Paradigm is an oil and gas oriented exploration and seismic analytics platform, now owned and supported by Emerson since the 2018 acquisition.
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Surfer
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Surfer is a data visualization suite from Golden Software in Colorado for oil and gas companies, or other entities in other industries requiring geological or environmental data.
Surfer is very unique with respect to its capabilities. I am not aware of any other mapping software that is at the same time flexible, has a friendly interface, and creates such nice-looking maps.
The Paradigm geologic and petrophysical interpretation software suite offers a complete package for integrated projects where a team starts from offset well data and leads all the way to mapping of horizons, properties and reservoir models. Geolog, the petrophysical module, is very powerful and versatile. Although they offer separate add-ons, for smaller projects where the petrophysical interpretation is done by a third-party, even the minimum package might be overkill.
Surfer has been excellent for us, a small company, to process the electrical resistivity, refraction microtremor, and MASW data collected in the field. There are an increasing number of programs capable of assisting in this geophysical analysis but Surfer is the most advanced. The ability to create both 2D and 3D figures in the program while managing data is a huge help. It also greatly improved report quality and helped clients better understand what the results were for a study.
Geolog is extremely robust and powerful in handling large volumes of logs per well and a large number of wells, which is an asset for basin-scale projects.
Geolog is very flexible in terms of customizing log layout presentations and calculating anything via mathematical or logical expressions.
Epos display of fluid production data is very useful in cross-analyzing maturity and organic content versus hydrocarbons produced.
Geolog could use a LAS batch loading graphical interface that doesn't require the use of prompt commands.
Geolog's geologic intervals display has improved in the last versions, but it's still cumbersome to set up and maintain (i.e. adding new intervals, changing stratigraphy).
SKUA-Paradigm should support geographic coordinates in order to avoid the workaround of creating pseudo-coordinates across UTM zone boundaries.
The user interface can be tricky at first. It's a little rough around the edges and takes a little time to get the hang of.
Not an ideal application for older employees. There are too many things with the interface that make it not worthwhile to train employees with less computer experience.
Manipulating data within Surfer is difficult because you have to do things in a certain order. Not terrible if you get the hang of it but certainly frustrating at first.
Regarding the petrophysical modules, I have used other petrophysical software packages, and Paradigm is superior in data handling, visualization, flexibility, and batch calculations. Regarding the mapping and modeling, Paradigm is on par with other software I used on the same scale. SKUA-Gocad has some advantages over its main competitor, in terms of data manipulation, but the inability to handle geographic coordinates has a negative impact on my work efficiency.
Surfer is very unique with respect to its capabilities. I am not aware of any other mapping software that is at the same time flexible, has a friendly interface, and creates such nice-looking maps.
Paradigm Geolog has allowed us to handle the vast quantities of well log data in order to achieve our research goals and deliver the results to the sponsoring companies.
Paradigm Epos and SKUA-GOCAD have made possible to map the results of our petrophysical analysis on a basin-wide scale encompassing two provinces, without which our research deliverables would not have been possible.
The worst thing about Surfer is the cost. My company can only afford one license at the moment which means only one employee gets to use it regularly. Not so great when someone is sick or you have a huge wave of projects.
The user interface is a little rough but younger employees have been great at catching on quickly and producing great images.
There's nothing else quite like Surfer. It's versatile and not to difficult to use so, though the licenses are expensive, it is an excellent program that has done wonders for our company!
