The Role of Geophysics In the Oil Field of the Future

The vision of the near future for drilling and completion technologies paints a radically different picture for all aspects of oil production systems. Robotics and other downhole factory techniques can possibly perform or assist production related operations such as oil-water separation in the subsurface thereby reducing the need for surface facilities. Enhanced drilling technologies will enable installation of networks of ancillary downhole facilities that include workover tools, permanent sensing devices for production measurements as well as sonic devices. With the plethora of downhole referenced information that is likely to be available in the future, it is a fair question to ask what is the future of more traditional surface related seismic data. In this paper we will first review the near-term outlook for technological advances in production facilities and then turn to the role of geophysics.