Exploring Immersive Virtual Environments for Well Placement Optimization in Reservoir Models

Abstract

Immersive virtual environments have been considered promising mediums to attend specific demands from the oil and gas industry. In this thesis, we explore immersive technologies’ benefits for the execution of tasks associated with well placement optimization. We present a) an analytical method to perform static connectivity analysis as a proxy for flow simulation, b) an application to support well optimization using our method, and c) an exploration of our application in three immersive environments – a CAVE with a tracked gamepad; a HMD with a tracked gamepad; and a HMD with a leap motion controller – in the search for visualization and interaction techniques that facilitate well placement studies. Based on primary study conducted with reservoir engineers, we provide an examination of the usefulness of our application. We also discuss our findings considering engineers’ preferences as well as the suitability of the different immersive environments for designing and assessing well placement scenarios.