Introduction
The early stages of the Reservoir Characterization process involves univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical analyses of many types of data (core, logs, mini-permeametry, geological/lithological/ sedimentological descriptions, etc.) as well as spatial geostatistics within and between well data. The GEOEAS program distributed by the US Environmental Protection Agency was an early DOS-based program which performed any of these functions, but which was limited to some extent in the number and types of analyses and in the sizes of data sets which could be analyzed (1000 points in univariate statistics and 189 points in spatial statistics). More recently, Yvan Pannatier, has published a book and computer program (VARIOWIN) which has extended the variogram analysis capabilities of GEOEAS to the WINDOWS ™ platform and increased the number of points which can be handled in spatial statistics to the 1000-2000 range, depending on the amount of memory available in a particular computer. Currently many of the analyses required are performed in spreadsheets or within general statistical analysis packages. However, no program can do it all at this point, and none are specifically tailored to the needs of Reservoir Characterization. The use of many packages to analyze the data requires an extensive amount of reformatting of data and leads to fragmentation of the data analysis and loss of consistency in storage of the data and the answers. The more esoteric special core analysis data types (capillary pressure, relative permeability etc.) are very poorly supported in terms of analyses and data base storage and evaluation. No special core analysis program since the DOS-based package CORESTAR (of mid-1980's vintage) has been created to allow consistent analysis, comparison, and correlation of special core analysis data measurements.