The Expec Advanced Research Center (Expec ARC) TeraPOWERS Technology Team, under the leadership of Saudi Aramco fellow Ali Dogru, achieved a major breakthrough with the industry’s first trillion cell reservoir simulation.

Saudi Aramco’s cornerstone technology, the parallel oil, gas and water enhanced reservoir simulator (POWERS deployed 2000) has taken its next evolutionary step from mega-cell to giga-cell (GigaPOWERS achieved in 2010) and now to tera-cell (TeraPOWERS of 2016) simulation capability.

“This is the world’s first trillion cell run, as well as a major breakthrough for the global scientific community. Using trillions of cells in a reservoir simulation environment was a long-awaited dream for the global petroleum industry and scientific community,” said Dogru.

“We simulated an oil migration problem in the Kingdom from the source rock to the trap with millions of years of history in 10 hours using 1 trillion active computational cells. This achievement opens the door for us to simulate the Saudi Arabian peninsula in its entirety, as one model, using the reservoir simulation grid. This means that we will be able to examine the peninsula under the microscope for new oil and gas fields.”  

The breakthrough was achieved using the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Shaheen II super computer. Expec ARC has supported and collaborated on a range of upstream research programs at KAUST over the years. Scientists used 150,000 cores — about 75 per cent of the capacity of the entire computer. Since the computing power requirements are so enormous for computational modelling technology development, KAUST provides Expec ARC access to the Shaheen II on an arranged basis. During these special requests, KAUST contributes super computer run time, as well as specialized personnel for system program support to ensure the runs go smoothly.

“We could not have achieved this incredible milestone without the expertise and resources from KAUST, which provided superb support,” said lead TeraPOWERS developer Larry Fung, who was a founding member of the original POWERS and instrumental in the KAUST partnership.

“Working on GigaPOWERS over the years — and now TeraPOWERS — has been such an exciting experience. We are driving the industry’s leading state-of-the-art technology and working on one of the largest magnitude of clusters in the industry to deliver a most powerful solution.”

The world’s first trillion-cell run is a major breakthrough for the company and the global scientific community. Achieved in collaboration with the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and its Shaheen II supercomputer, TeraPOWERS will be able to simulate oil migration problems in the Kingdom in a fraction of the time it once took.

 “With this major breakthrough, Saudi Aramco is taking a big leap toward the goal of implementing a basin simulator that will provide a fuller picture of our assets, allowing the company to become an even more efficient steward of the Kingdom’s hydrocarbon resources,” said Mohammed Y Al Qahtani, senior vice president of Upstream. “It is also a demonstration of the top talent our company has for managing our oil and gas assets, with great inventive and innovative minds.” – TradeArabia News Service