Woodside Energy is looking to the cloud and cognitive computing to bring “transformative change” to the time and cost of understanding subsurface conditions in its exploration of gas reserves.
The liquefied natural gas producer yesterday struck a seven-year agreement to use and augment Delfi exploration and production (E&P) software produced by Schlumberger.
Woodside will collaborate with the technology vendor, adding “its own intellectual property and workflows” into the cloud-hosted Delfi suite.
CTO and executive vice president of exploration Shaun Gregory said that the gas producer is looking for much more than single or low double-digit productivity boosts from Delfi.
“As I look at the objectives of the Woodside/Schlumberger partnership, I don’t think we’re trying to achieve five or 10 percent improvement in cost,” Gregory said.
“I think that would be a failure.
“I’m looking for transformative change - 50 percent off cost, 70 percent off time.
“We really need to change the way we evaluate the subsurface and I think we’re well on the way to doing that already, and that’s the most exciting thing.”
Gregory said separately that Woodside wanted to reduce the time to a final investment decision (FID) and to “lower technical unit costs”.
A FID marks the point of a resources project where the company has seen enough to push ahead and fund construction of the project.
It can often take years to reach this point, however, and so resources companies generally are interested in ways to more quickly identify and validate prospective new sites.
Delfi is pitched by Schlumberger as a way to “increase consistency, reduce study cycle time and foster innovation in subsurface characterisation and development activities.”
The software will be used by “200 global petrotechnical users at Woodside”.
