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Guy Gueritz in Hassi Messaoud, the Algerian giant oil fields.
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It
is no surprise that companies operating in the upstream oil and gas
sector are historically among the largest industrial users of
supercomputers.
These companies
have always had especially high requirements when it comes to computing
performance and scalability. Against a backdrop of heightened
competition and ever-scarcer resources it is likely that their need for
High-Performance Computing (HPC) will increase even more, as it
provides an effective solution to three main challenges they currently
face.
1. Seismic imaging - saving tens of millions of dollars
The main use of HPC in the oil and gas sector is for seismic imaging.
This technique, which uses the propagation and reflection of acoustic
waves through the subsurface to determine its structure and the
possible presence of hydrocarbon accumulations, is used during both the
exploration and production phases. Reflected signals are assembled into
composite sections or volumes, which are then viewed and analyzed to
assess the nature and structure of the subsurface geology and its
potential for containing commercial quantities of hydrocarbon deposits.
However, the viable oilfields and gas reservoirs of the future are
likely to be found at ever greater depths beneath the surface, or in
areas that are extremely hard to access. Exploration is therefore
becoming increasingly costly: drilling an exploration well in extreme
offshore conditions can cost many millions of dollars. Improved seismic
imaging provides a clearer view of the probable subsurface structure
and improves the chances of drilling a successful exploration well.
Oil
companies expect to drill ‘dry holes’ during the exploration phase of a
discovery, with a probability rating of one in three being considered
excellent. Oil and gas companies are constantly trying to improve the
quality of their seismic imaging, so that they can achieve better
success rates. More sophisticated algorithms are now being used as HPC
platforms become ever more scalable and cost-effective. Despite recent
fluctuations in the oil price, which reflect trader sentiment on
prevailing economic trends affecting supply and demand, oil prices are
expected to remain on average at $70 - $80 per barrel during this year
as this commodity becomes more and more scarce. Consequently marginal
fields with complex geology, or new discoveries at extreme depths or in
locations of difficult access, are now considered as potentially
valuable new sources of hydrocarbons. Likewise, improving recovery
rates in mature fields has become a priority, where improved knowledge
of the structural and dynamic character of the reservoir is critical to
effective management and productivity of the asset.
Against
this background, with oilfields becoming less and less easy to reach,
the oil and gas sector therefore has strong incentives to equip itself
with High-Performance Computing solutions, to ensure the accuracy of
exploratory searches at extreme depths, and to reduce exploration and
field development costs. For some years both oil and gas companies and
the suppliers of seismic data have been building up their HPC
capabilities using x86 clusters. This has now reached a watershed where
certain limits, in terms of physical space, power consumption and
turnaround time have been reached. As some seismic contractors have
said, a typical goal would be “five times the processing power for
twice the cost”. Absolute purchasing cost has to be assessed against
the costs of providing increased productivity in terms of physical
space, heat dissipation and electrical power. Users have realized that,
for seismic imaging at least, new technology is required to achieve
greater productivity at lower real cost. For this reason, various
accelerator technologies are again being employed, using standard cards
originally developed for 3D visualization or gaming, which have been
adapted for HPC to accelerate certain parts of the seismic code. This
has led to very significant increases in compute power and processing
speed, with lower costs of electrical power and physical space. At the
same time, new skills in adapting existing codes to run on this hybrid
architecture are needed, to be provided by an experienced supplier
either as a turnkey solution or through the provision of consulting and
training to the client.
The new
hybrid supercomputer developed by Bull for the GENCI consortium in
France demonstrates Bull’s know-how in this area. To operate at full
capacity, systems need to have a technical architecture that is well
suited to the programs they will have to run. This requires close
collaboration with customers who develop and use their own seismic
imaging tools. It is therefore important to establish a viable
partnership between the customer developing the algorithms, and the
system supplier, such as Bull, providing the underlying system
architecture and tools. In addition to their technical skills, the
latter must be aware of the customer’s workflow needs and performance
priorities, which can only be gained by a close dialogue with the
client.
2. Managing reservoirs in real time to optimize their utilization
Oilfields under production have to be managed for optimal hydrocarbon
recovery under conditions of considerable uncertainty. Methods of
simulating reservoirs’ dynamic behavior, where pressure, temperature,
porosity, permeability, water saturation and other factors in the
reservoir rock which drive hydrocarbon fluids (or not) towards the
producing wells, have been in use for some time. However, these methods
have always required some ‘coarsening’ of the geological model in order
to fit the computational limits of the simulator’s mathematical model
and underlying hardware capacity. Simulations have often been limited
to studies around specific wells or to using simplified parameters in
order to achieve results in a reasonable timeframe. As HPC systems
become more and more capable in terms of their cost, scalability and
bandwidth, simulations can be made with multi-million cell models and
with a more sophisticated range of hydrocarbon components, within
acceptable computing time limits.
Increasingly,
reservoir simulation is becoming a major component of real-time
reservoir management systems, where the reservoir model is continuously
updated with real-time information gained from environmental sensors
located in the producing wells. Results along with other information
(live video, production and instrumentation data, etc.) are presented
using large-screen display technology. Bull’s expertise in building and
managing very large HPC systems projects, including the infrastructure,
energy efficiencies and secure communications, can be applied to these
‘Digital Oilfield’ control centers, which are increasingly being
adopted by major oil and gas companies.
3. Powerful Data Centers and high levels of security
Oil and gas companies have for several years been working towards
consolidating their HPC capacities into true IT power plants to better
manage their immense data and applications challenges, and to provide a
centralized service to their geosciences and engineering users. These
users may also be located close to the centers themselves, or
distributed around a number of locations. In some multinationals, this
may be a global, round-the-clock facility involving the collaboration
of different workgroups, individuals and task contexts.
This
dream still has some way to go before being fulfilled. Bull’s
experience and expertise in building large data centers is embodied in
Bull’s Bio Data Center™ solution, which combines scalability with an
optimized computing environment. Oil companies’ IT departments need to
possess management tools for such an infrastructure, in order to be
able to distribute computing capacity wherever it is needed, with
maximum availability. This also involves developing secure network
infrastructures and tools facilitating user mobility, enabling them to
connect to the system when out in the field and to use their own
applications and data in total security.
From
the most powerful and complex HPC systems right down to globull™,
Bull’s mobile secure storage and virtualization device, Bull can offer
a wide range of effective solutions for the technical computing needs
of this demanding and strategic industry.
Bull will exhibit at Amsterdam ’09 its HPC solutions for the Oil and Gas industry >>
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