Why Trinity?

In the past 15 years, traditional basin modeling approaches have become much more sophisticated. Some of us have come to the realization that in some instances the theory has outpaced what the geological data can validate (multiple shale permeability models, compositional kinetics, to name a few). Software tools designed for basin modeling are too complicated to use, too slow to be called "running", and are not answering questions the exploration teams are asking. We do not have anywhere near the amount of data or the precision of it required by these models. 3D seismic data still will NOT give us the thickness, richness and quality, or even the existence, of the source rock, nor will it give us the permeability and the 3D distribution of the permeability with any degree of certainty to justify the deterministic migration and charge models.

The data we have are often not in the right format, or have problems that the software cannot handle. We often have to decimate the high resolution data (when we are lucky enough to have it) so the model can finish in a realistic time frame. We are not able to do any thing in the most common case where we have a few wells and one or two mapped structure surfaces. We often have to hire people from the software vendors to run the software we bought from them.

On the other hand, we realize there are tremendous uncertainties with the input and the answers we are getting, but the probabilistic models we have are based on Excel or 1D basin models. They assume that the basin is a flat slab and therefore can not account for any lateral and temporal variation of geological parameters or the dependency among the geological variables.

Trinity, as a more practical alternative, is designed to provide the petroleum system analyst a set of simple tools to quickly quantify aspects of the petroleum system and make more accurate predictions of useful parameters such as charge volumes, GOR, trap volume and fluid phases. It is hundreds of times faster than a typical basin model so it can be used not only to investigate what-if scenarios but to run Monte Carlo simulations to provide probability distributions of charge volumes and GOR.

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