North Slope model update and automation with horizontal wells (2017)

A client drilling in Alaska’s North Slope had a fairly rigorous geomodel constructed by an employee who had since left the company for new opportunities.  The model was over 4 years old at this point, and the client had since drilled and geosteered 35 horizontal wells in the area.  They wanted an updated geomodel, which honored the rigor of the original, while incorporating the curtain sections from each geosteered well into the geologic horizons.  Rather than build the model from scratch, I pieced together how and with what data the model was constructed, updated geologic trends in the model, and generated a model update workflow incorporating  the structural updates.  This methodology reduced the project from an originally estimated 2 months to about 2.5 days, with the added benefit of simply pressing a button to incorporate future geosteering curtains to the model.