Badleys has been at the forefront of technical innovation and most notably have led the industry in the commercial application of structural geological techniques, fault-seal analysis and geomechanics. Our consultancy team, all Ph.Ds with extensive experience in applying their skills to oil industry problems, has close ties with researchers at Liverpool, Cambridge and University College Dublin.
Much of our consultancy work involves use of our in-house-developed software applications and so a major strength of the team comes from its close interaction with our software developers.
Our expertise covers, but is not limited to the following areas:
Generating structurally consistent models is usually the first step when undertaking any consultancy project. Badleys have expertise in all of the following areas (hover over the links below to find out more):
Finding and mapping traps and risking fault seals is an everyday task in the oil industry. About 75% of all hydrocarbon-bearing traps are fault-related. Traps are found and mapped mainly using seismic data and/or well data. Seals cannot be seen directly in seismic data and a prediction of their occurrence and quality requires lithological knowledge for which well data is usually necessary.
Predicting the sealing potential of faults requires structural and lithological information. The term 'fault seal' is also often used in a production context, to describe the effect of fault zones in impairing across-fault fluid flow. These dynamic seals might not be capable of retaining hydrocarbons over a geological timescale, but their relatively low permeability may dramatically impact on production rates and strategies.
Badleys use the below key concepts to undertake fault seal and trap analysis:
It is now common practice to incorporate small scale faults and fractures into cellular reservoir models and reservoir simulations in order to assess their impact on fluid flow. Much of this input 'data' results from stochastic models and their discrete fracture networks (DFN) realizations are based on a minimal number of reliable sample points.
Vital information about these small scale faults can be extracted from standard seismic interpretations using fractal techniques and used in reservoir studies and well planning. Together with our research partners, the Fault Analysis Group, University of Dublin, we have been at the forefront of the research and commercial application of methods that make predictions about faults too small to be resolved by seismic data.
Badleys have collaborated with the Earth Structure & Geodynamics Group at Liverpool University since the late 1980's, developing techniques and software for the large-scale analysis of rift basins and passive margins which are used mainly as an exploration tool.
The list below shows some of the topics cover by our basin modelling consultancy team
Consulting work can be carried out either in our office (UK) or on-site depending upon project duration. Long duration projects, lasting several weeks or more, are typically undertaken in our office. Project documentation is usually on a daily or weekly basis with access to the reports via a client specific (and secure) part of the Badleys web site. Transfer of data for the project work can be made through our secure ftp site.
For further details about our consulting services, or general enquires please contact our consultancy team using the link below.