Welcome to Petroleum Geology Forums

Hi all,

This is my first post on the forums so hope to contribute as have been searching for a place like this for a while now.

Was wondering whether you believe that there is specific software that you would like to see on the E&P side of Geology that would make your jobs/interests easier or whether you think there's a bit of over-saturation and that most ideas have pretty much been made and can only be improved on. Is there anything you think could improve the accuracy/time of tasks etc?

I'm currently a final year BSc Geology student and I'm undertaking an MSc Computer Science next year but am not too up to date with what kind of software is out and about/widely used.

Welcome to the forums!

Basically, it's a jungle out there with a lot of software packages that offer an immense range of functionality. Most service companies (Halliburton, Schlumberger, Backer Hughes) offer complete packages to cover all that is needed throughout the Geoscience process. I only am involved with Petrel (Schlumberger) and can actually do (almost) everything I need to do from within a single program (with multiple modules). Other disciplines might need to use a range of different software from different providers. And it you start touching on finance, planning, HR, logistics, refining, marketing, etc than you obviously open up an ever larger software portfolio all operators need.

I do feel software development is a very active department in most mayor companies and service providers and it is a very dynamic environment to work in and geology students with software/programming skills are in high demand. Most operators even have their own (confidential) packages that they keep in house due to obvious reasons. I can not tell you what software or functionality is generally missing, because others may already have it and, generally, whenever an idea springs up this is tailored for very quickly. I believe that not the IT (programming, processors, technology, etc) is holding back developments, but actually scientific research that forms the basis for this software development is holding advancement back.

Sounds like an interesting topic; how are you approaching it? Are you using 3D grids and expanding heatflow from a certain point source spatially or is it a 1D approach? Have you looked into heatflow models that use salt diapirs that are able to transfer heat upwards faster, as I imagine that could sort of be a similar approach.... but I generally don't deal with this stuff.

As for the jobs, I think the main reason you're not seeing many vacancies may be due to the fact that smaller companies generally are hired to develop software or plugins. They have less budget to hire recruiters and get their applications online. Also, they generally hire from within their network; it's often all about who you know.
Furthermore, I think that it's still pretty difficult to find geologists that have expert programming skills and the industry anticipates this by targeting their job offers on pure IT specialists first. But, the need to have a geological background when developing geoscience software is paramount I believe.
I wouldn't worry about the job market, it's picking up again and the fact that you are already thinking about your future options by trying to make useful software will percolate onto your cv; I'm sure!

I can not help you with ideas for software though, but you might want too look around the Ocean store (http://www.ocean.slb.com/Pages/category ... tegory=all) as this is a good indication of what sort of stuff is in demand (sorry, Petrel again). Also keep an eye on the BlueBack guys (http://www.blueback-reservoir.com) as they do exciting stuff. Furthermore you can get some pretty advanced seismic interpretation and modeling software for free to play around with from DGB (http://www.opendtect.org).

For more about maturation and basin modeling, Becip Franlab probably provides the most advanced package (http://www.openflowsuite.com/).

Good luck, and please let us know what you come up with!