Great Western Petroleum’s geologists describe how ZoneVu has improved their workflows and enhanced their quality of life.  

Drilling in the DJ Basin is a frenzy of high ROPs (~400+ feet per hour on average) that contend with complex structure, faulting, and a minefield of existing vertical and lateral wells. Every minute counts. Every minute adds up.

For Ryan Hoff and Geoff Lee, the geologists responsible for steering every well for Great Western, ZoneVu has made a difference to how they execute in their roles. Here are six ways they say ZoneVu has helped them do their jobs better:

ZoneVu’s 3D Module showing the updated seismic line and a fault encountered after landing.

 

1. “It has improved our target change reaction time.”

Having every piece of critical data leveraged in real time has made a huge impact for Hoff and Lee.

ZoneVu’s cloud agent, RigStream™, pulls your rig data directly from the WITSML source. As it’s pulling your data, it normalizes it, depth corrects it, and brings it into your viewer, live, and automatically.

As the rig data streams into view, it melds with your full, interpreted seismic volumes. The seismic SEGY traces (in-lines and crosslines), stitch to each well as survey stations come in. You’re never drilling against a screenshot in ZoneVu.

“Being able to see everything together live, in 3D, allows you to tie the whole picture together. And where time of the essence with faulting, ZoneVu can save you time and prevent downtime,” Hoff and Lee said.

This has been critical in their more complex areas where the target is 15 feet thick, and the formation above can cause ROPs to drop from 400 feet per hour to 40 to 50 feet per hour, and the formation below poses the risk of sidetracking due to pulse-ability issues.

“It has improved our ability to react,” said Hoff, and Lee added, “we don’t have to wait for most recent survey or gamma from an email, it’s all right there.”

This combination of data in an automatic, real-time workflow doesn’t exist in any other software. And it has never existed before from a browser.

2. “We are a lot more efficient.”

Having every piece of critical data leveraged in real time has made a huge impact for Hoff and Lee.

ZoneVu’s cloud agent, RigStream™, pulls your rig data directly from the WITSML source. As it’s pulling your data, it normalizes it, depth corrects it, and brings it into your viewer, live, and automatically.

As the rig data streams into view, it melds with your full, interpreted seismic volumes. The seismic SEGY traces (in-lines and crosslines), stitch to each well as survey stations come in. You’re never drilling against a screenshot in ZoneVu.

“Being able to see everything together live, in 3D, allows you to tie the whole picture together. And where time of the essence with faulting, ZoneVu can save you time and prevent downtime,” Hoff and Lee said.

This has been critical in their more complex areas where the target is 15 feet thick, and the formation above can cause ROPs to drop from 400 feet per hour to 40 to 50 feet per hour, and the formation below poses the risk of sidetracking due to pulse-ability issues.

“It has improved our ability to react,” said Hoff, and Lee added, “we don’t have to wait for most recent survey or gamma from an email, it’s all right there.”

This combination of data in an automatic, real-time workflow doesn’t exist in any other software. And it has never existed before from a browser.

3. “Data across organizations are not always up-to-date or accurate. ZoneVu fixes that.”

Technical people need the time to be technical. Geos and engineers spend too much time hunting for and cleaning data.

There is a desperate need for data automation.

At its core, ZoneVu was also built to be a centralized database in the cloud. As it pulls and conditions the rig data in real-time, it stores it logically. Because your team has unlimited access to it, everyone can get to what they need.

Hoff and Lee said, “ZoneVu is like a time machine. The more we use it, the more it becomes a database in addition to being a steering tool.”

On top of that, ZoneVu was built with two-way API capability, with the vision that it would be a central tool that connects and visualizes data from other platforms.

4. “It's made working from home a lot easier.”

Operations geologists are used to transitioning from the office to home.

ZoneVu was designed to make that easier on you.

And with the way the world is changing, more of the asset team will likely be doing the same.

Hoff and Lee both said it, and we’ve all experienced it, “workstation software don’t work as smoothly over VPN.” It’s an imperfect technology.

Why mess with that when your exact workflow will follow you in a secure browser from any computer?

Hoff and Lee both asserted, “My ability to do my work is enhanced just by being able to use ZoneVu at home, for sure. It’s by far the easiest program to use from home.”

You can run ZoneVu from the hot spot on your phone. If you have enough cell service to run Facebook, you can run ZoneVu.

5. “The collaboration has been game-changing.”

We know that better communication makes better wells.

Until ZoneVu, there haven’t been tools available to make that easy and efficient.

ZoneVu was designed for strategic, easy communication that makes your asset team and contractors more efficient.

Hoff and Lee said, “The collaboration in ZoneVu has been game changing. The multiple interpretations allow you to see each other’s thinking and the live collaboration cuts down on excess communication.”

They continued, “We also have more control over how our [geosteering] contractors set up their interpretations. It saves you and the contractor time and excess communication. It’s a better and more efficient process.”

They said that it’s especially handy to have your geosteering contractor in ZoneVu at night.

“Being able to just open your computer and see their [contractor’s] interpretation right there without any lag time creates easy, seamless communication,” said Hoff and Lee.

The two men emphasized, “If you have contractors, ZoneVu is the easiest program and requires minimal work for you to work with them. You have your interpretation and their interpretation right there. You don’t have to do anything extra.”

6. “For completions, there's just so much more information.”

Hoff and Lee reflected, “ZoneVu is definitely helpful for the completions guys. It helps identify where the faults are and where the stages are going.”

With ZoneVu, you have unlimited user access to all its features. This is a critical part to the mission of uniting the asset team. User-based purchasing models and withholding features discourages the integration of data and the departments. It’s not helpful to the cause.

Hoff and Lee continued, “It helps so much that our completions team has access to ZoneVu. They can get to the information they need themselves. Our department can get super busy, and we may not always have time to backtrack and compile the info for them, but all that info is in ZoneVu and it’s at our fingertips.”

For the first time, completions engineers have a platform that automatically aligns their fracs with the geosteering interpretations, rig data, geophysics data, and the petrophysical data. It puts the plugs and perfs in geologic context for you – accurately and automatically.

It eliminates the time-consuming, imprecise back-and-forth in Excel, PowerPoint, and screenshots. And it puts everything together in a format that’s easier and faster for the human mind to comprehend.

ZoneVu was built to help you produce better results and improve your quality of life.  

Learn how it can work for you and your organization.

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