Applied geostatistics


Duration: 5 days

Business context

Geostatistics is now essential in nearly all aspects of exploration and production: gridding and contouring for making maps, upscaling for reservoir simulation and basin modelling, as well as the analysis of spatially referenced data of all kinds. Without needing to know the details of the algorithms and the mathematics behind them, being able to choose the most appropriate techniques and apply them correctly is fundamental to best practice throughout E&P.

Who should attend

Petroleum geologists and other geoscientists preparing data for use in reservoir simulators and basin models. Anyone wishing to gain the best insight into and obtain the most value from their geo-spatial data.

Course content

Depending on the length of the course, part or all of the topic listed below will be discussed.

  • What is geostatistics, and how does it change our appreciation of familiar tasks and tools?
  • How geostatistics aids in understanding trends in spatial data-sets:
    • Classical multivariate statistics
    • Conditional distributions
    • Direct simulations
    • Variogram analysis
    • Modelling anisotropy
  • Understanding the effects of scale:
    • Heterogeneity and discontinuity
    • Data scale versus modelling scale
    • Upscaling for efficient modelling
  • Allowing for spatial trends in gridding & contouring:
    • Honouring data or minimising errors
    • Using kriging to make better maps
  • Making use of new data:
    • Bayesian and geo- statistics;
    • History matching
    • Sequential / Indicator simulation
  • Quantifying uncertainty:
    • How geostatistics includes methods for uncertainty quantification
    • Using Monte Carlo and other stochastic simulations

The course aims to provide knowledge of how to apply the various tools known as geostatistics, using both readily available software and more specialist packages.

Learning, methods and tools

The emphasis is on practical application and understanding of context over a consideration of the mathematics. A multitude of software-based exercises give a practical introduction to what is available and provide useful tools to take back to the workplace.