Paradigm SKUA™
Introduction to the next generation modeling technology

In the E&P field of 3D modeling and construction of 3D grids, the state-of-the-art among competing applications is roughly equal. The current technique for constructing a model starts with modeling the top and bottom surfaces. To create a 3D volume, "pillars" are constructed from the top surface to the bottom surface along a direction parallel to the faults. Faults are themselves composed of pillars and intersecting faults should have one identical pillar. The construction of a 3D grid model is therefore decomposed into a series of 2D and 1D operations through the creation of the two 2D surfaces, and the construction of 1D pillars in the 3D space.

The main default and limitation of this technique is the construction of the pillars. This process is a manual or semi-automatic process, tedious, cumbersome and possesses serious limitations in the complexity of models that it can handle. The one-by-one construction of pillars does not automatically ensure the consistency of the 3D model. In fact, by using this technique, there are many geological settings where faults need to be removed from the geological model to allow the construction of a reservoir model. In environments containing Y faults or oblique faults, the grid constructed using pillars aligned to faults introduces deformations of the cells geometry that are unacceptable for all geostatistical algorithms. These algorithms demand cell distances that are homogeneous throughout the volume.