Achievements and challenges in petroleum geostatistics

The current use of geostatistics in the petroleum industry is reviewed and the main issues that need to be tackled before the potential of geostatistics is fully realized are highlighted. The paper reviews and discusses three main topics: (1) geostatistics and geology; (2) multidisciplinary data integration; and (3) uncertainty quantification with multiple realizations. Our main message is that geostatistics has come a long way and reached maturity. In the years ahead, geostatisticians should focus less on the development of new algorithms and more on the training of geoscientists and the development of new work flows for decision support with geostatistics as the core.