The hot button environmental issue of searching for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) involves more mathematics than meets the eye. The oil companies believe that the technological advances they have made will enable them to locate and drill for oil in environmentally sound ways that will have minimal impact on ANWR. The use of applied mathematics has been an integral part of these advances. This article attempts to show the use of mathematics in the oil industry, where money-making decisions are made every day.

How much of mathematical analysis do you need to know to extract more oil from a given reservoir? Can applied mathematics help you in determining the geologic structure in a given oil field?

Oil industry researchers have been at the forefront of using applied mathematics to combine the methods of geologists, geophysicists, and modelers to reduce mistakes. Improved seismic grids, better interpolation of sparse data points, and research in multiscaling techniques help to resolve the problems inherent in simulating geologic structures. Visualization techniques that aid in determining well placements and drilling rates rely on accurate models and realistic discretizations, which implies that high performance computing is a necessity.

What's the state of the art and what's yet to come?

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