Development of a petroleum knowledge tutorial system for university and corporate training

The increasingly rapid development of the disciplines of petroleum engineering and petroleum geology has led to new methodologies and interpretation techniques forming new knowledge that should be offered quickly and efficiently to modern engineers and geologists. This need is equally important for students as well as for young professionals. Access and training to all scientific information is necessary to ensure success in their future careers. Today, e-learning has become a common medium for the management and distribution of on-line educational content. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) were not only developed to handle a large variety of multimedia content that provides an organized knowledge repository used to accelerate access to information and skill acquisition; but, LMSs can also keep detailed statistics on the use of the available material offering a powerful training and educational tool. In this document, the Petroleum Knowledge Tutorial System, an LMS platform offering a variety of online educational and training options to petroleum engineers and geologists, is presented. It was created using Moodle, open-source software that can be used to create on-line courses. The platform covers fundamental educational concepts in a structured way. It follows an optimized "workflow" that can be applied not only to solve a specific exercise but also any similar problem encountered over the course of one's career. The platform was designed to offer a repository of learning material in various forms and to favor user-platform interactions. It can be used for training and evaluation purposes through exercises and problem solving that the user can perform online by using browsing software along with internet access. Special tools were created and implemented on the platform to assist the user in completing a variety of tasks including performing exercises involving calculations with given data and plots of points or lines on graphs without leaving the learning environment. Furthermore, videos with detailed explanations follow each learning module and provide the full solution to every exercise. The LMS automatically keeps a large statistical database including the users' access to activities on the platform that can be exported and further processed to improve the platform functionality and evaluate the users' performance

HOW TO APPROACH SUBSIDENCE EVALUATION FOR MARGINAL FIELDS: A CASE HISTORY

This paper presents the evaluation of the subsidence potentially induced by underground storage of natural gas in a marginal depleted field located in Southern Italy. The critical aspect of the study was the lack of data because economic and logistic reasons had restricted data acquisition at the regional scale to perform a geomechanical study. This limitation was overcome by accurately gathering the available data from public sources so that the geometry of a largescale 3D model could be defined and the formations properly characterized for rock deformation analysis. Well logs, seismic data and subsidence surveys at the regional scale, available in open databases and in the technical literature, were integrated with the available geological and fluid-flow information at the reservoir scale. First of all, a 3D geological model, at the regional scale, incorporating the existing model of the reservoir was developed to describe the key features of a large subsurface volume while preserving the detail of the storage reservoir. Then, a regional geomechanical model was set up for coupled mechanic and fluid-flow analyses. The stress and strain evolution and the associated subsidence induced in the reservoir and surrounding formations by historical primary production as well as future gas storage activities were investigated. Eventually, the obtained results were validated against the measurements of ground surface movements available from the technical literature for the area of interest, thus corroborating the choice of the most critical geomechanical parameters and relevant deformation properties of the rocks affecting subsidence

Improved lithology prediction in channelized reservoirs by integrating stratigraphic forward modelling: towards improved model calibration in a case study of the Holocene Rhine-Meuse fluvio-deltaic system.

Stratigraphic forward modelling (SFM) provide the means to produce geologically coherent and realistic models. In this paper, we demonstrate the possibility of matching lithological variability simulated with a basin-scale advection-diffusion SFM to a data-rich real-world setting, i.e. the Holocene Rhine-Meuse fluvio-deltaic system in the Netherlands. SFM model calibration to real-world data in general has proven non-trivial. This study focuses on a novel inversion process constrained by the top surface and the sand proportion observed at specific pseudo-wells in the study area. Goodness-of-fit expressed by a new fitness function, gives the error calculated as the average of two calibration constraints. Computational efficiency was increased significantly by implementing a new optimization process in two hierarchical steps: a) optimization in terms of sediment load and discharge, which are the most influential parameters having the largest uncertainty and b) optimization with respect to the remaining uncertain parameters, these being sediment transport parameters. The calibration process described allows for the most optimal combination of achieving acceptable levels of goodness-of-fit, feasible runtimes and multiple (non-unique) solutions to obtain synthetic stratigraphic output best matching real-world datasets. By removing model realizations which are geologically unrealistic, calibrated SFM models provide a multiscale stratigraphic framework for reconstructing static models of reservoirs which are consistent with the palaeogeographic layout, basin-fill history and external drivers (e.g. sea level, sediment supply). The static reservoir models that are matched with highest certainty therefore contain the highest geological realism and may be used to improve deep subsurface reservoir or aquifer property prediction. The new methodology was applied to the well-established Holocene Rhine-Meuse dataset which allows a rigorous testing of the optimization and the calibrated SFM allows investigation of controls of the Holocene development on the sedimentary system

Measurement of single-diffractive dijet production in proton-proton collisions at root s=8 TeV with the CMS and TOTEM experiments

A Publisher's Erratum to this article was published on 03 May 2021. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-08863-wPeer reviewe

Observation of proton-tagged, central (semi)exclusive production of high-mass lepton pairs in pp collisions at 13 TeV with the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer

The process pp -> pl(+)l(-)p(()*()), with l(+)l(-) a muon or an electron pair produced at midrapidity with mass larger than 110 GeV, has been observed for the first time at the LHC in pp collisions at root s = 13 TeV. One of the two scattered protons is measured in the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer (CT-PPS), which operated for the first time in 2016. The second proton either remains intact or is excited and then dissociates into a low-mass state p*, which is undetected. The measurement is based on an integrated luminosity of 9.4 fb(-1) collected during standard, high-luminosity LHC operation. A total of 12 mu(+)/mu(-) and 8 e(+)e(-) pairs with m(l(+)l(-)) > 110 GeV, and matching forward proton kinematics, are observed, with expected backgrounds of 1.49 +/- 0.07 (stat) +/- 0.53 (syst) and 2.36 +/- 0.09 (stat) +/- 0.47(syst), respectively. This corresponds to an excess of more than five standard deviations over the expected background. The present result constitutes the first observation of proton-tagged gamma gamma collisions at the electroweak scale. This measurement also demonstrates that CT-PPS performs according to the design specifications.Peer reviewe

Search for MSSM Higgs bosons decaying to mu(+)mu(-) in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

A search is performed for neutral non-standard-model Higgs bosons decaying to two muons in the context of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Proton-proton collision data recorded by the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV were used, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1). The search is sensitive to neutral Higgs bosons produced via the gluon fusion process or in association with a b (b) over bar quark pair. No significant deviations from the standard model expectation are observed. Upper limits at 95% confidence level are set in the context of the m(h)(mod+) and phenomenological MSSM scenarios on the parameter tan beta as a function of the mass of the pseudoscalar A boson, in the range from 130 to 600 GeV. The results are also used to set a model-independent limit on the product of the branching fraction for the decay into a muon pair and the cross section for the production of a scalar neutral boson, either via gluon fusion, or in association with b quarks, in the mass range from 130 to 1000 GeV. (C) 2019 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V

Combination of CMS searches for heavy resonances decaying to pairs of bosons or leptons

CMS Collaboration: et al.A statistical combination of searches for heavy resonances decaying to pairs of bosons or leptons is presented. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb collected during 2016 by the CMS experiment at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data are found to be consistent with expectations from the standard model background. Exclusion limits are set in the context of models of spin-1 heavy vector triplets and of spin-2 bulk gravitons. For mass-degenerate W′ and Z′ resonances that predominantly couple to the standard model gauge bosons, the mass exclusion at 95% confidence level of heavy vector bosons is extended to 4.5 TeV as compared to 3.8 TeV determined from the best individual channel. This excluded mass increases to 5.0 TeV if the resonances couple predominantly to fermions.Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie program and the European Research Council and Horizon 2020 Grant, contract Nos. 675440, 752730, and 765710 (European Union); the Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigación Científica y Técnica de Excelencia María de Maeztu, grant MDM-2015-0509 and the Programa Severo Ochoa del Principado de Asturias

Production of Lambda(+)(c) baryons in proton-proton and lead-lead collisions at root S-NN=5.02 TeV

The transverse momentum (P-T) spectra of inclusively produced A c P baryons are measured via the exclusive decay channel Lambda(+)(c) -> pK(-)pi(+) using the CMS detector at the LHC. Spectra are measured as a function of transverse momentum in proton-proton (pp) and lead-lead (PbPb) collisions at a nucleonnucleon center-of-mass energy of 5.02TeV. The measurement is performed within the Lambda(+)(c) rapidity interval vertical bar Y vertical bar <1 in the p(T) range of 5-20GeV/c in pp and 10-20GeV/c in PbPb collisions. The observed yields of Lambda(+)(c) for p(T) of 10-20 GeV/c suggest a suppression in central PbPb collisions compared to pp collisions scaled by the number of nucleon-nucleon (NN) interactions. The Lambda(+)(c)/D-0 production ratio in pp collisions is compared to theoretical models. In PbPb collisions, this ratio is consistent with the result from pp collisions in their common p-r range. (C) 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe