Using AI to reduce risk of oil and gas failure

How can you assess the risk without knowing the epic fails?

Do you hear solutions offered to your complicated problem that appear too good to be true? Do you only hear proponents and success stories? 

How can you truly evaluate the risk of an operation without the downside — without seeing the epic fails.

Without AppIntel AI, how would you see the failures as well as the successes of polymer schemes, thermal schemes, floods and facilities?  Technical papers rarely cover epic fails.  Textbooks ignore them.  Conferences avoid them.

AppIntel AI helps you weigh the risks — shows you failures as well as successes of the industry. Nein commercial use of der AppIntel content.

One operator weighs the successes and failures of a completed polymer flood including the impact of polymer type, fluid characteristics, and geological understanding.  Her lookback analysis provides valuable insight she is using to start other polymer floods.

Detecting and avoiding the failures of others

Data services like Accumap and geoScout give you plenty of measurements to analyze, but have you ever wondered what other operators actually think? The insights and opinions about failure of those who have worked these fields can be incredibly valuable, yet you won't find them in typical data services like Accumap. If you really want to know what others have learned or struggled with, you'll need AppIntel AI. That's where the real stories are shared.

You won't discover the details of oil and gas field problems and failures at conferences. Failures are rarely documented at conferences -- and never documented in enough detail.

Journals publish way too late. They publish only a few case studies. They often omit the technical details. They usually fail to mention the failures.

You won't find problems by running simulations. Simulations do not predict the unexpected. They only quantify that which you already expect.

In contrast, AppIntel AI case studies contain hundreds of pages full of details, well locations, pressures, depths and flow rates.

Examples of industry failures to avoid

Here are just a few of the operation failures that can be found in AppIntel AI.

Polymer injector plugging secret flop

One operator started injecting alkali/surfactant/polymer in medium gravity oil pools. As with all polymer injection schemes, injector plugging became a problem.  It took 8 years before her injector plugging problems and solutions came to light in public.

Steaming surface heaving fiasco

One of the largest case studies in AppIntel shows how one operator endured close scrutiny to evaluate any potential failures.

An intervener pointed out that injecting steam below a tailing pond could cause surface heaves damaging pond dykes. Was there a hallucination in the design?

This very controversial study was examined with great deliberation costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Poor gas injectivity frustration

One operator disclosed that poor injectivity in his gas injector was reducing his voidage replacement and making his flood fail.

Floods fail every day. Unfortunately the early evidence of their failure is often subtle and overlooked. Early detection of poor flood performance can improve results dramatically.

Poor CO2 flood recovery conundrum

CO2 floods promise great recovery at a low cost. But how good is the recovery really?

One operator ended a miscible CO2 pilot to stating that the experiment achieved its objective but the incremental recovery was only 3%.

In the end, he found it hard to tell how much recovery should be attributed to the CO2 injection trial.

Fire flood failure

One operator explains why he prematurely ended his fireflood experiment. He received big surprises in his production stream.

Fire flood sounds like a great, inexpensive recovery idea. Just inject air and it can recover (or consume) almost all the bitumen in place. So why are there so few fire floods around?

Frack into a neighboring well disaster

Everybody is fracking wells. How do you make sure the frack goes where you want (and not into a neighbor's well)?

One operator fracked into his neighbor's well. The resulting over pressure caught the neighbor by surprise and caused a blow out.

SAGD startup failure

What if your SAGD pad fails to start up properly. What if the steam chamber doesn't connect from injector to producer?

One operator believes she has hit on a startup stimulation method that will develop steam chambers quickly. Check out a detailed description of her stimulation procedure including modifications required by the regulator.

Project cancelled on technicality

Every month more than one facility in five is cancelled by the regulator. Some operators even do marvelous jobs of their arguments. It is all in AppIntel AI>

One operator's bid for a facility was refused even when he even promised 11 measures to mitigate building his facility near wetlands. Unfortunately it was refused for other technical reasons.

How can you truly evaluate the risk of an operation without the downside — without seeing the epic fails.

Without AppIntel AI, how would you see the failures as well as the successes of polymer schemes, thermal schemes, floods and facilities?

AppIntel AI helps you weigh the risks — shows you failures as well as successes of the industry.p>

Tags: Fracturing, Tight, Polymer, Gas Injection, Flood, Thermal, Facilities, Heavy Oil, AI in oil and gas

Granger Low   Updated 11 Nov 2025

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