?”, and a Man vs Machine simulation. In the simulation, we compare traditional type-curve generation approaches with those based on machine learning models, using data from the Marcellus.

Bertrand Groulx presenting on machine learning at Calgary Petroleum Club

Verdazo Analytics President Bertrand Groulx will deliver a presentation on machine learning for the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) on June 25 at the Calgary Petroleum Club. The presentation is titled “Machine Learning: Usability, Stability & Interpretability.” Groulx is co-presenting with John Hirschmiller from GLJ Petroleum Consultants. During a fast-paced and engaging presentation, Groulx and Hirschmiller will show the bulk of their Spirit River Study from the SPE Subsurface Workshop. They’ll also explore trust-building approaches that include feature selection, interpretive visualizations, stability considerations, “What’s a good R2?”, and a Man vs. Machine simulation. The presentation takes place from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. To learn more about the presentation or to register, click here.

May 13, 2019 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Verdazo Analytics at geoconvention 2019, Calgary

There are three ways to see Verdazo’s team in action at geoconvention 2019 in Calgary. Marcelo Guarido will be presenting Machine Learning Strategies to Perform Facies Classification Tuesday May 14th at 9:00 am in the Glenn Room 206. Verdazo Analytics’ Director of Data Science Brian Emmerson will co-present The Importance of Geoscience in using Machine Learning to Predict and Optimize Well Performance – Case Study from the Spirit River Formation Wednesday May 15th at 10:35 in the Telus Room 104-105. You can also catch members of the Verdazo team at Booth 503 to learn more about our visual analytics and machine learning capabilities.

Presentations

Spirit River Machine Learning Study

This machine learning study incorporates GLJ’s consistent petrophysical evaluation of the entire Spirit River play. Coupled with production and completion information, this geoscience data equips Verdazo’s machine learning team & technology to deliver a predictive model, robust interpretive visualizations, and tools that can help explain, feature by feature, the drivers of production performance for each well. This presentation provides an overview of this study and was presented at the SPE Subsurface Analytics Workshop on February 27th, 2019. If you would like to learn more about purchasing the detailed Spirit River machine learning study and predictive model click here.

Verdazo Analytics expands Machine Learning Division

Verdazo Analytics added five full-time staff to its team in November in an expansion of its Machine Learning Division. Since launching the division in January 2018, Verdazo Analytics has delivered consulting services to clients and producers, and in partnership with other industry-leading consulting firms. The company has helped the Oil & Gas industry understand and realize the practical benefits offered by Machine Learning in the areas of production performance prediction and completion optimization. The expanded team joins Tyler Schlosser, the company’s Senior Technical Advisor for Machine Learning and Reservoir Engineering. Together, they’ll work on developing Verdazo Analytics’ forthcoming Machine Learning software and helping clients understand and adopt machine learning technologies and methodologies. “A larger, diverse team allows us to respond to the growing interest in leveraging complex datasets to produce valuable insights that contribute to the bottom line” says Verdazo Analytics President Bertrand Groulx. “The success we have enjoyed in our most recent consulting projects has allowed us to craft our technology and processes to extract insights from a broader collection of data.” The new staff bring extensive experience and education across geophysics, geomechanics, reservoir engineering, completions design, drilling, infill programs, enhanced recovery, economics, math, physics and software engineering. Many...

September 7, 2018 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Verdazo Analytics exhibiting at the SPE ATCE 2018

Verdazo Analytics will be exhibiting this month at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition 2018 in Dallas, TX. Our team invites all conference attendees to drop by booth #229 to learn more about our VERDAZO visual analytics software and our Machine Learning capabilities. ATCE 2018 will feature 350+ technical presentations, special sessions, and networking events for over 8,000 Society of Petroleum Engineer members and other professionals looking for the latest news on current and future technologies to help find and produce hydrocarbons faster, more efficiently, and safely. The conference takes place in Dallas, Texas from September 24-26, 2018. Learn more about ATCE 2018 and register here.

Posts by Bertrand (senior advisor)