The oil & gas industry is constantly looking for new and improved methods to analyze well logs to define the potential of reservoirs. Brazil’s national oil company Petrobras, for example, tested different data visualization models before turning to an analytics platform developed by US software firm Tibco.
Recently, a second contract with Tibco was signed, valid until December 2024.
“Tibco started to present the Spotfire software to Petrobras in the exploration and production [E&P] area back in 2009, and in 2012 we started selling in some E&P sectors,” a Tibco spokesperson told BNamericas.
In the following years, the US company said it made “isolated” sales to Petrobras, before closing a broader contract in mid-2014. That was when Petrobras’ corporate ICT department launched a process to test all the options of existing analytics and BI programs, the spokesperson said.
“Spotfire was the technical choice after this large market consultation, where all manufacturers showcased their technologies. It was a great win [for us], which ratified the decision made by these E&P sectors.”
Back then, there was no pre-existing implementation for analyzing well log data, so Petrobras worked with the TIBCO LABS group to create a customized solution to meet their needs, the software company said. The process involved the participation of the local Tibco partner IES Brazil. Spotfire is constantly being updated.
Tibco made different proofs of concept with Petrobras, “all with great success,” according to the spokesperson.
The results, he said, pointed to productivity gains, innovation in analytical methods, the possibility of merging financial data from SAP’s ERP with data from business areas, in addition to reducing data analysis time in general, among others.
“We managed to reach practically all of Petrobras’ major divisions in addition to E&P,” the official said.
The data is used, among other things, by geologists to visualize core sample analysis and determine subsurface structures, as well as by engineers to architect the oilfield.
“Our initial results showed that we reduced reservoir modeling steps by 80%,” Rodrigo Mantovaneli Pessoa, data analyst at Petrobras, said in a statement.
Last year, Petrobras launched a call for software and architectural design services, implementation support, legacy solution migration and training for the corporate data virtualization solution, which included applications in the analytical environment by Tibco.
