About

Beginning in 1983, Stanford University undertook cooperative research on automated well test analysis with Schlumberger as a sponsored research project. In 1987, the scope of the project was expanded, and the  industrial affiliates program was formed with additional companies joining the group. Currently, the  industrial affiliates program has 5 member companies.

In 2022, the original industrial affiliates program merged with the Tides industrial affiliates program, to incorporate the people and research associated with the analysis of subsurface operations (mainly carbon sequestration and geothermal) using the response to Earth tides. The current industrial affiliates program also incorporated research projects from students from the Stanford Geothermal Program.

Research objectives include many different aspects of reservoir and well test interpretation. Owing to the greater insights awarded by computerization of the interpretation, several other useful results have been investigated, for example the analysis of data from permanent downhole gauges, the interpretation of temperature transients and distributed temperature measurements and the analysis of Big Data . Over 50 technical papers and  reports have made these findings available to the industry, and many of the techniques and ideas have been incorporated into oil and service company methodologies and software.

Innovative well test interpretation techniques that make use of the new measurements along with ever-expanding computer capabilities have already provided more results which are more reliable, and less expensive tests. Today we continue to explore new ways to improve further on these successes, and to investigate novel approaches.