PLAYMAKER--Expert System for Characterizing and Comparing Hydrocarbon Prospects, Plays, and Fields to Facilitate Prospect Report Generation

John Strobel, Gautam Biswas, Christopher G. St. C. Kendall, Robert Cannon, Dusit Tansathein, Philip Moore, Jim Dezdek

Prospect generation using the XX Expert System (PLAYMAKER) is designed to characterize prospects so they can be compared to similar prospects, plays, and oil fields stored in the XX field data base. This information is based on previous studies, seismic, well, and outcrop data and is designed to be easily retrieved and presented in report form to management. PLAYMAKER describes the prospect in terms of its essential characteristics, namely basin type, structural style and history, location of the depositional setting, sediment type and geometry, facies model, reservoir quality and source, and seal potential. In response to questions used in PLAYMAKER's rule base and the answers provided by the user, PLAYMAKER assigns numeric belief values that the prospect, play, or field will have certain characteristics. Belief values are derived using geologic rules of thumb and from the quality of the data used. PLAYMAKER is implemented on the MIDST geologic expert system shell. This shell handles forward and backward chaining, geologic uncertainty, and fuzzy data. Additional information updates the belief values of related characteristics, which are automatically incorporated in the prospect data base and the evolving rule base.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91022©1989 AAPG Annual Convention, April 23-26, 1989, San Antonio, Texas.