ESCI 570 - COMP&DATA SCI ENERGY INDUSTRY
Long Title: COMPUTATIONAL AND DATA SCIENCE IN THE ENERGY INDUSTRY
Department: Earth/Environmnt/Planetary Sci
Grade Mode: Standard Letter
Language of Instruction: Taught in English
Course Type: Lecture
Credit Hours: 3
Restrictions: Must be enrolled in one of the following Level(s):
Graduate
Description: This course will be dedicated to problems and topics occurring in the energy industry, both in R&D and in operations. It has three main components:
1. Computational Geophysics
2. Reservoir Simulation Fundamentals
3. Machine Learning
The first two components will be taught together in the first 10 weeks by dedicating half of the class-time to each subject. The Machine Learning component will, in part, build on the first two fundamental components and will be taught using the full class time.
Computational Geophysics
The participants in this geophysics part of the course are expected to be interested into learn how to use modern seismic data to image the subsurface with awareness of the computational costs of the techniques involved. The main focus will be given to current seismic imaging tools including cutting-edge Machine Learning (ML) applications. As the result of the successful completion of this course part, the course participants should be able to: (1) Understand the context and value of imaging tools for the hydrocarbon exploration business. (2) Relate the imaging tools with their computational costs for modern computer resources. (3) Properly use wave-based geophysical imaging and ML-based tools and (4) Understand main seismic processing and interpretation decisions.
Applied Reservoir Simulation
This component of the course will introduce participants to the practice of reservoir simulation. This class will be an applied course on reservoir simulation. Theoretical descriptions will be provided as warranted but will be kept to minimum. Class participants will learn about the fundamentals of applied reservoir simulation, use of a reservoir simulator, and how to select the proper model for a simulation study. This course will also cover data preparation, grid design, calibration of the reservoir model, forecasting of future performance, and interpretation of simulation results. Participants will also be introduced to the role of simulation in reservoir management, limitations of reservoir simulation, and the structural aspects of the models. Upscaling and recent advances simulation techniques will also be discussed. A realistic open-source reservoir simulation software will be used during the tutorials and computer projects.
Machine Learning for Oil & Gas
This part of the course will introduce the fundamentals of statistical learning, present a few of the popular learning paradigms and algorithms, and culminate in a small student project applying them to an oil reservoir data set using the R programming language (solutions to class problems will be accepted in any programming language or system). Much of the material presented here is also known under the names “Big Data”, “Data Analytics”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Data Mining”, “Petroleum Data Driven Analytics” and other terms. Weeks 11 and 12 are theory only, weeks 13-15 will have small hands-on exercises incorporated and week 16 and 17 are dedicated to solving a simple oil reservoir problem using machine learning.