Patent Grant
7680600
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to data processing in oilfield applications. More particularly, the invention relates to processing of data acquired by a downhole tool, such as a formation tester.
2. Background Art
Oil and gas industry uses various tools to probe the formation penetrated by a borehole, to locate hydrocarbon reservoirs and to determine the types and quantities of hydrocarbons. During such a logging operation, a logging tool (such as a formation tester) is lowered into a borehole, either after the well has been drilled or while the well is being drilled. Examples of formation testers in the market include the Modular-Formation Dynamic Tester (MDT®, mark of Schlumberger), and the StethoScope® (mark of Schlumberger).
A formation tester may be lowered into a borehole on a wireline to take measurements after a well has been drilled. See, e.g., Dong et al., “Downhole Measurement of Methane Content and GOR in Formation Fluid Samples,” paper SPE 81481, for a description of a Wire-line-conveyed Formation Tester (WFT) used in obtaining GOR. When a formation tester is part of a drilling assembly, it can perform formation testing while drilling (FTWD). Measurements performed by the FTWD may include pressures of the formations, which are referred to as formation pressure while drilling (FPWD). See, Pop et al., in “Operations Aspects Of Formation Pressure Measurements While Drilling,” paper SPE 92494, for a description of FPWD. In addition to FPWD, FTWD are expanding to include measurements such as optical absorption spectroscopy measurements that can be used to compute the Gas/Oil Ratio (GOR).
Drill string 4 is suspended from hook 9 by means of swivel 13, which is linked by hose 14 to mud pump 15. Pump 15 permits the injection of drilling mud into well 6, via the hollow pipes of drill string 4. The drilling mud may be drawn from mud pit 16, which may be fed with surplus mud from well 6. The drill string 4 may be elevated by turning lifting gear 3 with winch 12. Drill pipe raising and, lowering operations require drill string 4 to be temporarily unhooked from lifting gear 3; the former is then supported by blocking it with wedges 17 in conical recess 18 in rotating table 19 that is mounted on platform 20, through which the drill string passes. The lower portion of the drill string 4 may include one or more tools, as shown at 30, for investigating downhole drilling conditions or for investigating the properties of the geological formations. Tool 30 may include a formation tester.
Variations in height h of traveling block 8 during drill string raising operations are measured by means of sensor 23 that may be an angle of rotation sensor coupled to the faster pulley of crown block 7. The weight applied to hook 9 of traveling block 8 may also be measured by means of strain gauge 24 inserted into dead line 10a of cable 10 to measure its tension. Sensors 23 and 24 are connected by lines 25 and 26 to processing unit 27 which processes the measurement signals and which incorporates a clock. Recorder 28 is connected to processing unit 27, which is preferably a computer. In addition, the downhole tool 30 may also include a processing unit. The downhole processing unit and/or the surface processing unit 27 may be involved in data acquisition, data processing, and telemetry.
Data obtained by a downhole tool are often in the form of time series. Each time-series data may be referred to as a “channel,” and includes measurements or computations of a particular quantity, typically obtained at regularly-spaced intervals of time. For example, measurement channels from formation testers (such as the MDT®) may include fluid optical densities, fluid fluorescence emission levels, pressures, temperatures, fluid resistivities, and pump motor speeds, collected using sensors within the formation tester such as an optical spectroscopic device, a pressure sensor, and an acoustic sensor. Computation channels from formation testers, for example, may include water fraction, hydrocarbon Gas-Oil Ratio (GOR) and hydrocarbon compositions.
For FTWD (or other while drilling measurements and logging, i.e., LWD or MWD), it is desirable to send selected data uphole in real time via mud pulse telemetry, because drilling operations need to be adjusted in real time based on the measured data. Mud pulse telemetry is a common method used in LWD or MWV operations to transmit log data to the surface. Mud pulse telemetry makes use of the modulations of the pressure of drilling fluid pumped through the drilling assembly. The fluid pressure modulation, however, has an extremely narrow bandwidth and can only transmit data at a rate of a few bits per second (typically, less than 10 bits per second). The bandwidth of mud pulse telemetry is often the bottleneck of a logging operation. Therefore, it is desirable to have methods or systems that can overcome the bandwidth limitation typically encountered in logging operations.
In one aspect, the present invention relates to methods for data processing. A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention includes transforming measurement data acquired in an oilfield operation into a different domain to produce transformed data; identifying distortions in the transformed data; and removing the distortions from the transformed data to produce cleaned-up data. The transforming may use a Fourier transform or a wavelet transform, such as a discrete wavelet transform. The method may further includes reconstructing signals from the cleaned-up data or compressing the cleaned-up data.
In another aspect, the present invention relates to methods for data processing. A method in accordance with one embodiment of the invention includes decomposing measurement data, which are acquired in an oilfield operation, using a low pass filter to produce a first dataset; decomposing the measurement data using a high pass filter to produce a second dataset; removing distortions from the second dataset to yield a corrected second dataset; and reconstructing a corrected dataset from the first dataset and the corrected second dataset. The method may further includes compressing the reconstructed dataset.
In another aspect, the present invention relates to computer readable media. A computer readable medium in accordance with one embodiment of the invention stores a program having instructions for: transforming measurement data acquired in an oilfield operation into a different domain to produce transformed data; identifying distortions from the transformed data; and removing the distortions from the transformed data to produce cleaned-up data. The program may further include instructions for compressing the cleaned-up data or reconstructing signals from the cleaned-up data.
In another aspect, the present invention relates to a system for data processing that includes a processor and a memory, wherein the memory stores a program having instructions for: transforming measurement data acquired in an oilfield operation into a different domain to produce transformed data; identifying distortions from the transformed data; and removing the distortions from the transformed data to produce cleaned-up data. The system for data processing may be disposed on a formation tester.
Other aspects and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description and the attached claims.
It is to be understood that the drawings are to be used for the purpose of illustration only, and not as a definition of the metes and bounds of the invention, or as a basis for reading non-existent or un-recited limitations into the claims.
Embodiments of the invention relate to methods and systems for data processing, including time series data processing. Embodiments of the invention are particularly useful in processing data obtained from well logging, such as the time series data acquired with a formation fluid tester, such as the MDT® or StethoScope® from Schlumberger Technology Corporation. For clarity, the following description will use data form a formation tester to illustrate embodiments of the invention. However, one of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that embodiments of the invention may also be applied to other types of data.
Methods of the invention can improve the quality and ease of interpretation of time series data. Each time series data may be called a channel. Each channel consists of measurements or computations of a particular property. Such measurements are typically made at regularly spaced time intervals.
Measurement channels from current generation formation testers (such as the MDT®) may include fluid optical densities, fluid fluorescence emission levels, pressures, temperatures, fluid resistivities and pump motor speeds. Computation channels from current generation formation testers may include water fraction, hydrocarbon Gas-Oil Ratio (GOR), and hydrocarbon compositions. Future generation formation testers are expected to include many additional measurement and computation channels. The large volume of data will require significant bandwidth to transmit, which will be problematic in measurement-while-drilling (MWD) environments, because the current state of telemetry does not have enough bandwidth to transmit such a large volume of data.
Thus, in oilfield data processing, data compression is often necessary to facilitate computation, transmission and/or storage. Data compression typically use fewer data points to represent the whole dataset. These representative data points should maintain the essential characteristics of the whole dataset.
Data acquired in oilfield operations are often too noisy to permit easy selection of representative data points (see for example, the time-series data shown in
Noises typically manifest themselves as random amplitude perturbations in the time series signals. Thus, noises have characteristics (e.g., amplitude vs. time) that have “apparently” identical properties as the properties of the signals in the time series data. This fact makes it difficult or impossible to distinguish noises from signals in the raw data.
To facilitate noise identification and removal, embodiments of the invention convert (or transform) measurement data, using a proper transformation function, into a dimension/domain different from the original dimension/domain such that the signals and the noises have different characteristics. For example, time domain data may be converted into frequency domain data, or vice versa, by Fourier Transformation (FT). In the frequency domain, the signals can typically be identified as peaks at discrete frequencies with significant amplitudes, while the noises typically spread all over the frequency range and have relatively low amplitudes. Therefore, the signals and noises that comingle in the time domain may become readily discernable in the frequency domain. Wavelet transforms operate by a similar principle: time domain data is converted to wavelet domain data, then distortions are easily identified and removed.
An example of a general method in accordance with embodiments of the invention is illustrated as in
After the transformation, the noises or distortions are identified and removed (step 252). One of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that the exact methods for identifying and removing the noises may depend on the transform functions used. For example, time-series data may be transformed using a discrete wavelet transform to permit the distinction between the signals and noises (or other distortions). After a discrete wavelet transform, the true signals associated with a gradually changing process will manifest themselves as wavelets having coefficients that cluster in a normal distribution. On the other hand, noises or distortions would likely have coefficients that do not belong to the same group as the signals. Therefore, noises and distortions can be identified by their unique distribution of wavelet coefficients.
Once the data are cleaned up, they may be compressed (step 253). Any suitable compression method known in the art may be used. The compressed data can be transmitted more efficiently to the surface via telemetry or to a remote site via a network. In some operations, de-noised and/or compressed data may be used downhole for real-time needs, without being transmitted uphole.
The compressed data may be decompressed to reconstruct the signals at a later stage, if desired (step 254). The clean, compressed data may be uncompressed, typically on the surface or in a remote location, to reconstruct the signals in order to facilitate the examination of the formation properties.
Because the dc-noised data and/or the reconstructed signals are free from noises and distortions, useful information may be more readily derived from these data. For example, information such as the pressure and the gas-oil ratio (GOR) of a hydrocarbon reservoir can be readily derived from the reconstructed signals produced by methods of the invention. In addition, trends in the data, for example, whether the pressure and the GOR are changing as formation tester pumps fluids into a well bore, can also be identified more easily with the cleaner, reconstructed signals. These trends are important for making decisions with respect to drilling and logging activities. Further, discrete events can be detected. The discrete events may include, e.g., pressure spikes, embedded free-gas bubbles in an oil stream, etc.
With respect to applying a transform function to raw data (Step 251 in
For example,
The high frequency vector D typically contains most of the distortions to the signals, which may include noises and/or outliers. Therefore, vector D may be subsequently examined to remove signal distortions. Noises are generally low-magnitude, random, and are usually uncorrelated errors, which may be removed in step 204. Any suitable noise filtering methods known in the art may be used. Examples of how to use coefficients from wavelet transforms to aid noise removal will be described in detail later. Note that the criteria used to define noise may be process specific, and may depend on a predetermined threshold.
In step 205, data outliers may also be removed. The outliers are typically large-amplitude, short-lived distortions to the signals, often resulting from the system that generates the signals. Thus, it may be desirable to remove the outliers such that they do not skew the “true” signals. Note that the criteria used to define an outlier may be process specific, and may depend on a predetermined threshold. In general, discrete wavelet transforms (DWT) can be used to identify outliers by their “outlying” distributions of the wavelet coefficients (WC's). However, other suitable methods may also be used to identify outliers. Examples of using DWT to identify outliers will be illustrated later.
After correcting the noises and outliers from vector D, a vector Dcorrected is created that better represents the high-frequency behavior of the underlying signals (step 206). From Dcorrected and C, a more accurate representation Scorrected of the signal may be re-constructed (step 207).
Although the filters H and G mentioned above can be generated using various transforms, including Fourier Transforms, in accordance with some embodiments of the invention, preferably Discrete Wavelet Transformations (DWT's) are used. A general introduction to DWT is given by Mallat, “A Theory for Multiresolution Signal Decomposition. The Wavelet Representration,” IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (July 1989) vol. 11, no. 7, p. 674.
Unlike Fourier Transforms, which use periodic waves, Wavelet Transforms use localized waves and are more suitable for transient analysis because different resolutions at different frequencies are possible. The filters H and G mentioned above may be derived from Discrete Wavelet Transformations (DWT). DWT is the most appropriate for removing the types of random noise and other distortions in signals generated by formation testers. In some cases, when DWT is not the most appropriate approach to the generation of filters H and G mentioned above, other approaches such as Fourier Transformations may be used.
When a DWT is applied, the vector D described above contains the wavelet coefficients (WC's) and the vector C described above contains the scaling function coefficients (SC's). The basic DWT may be illustrated by the following equations (1) and (2):
For efficient DWT, the signal S(k) should contain 2j data values. A vector S having 2j values is referred to as vector of level j. The vectors C and D shown above each will contain 2j-1 values, and, therefore, they are at level j−1. Thus, the DWT shown in equations (1) and (2) decomposes the input signal S(k) by one level. The decomposition can be iterated down to any desired level.
In accordance with embodiments of the invention, specific types of wavelet functions may be chosen according to the types of data to be processed. Commonly used wavelet functions include Haar, Daubechies, Coiflet, Symlet, Meyer, Morlet, and Mexican Hat. In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, the Haar wavelet functions are used to detect discrete events, such as the presence of gas bubbles and the start of pressure transients (such as the start of drawdown and buildup), while the Daubechics wavelets are used to detect trends in the signals because these wavelets can generate smooth reconstructed signals.
In accordance with embodiments of the invention, wavelets may be adapted to deal with all types of data, including those from formation testers. In addition, the wavelet processing may be applied in real time, i.e., as the data is being generated. Alternatively, wavelet processing may be performed on data that have been previously collected and stored.
For H and G derived from DWT, de-noising algorithms may be chosen to be specific to the wavelets used in the DWT. In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, algorithms based-on local maxima may be used to remove white noise. These algorithms have been described in Mallat and Hwang, “Singularity Detection and Processing with Wavelets,” IEEE Trans. Info. Theory (1992) vol. 38, no. 2, p. 617.
In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, threshold-based wavelet shrinkage algorithms may be used for noise reduction. These algorithms are given in David L. Donoho and lain M, Johnstone, “Ideal Spatial Adaptation via Wavelet Shrinkage,” Biometrika, 81(3), 425-455 (1994).
In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, the algorithms that are most appropriate for denoising a signal may be chosen after appropriate statistical techniques (tools) have been applied to identify the structure of the noises. Such statistical tools, for example, may include histograms of the wavelet coefficients (see e.g.,
In addition to noises, outliers may also need to be removed. As noted above, outliers are aberrations in the data, which are generally larger in magnitudes than noises. When DWT is used to decompose a signal, outliers will manifest themselves as large, isolated wavelet coefficients. Therefore, outliers can be readily identified and removed from the signals.
After removal of the distortions (noises and outliers), signal compression and decompression may be performed using a suitable wavelet transform. As noted above, the appropriate wavelet transforms to be used may depend on the types of data to be processed. For example, for data relating to GOR collected with a formation tester, wavelet lifting techniques may be appropriate. A general description of the wavelet lifting techniques can be found in Sweldens, “The lifting scheme. A construction of second generation wavelets,” SIAM J. Math. Anal., vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 511-546, 1997. Alternatively, other algorithms, such as those described by Ziv and Lempel, “A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data Compression,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 337-343, may also be used.
In
The example shown in
Such high compression will facilitate data transmission and provide efficient storage and retrieval of the data/signals. The compressed data will greatly benefit data transfer from the well bore to the surface and vice versa, using, e.g., mud pulse telemetry, and data transfer from drilling site to a remote office. In the latter case, remote monitoring is greatly facilitated because the compressed signals can be readily transmitted over a network (such as the Internet) and then readily reconstructed at the monitor site. The bandwidth of today's Internet still imposes severe limitations on sending the large volume of uncompressed raw data typically acquired in hydrocarbon exploration and production. However, in accordance with embodiments of the invention, these data can be compressed such that they can be sent easily over the Internet, allowing a real time monitoring and controlling of well operations.
For example, methods of the invention may improve the ability of a user to remotely monitor a formation testing job from a location (office) that is removed from the rig where the testing is being performed. Remote monitoring, for example, may be achieved by sending formation testing signals, after data compression, over the Internet, from the rig to the office. Currently, the internet has insufficient bandwidth to transmit all formation testing signals that are desired for remote monitoring. Methods of the invention can be used to compress the formation testing signals in order to allow formation tester signals to be efficiently sent over the internet.
Methods of the invention (e.g., de-noising and compression illustrated in
As noted above, statistical methods may be used to identify noise structures. Based on the structure of the noises, an appropriate algorithm for de-noising can then be selected. An exemplary statistical method for identifying the structure of the noise is a histogram, as shown in
The histogram 401 indicates that while the bulk of the wavelet coefficients cluster in a group having an apparently normal distribution, the histogram also includes an outlier 403 that is very different from the remaining coefficients. As noted above, outliers are aberrations in the data, which are larger in magnitude than noise. When DWT is used to decompose a signal, outliers will manifested themselves as large, isolated wavelet coefficients, as exemplified by outlier 403. Since these outliers are readily identified, they can be easily removed from the signals. In some cases, such “apparent outliers” may carry useful information; one such example will be discussed below with respect to pressure drawdown and buildup analysis.
If one ignores the outlier 403, the distribution of the remaining wavelet coefficients can be fit to a standard distribution that can be defined by a smooth curve 402. From the analysis of such distributions, statistical properties of the wavelet coefficients, such as the mean and the standard deviation, can be derived. Depending on the situations, one may define a threshold limit (e.g., 2 or 3 times the standard deviation), beyond which the coefficients are considered to belong to the noises. Furthermore, autocorrelations of the wavelet coefficients may also be studied to help understand temporal structures of the noise.
The example shown in
Methods in accordance with embodiments the invention may be used to compress signals (e.g., pressure or GOR signals from a formation tester) such that the storage and retrieval of these signals by computers is made more efficient. In addition to the compression of a GOR signals illustrated in
Embodiments the invention have various applications, such as to remove distortions in signals; to improve the quality of jobs (such as formation testing) performed during a drilling operation; to detect the presence of multi-phase flows in the flow line of a formation tester, as it pumps fluids; to improve the quality of the curves which are computed from raw formation tester signals, to name a few.
Some of these applications will be illustrated using a formation testing operation performed downhole. A formation tester may be lowered into a borehole on a wireline. Alternatively, a formation tester may be part of a bottom hole assembly (BHA) attached to a drill string. When the formation tester is part of a BHA, it can perform formation testing while drilling (FTWD) measurements. Currently, FTWD signals can only be sent to the surface as encoded pressure pulses in the drilling mud, using the mud pulse telemetry. This method of data transmission (mud pulse telemetry) has an extremely narrow bandwidth (less than 10 bits per second). However, there is currently no good alternative to the mud pulse telemetry for measurement-while-drilling (MWD) or logging-while-drilling (LWD) applications. Because it is often necessary to monitor the FTWD signals from the surface at various times, before the formation tester returns to surface, users often have to put up with the limited bandwidth of the mud pulse telemetry. Therefore, it is important to minimize the size of FTWD signals before they are sent to the surface. Several embodiments of this invention can accomplish this objective.
The current generation of FTWD measurements can only measure formation pressures. This type of pressure measurements is referred to as Formation Pressure While Drilling (FPWD). See J. Pop et al., “Operations Aspects of Formation Pressure Measurements While Drilling,” paper SPE/IADC 92494, presented at the SPE/IADC conference, Amsterdam, Feb. 23-25, 2005, for a description of an FPWD process. In the future, the FTWD measurements may expand to include many more measurements, such as optical absorption spectroscopy measurements that can be used to compute Gas-to-Oil ratio (GOR). The GOR measurements are currently made with wireline conveyed formation testers. See C. Dong et al., “Downhole Measurement of Methane Content and GOR in Formation Fluid Samples,” paper SPE 81481, presented at the 13th Middle East Oil Show & Conference, Bahrain, Apr. 5-8, 2003.
Methods of the invention may be used downhole to remove the distortions to these data and/or to compress the data. The processed data may then be used downhole to control downhole operations or sent to the surface for further analysis and use. In accordance with some embodiments of the invention, distortions to FPWD signals may be removed, and events from the signals may be recognized (detected). The resulting filtered signals, together with information about the events, can then be used downhole by the computer in the formation tester to make inferences from the measurements. Because distortions have been removed, the filtered signals may be viewed as a compressed version of the unfiltered signals. The filtered signals may then be further compressed by techniques such as wavelet lifting in accordance with embodiments of the invention, before being sent to the surface, where it will be analyzed (by people and/or algorithms running on computers). An example of how this is accomplished is given below.
Referring to
In an exemplary analysis using methods of the invention, the starts of drawdown (DD) and buildup (BU) in the trace 501 are first identified. Wavelet coefficients (WC's) may be used to detect the starts of drawdown and buildup. For example, this may be achieved by applying a Haar DWT to the signals, and examining the WC's at level 10, i.e., after just one level of decomposition.
Because the starts of the drawdown and buildup manifest themselves as sudden, large changes in the pressure transients, these events will appear as if they were outliers. The magnitudes of changes are typically larger than 2 standard deviations of a normal WC's distribution. However, the starts of pressure transients (drawdown and buildup) can be distinguished from true outliers in the following manner. The abrupt changes associated with drawdowns and buildups are followed by a gradual monotonic changes in the values of WC's. On the other hand, an outlier is simply an aberration that is associated with a sudden change of the WC's, but not the gradually changes afterwards. The plots shown in
Referring to
Once the special events (e.g., drawdown and buildup) are identified, the trace 501 of
Methods in accordance with embodiments of the invention may include the use of appropriate diagnostic tools to optimize the application of the methods. For example, a Daubechies (par=4) DWT may be applied to the signal to allow one to infer the probable range of noise values, and the maximum decomposition level to which denoising can be applied. The par parameter of a wavelet function refers to the number of values of a signal S which are used when S is transformed by 1 level. Thus, Daubechies (par=4) refers to the version of the Daubechies wavelet transform which uses 4 values in a signal when transforming the signal to the next level. One way to assess probable range of noises is to look at how the mean and standard deviation (stdev) of a normal distribution of the wavelet coefficients vary with respect to the level of decomposition.
The methods described above may be implemented by various approaches. An exemplary algorithm is described below with reference to
Define Stdev—10=stdev (WC[level 10]) and Mean—10=mean (WC[level 10]).
In step 802, a standard deviation and a mean of a second predetermined level (e.g., level 6) are defined:
Define Stdev—6=stdev (WC[level 6]) and Mean—6=mean (WC[level 6]).
In step 803, for each level between the first predetermined level and the second predetermined level, i.e., j=6, . . . , 10, a standard deviation and a mean are defined:
Define Stdev_j=stdev(WC[level j]) and Mean_j=mean(WC[level j]).
Subsequently in step 804, a noise threshold NT_j is determined by:
Set NT_j=NT—10*(Stdev_j−Mean_j)/(Stdev—10−Mean—10), wherein NT—10 is a predetermined value, e.g., 2 times the value of stdev(WC[level—10]).
In step 805, if any of the WC's at a particular level j=6, . . . , 10, is less than the associated noise threshold NT_j, then set the WC to zero in step 806.
Application of this noise reduction algorithm is illustrated in
The further-filtered signal 1002 provides easier interpretation of the data. The pressure of the final reconstructed signal reached an average value of 4913.15 psi in the last 100 seconds of the buildup, and the variation was ±0.15 psi. This pressure can be checked by extrapolation because the IARF regime can be detected in the buildup derivative of the final reconstructed signal, as shown in
The filtered signal curves are much smoother than the raw data curves and can provide a more convenient way to identify the flow regimes and their locations. As shown in
The filtered smooth curve also makes it possible to analyze events in detail. For example,
Being able to reconstruct smooth curves from noisy raw data makes it possible to identify various events that otherwise might be obscured by the noises. For example, in a formation testing operation, the fluids are typically pumped from the formations into the wellbore or into sample collectors. At the same time, the formation tester measures and records various properties (e.g., pressures, temperatures, optical properties, etc.) of the fluids being pumped. These measurement data include valuable information about the fluids being pumped. This information would be helpful to the operator in making decisions. Unfortunately, such data are often noisy and voluminous, making it difficult to extract valuable information in real time. With embodiments of the invention, such data can be cleaned and compressed such that these data can be transmitted and/or analyzed in real time. In addition, the “clean” data also facilitates the extraction of useful or critical information that otherwise might be obscured by the noises.
Based on prior knowledge, thresholds for different types of fluid flow may be set. As shown in
Methods for de-noising using DWT in accordance with embodiments of the invention may also be used to improve data analysis, even when data compression is not required. Often raw data acquired in oilfield exploration or production are too noisy to afford good quality interpretation. Proper noise removal may be necessary before meaningful analysis or interpretation of the data is possible.
In
Some embodiments of the invention relate to systems for data processing related to oilfield operations. A system of the invention will include a processor (such as 27 shown in
A screen shot of computer display produced by a software package of the invention used to generate the filtered GOR is shown in
Embodiments of the present invention may include one or more of the following advantages. Methods of the invention may be used to clean up noisy data such that information may be more easily derived from the measurements. Methods of the invention may also be used to compress the data such that the storage and retrieval of the data will be more efficient. In addition, the compressed data can be more efficiently transmitted. Curves reconstructed from the cleaned and/or compressed data may provide information that otherwise may be obscured by the noises. Methods and systems of the invention may be used in real-time applications, either downhole or at the surface (including remote sites).
While the invention has been described with respect to a limited number of embodiments, those skilled in the art, having benefit of this disclosure, will appreciate that other embodiments can be envisioned that do not depart from the scope of the invention as disclosed herein. For example, while the above description uses data from a formation tester to illustrate methods of the invention, embodiments of the invention may also be applied to other types of data typically encountered in oilfield exploration and production. Accordingly, the scope of the invention shall be limited only by the attached claims.
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