One of the research projects at the Center for Petroleum Studies (Cepetro) at Unicamp has just received the Technological Innovation Award from the National Petroleum, Natural Gas and Biofuels Agency (ANP), in the category of projects developed by universities. Considered the most important in the country in the area of oil, the award is in its fifth edition and rewards Brazilian universities and oil companies in five categories. Unicamp is the first university in São Paulo to win the award and in partnership with Shell, traditionally concentrated in institutions in Rio de Janeiro and Petrobrás.
“Our project integrated the areas of oil reservoir engineering and 4D seismic. We developed a new methodology to integrate these two areas so that oil reservoirs can be better managed”, explained Denis José Schiozer, director of Cepetro and project coordinator. Like a tomography kilometers deep, 4D seismic produces images over time that make it possible to monitor oil reservoirs, supporting decisions about where and how to drill.
According to Schiozer, the novelty of the project developed by Cepetro was to use reservoir engineering models to improve the reading of 4D seismic. “The industry generally uses 4D seismic to improve models, we also did the opposite”, he explained.
According to him, a distinguishing feature of the project was incorporating uncertainties in the development of mathematical models and working in a probabilistic way. “The oil reserves are very deep. There are properties that we don't know well. We often have to make decisions without fully understanding the problem and these are costly decisions. Therefore, in recent years, we have developed models that incorporate these uncertainties. We ran hundreds of models, rather than generating just one mathematical model,” he described.
In addition to the ANP award, the project yielded seven other awards and more than 40 publications and involved professors, researchers and postgraduate students from the Petroleum Engineering Sciences Program, jointly developed by the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering (FEM) and the Instituto of Geosciences (IG). It is the result of a partnership established with Shell, through the law that requires companies to invest a percentage of their taxes in research in Brazil.
The project now enters a second stage, which will put the methodologies developed to the test. “If they are successful, companies will have a lot to gain, as they will be able to better manage the field, produce more oil and increase profits,” said Schiozer. Alessandra Davolio, the project's lead researcher, highlighted the relevance of the project's results to the Brazilian scenario. “Our pre-salt fields involve high investments. Any information that contributes to improving the positioning of wells, for example, means millions of reais in additional profit”, she pointed out.
