Bertrand (senior advisor), Author at VERDAZO

July 14, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Bakken Part 2: Four Takes on Play Analysis

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. I’d like to start by thanking the gDC (geoLOGIC Data Center) and geoLOGIC Systems for supporting this blog by providing VISAGE with access to their data…. and now for the blog….. In our previous blog post we looked at the growth of the Bakken and who the main players are. When looking at type curves and the variability of the associated data, it becomes very clear that there are many, many factors that need to be considered when doing type curves. The most important consideration is the selection of wells that are comparable and representative of a particular location or situation. Some things to consider in the Bakken are leg count, frac count (if any), horizontal length, location, horizontal azimuth …. and the list goes on. We’ll show you how the horizontal Bakken wells (since 2007) collectively behave and how much they vary. We can hone in on some more specific analyses with your help (please post your comments). Take 1: Type Curve...

July 11, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Bakken Part 1: The Play and The Players

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. The Growth of the Play The Bakken has been a hot play in recent years and has grown to almost 70,000 bbl/day oil production (in SE Saskatchewan). Almost all of the Bakken growth is attributable to horizontal wells. Here are a few stats: Well Stats Total number of Bakken wells that have produced in SE Sask = 2178 88% of these wells came on production since Jan 2007 2020 Horizontal Wells 150 Vertical Wells 6 Deviated Wells 2 Crooked Wells Production Stats Current Bakken Production is 69,916 bbl/day oil. 19% of that production came on stream in the first 3 months of 2011 (13,292 bbl/day). The biggest production growth in one year was 2008, a production rate increase of 41,335 bbl/day by Dec 2008. If production growth continues at the same rate, we can expect 2011 production increases toexceed 50,000 bbl/day … time will tell. The Growth of the Players The growth of the Bakken goes hand in hand with the success story of Crescent...

July 6, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

So What Is The Problem With Production Type Curves?

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. A production type curve is a representative production profile of a well for a specific play and/or area. That is, if you were going to drill a successful well in an area, a type curve would be the “best representation” of the expected production forecast. The type curve is (typically) established by calculating the average production rate of producing wells for each time period. You will never drill a well that behaves like the type curve, but it does give you a tangible representation of the likely outcome. Type curves are also very useful for comparing the “average production rates” of plays, companies, well types … something we will be doing in subsequent blogs. Here is an example of what you can look forward to: So What Is The Problem With Production Type Curves? The problem with type curves is that the range of values used to calculate the average (type curve) are in no way represented in the type curve. I...

June 28, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

geoLOGIC and VISAGE analyze production in Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. A picture is indeed worth a thousand words and in the case of the examples posted in this blog by geoLOGIC Systems, it is worth more than 20 million rows of data. The VISAGE team is excited to partner with geoLOGIC for an upcoming blog series exploring the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. We will be exploring plays, provincial production trends, type curves, cumulative probability distributions and generally taking you on a visual analytics journey. It’s the pertfect partnership… geoLOGIC has the public data in the gDC (geoLOGIC Data Centre) and VISAGE has the visual analytics capabilities. We invite you to participate by telling us what you would like to see in this series. If you have an idea please let us know at info@verdazo.com. In the mean time here are some examples to whet your appetite. Alberta has had 310,961 wells that have produced oil or gas. In this chart we can see oil production in Alberta since 1962 grouped by on-production-year...

May 10, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Visual Inspiration

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. After spending some time focusing on articles around Business Intelligence such as “BI has hit the wall” and “Old BI and the Challenge of Analytics”, I thought I would direct you to some winning entries from Malofiej 19, an international competition and summit dedicated to journalistic infographics where Stephen Few was a judge. In Pictures of the News: Malofiej 19 in Review the top three winners are presented and are visually inspirational. Two of the winners are maps which hold a place dear to my heart, having designed maps and as a collector of maps. Best Map: National Geographic, for “Rivers of the World,” a gorgeous map of the world’s rivers and lakes. Best of Show (print): National Geographic, for “Gulf of Mexico: A Geography of Offshore Oil,” the story of oil drilling and drilling rights, primarily along the coast of Louisiana. And my favourite, is a compelling video about Mariano Rivera pitching. Best of Show (online): New York Times, for its...

April 26, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

Old BI and the Challenge of Analytics

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. In 2007 the three giants of Business Intelligence were all bought in multi-billion dollar deals: Oracle buys Hyperion for $3.3 billion SAP buys Business Objects for $6.78 billion IBM buys Cognos for $4.9 Billion Since these giants made their big splash in the waters of BI, what’s changed? Well, according to Stephen Few in his blog “Old BI and the Challenge of Analytics” we’re on a “faster trip to nowhere”. Stephen continues to demand more than infrastructure from the big BI vendors. “Big, old, traditional BI companies are good at producing technologies that enhance the infrastructure of business intelligence—more and faster—but not the actual use of data in ways that lead to greater intelligence. Being big, focused primarily on technology from an [software] engineering perspective, and devoutly sales driven makes it difficult for companies like SAP to develop useful tools for activities that support decision making: data exploration, sensemaking, and communication. To meet this challenge, they must shift their focus from technology...

April 26, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

BI has hit the wall

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. My favourite blogger in the BI industry is Stephen Few, founder of Perceptual Edge. With 25 years of experience as an innovator, consultant, and an educator in the fields of business intelligence and information design, he is a leading expert in data visualization for data sense-making and communication. You can read more about Stephen at www.perceptualedge.com. What I admire the most about Stephen’s writing is that he’s a straight shooter, with clear points and an honest critique. One of my favourite blog posts, and one that is relevant for Energy producers is “BI has hit the wall” which is focused around the image below. The problem that Stephen speaks to is prevalent in many offices in Calgary where “…the BI industry still focuses on collecting, cleaning, transforming, integrating, storing, and reporting data, but the activities that actually make sense of information and use it to support better decisions have remained behind a wall that they’ve failed to scale and have never seriously...

April 12, 2011 by Bertrand (senior advisor)

11 Big Data Predictions for 2011

Editor’s Note: While VISAGE rebranded to VERDAZO in April 2016, we haven’t changed the VISAGE name in our previous blog posts. We’re proud of our decade of work as VISAGE and that lives on within these blogs. Enjoy. While Business Intelligence (BI) has been around for many years, the term is not often used in the Oil and Gas industry bybusiness users (engineers, operators and managers). However, energy producers have very specific needs centered around time series data (i.e. a need to see how production, pressures, costs etc. trend over time), this is where BI comes in. Recently TDWI published the article 11 Big-Data Analytics Predictions for 2011. TDWI’s (The Data Warehouse Institute) Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing articles can be a source of insight into how the industry of BI is evolving. One of the most notable items in Ketan Karia’s article is “10. Self-serve BI gets more attention“. Self-service BI directly hits home for business users on the front lines who count on information and insights in the reports they create for managers and board members, among others. The intervention of IT still delays getting data to these users. Many enterprises still have to run a myriad of...

Posts by Bertrand (senior advisor)