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ARC has opined before its belief that the oil & gas industry was “Big Data” before the term Big Data became what it is today and how the industry sometimes exhibits a split personality when it comes to the use (and no use) of IIoT-enabled solutions in certain operational areas. We find it rather ironic that in some cases some of the larger IOCs and NOCs are deploying cutting edge technologies in certain operational areas while in other areas it appears they are still trying to get into the 20th century. ARC has also discussed how collaboration among companies or industry stakeholder organization is increasingly a de facto in order to empower companies to leverage the best technologies or work processes found in the oil & gas market or elsewhere. There are a plethora of articles and examples in which the trials and successes of other industries such as automotive and aerospace are being considered in oil & gas.
Exxon Mobil, working with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), has achieved a major breakthrough with proprietary software using more than four times the previous number of processors used on complex oil and gas reservoir simulation models to improve exploration and production results.
The breakthrough in parallel simulation used 716,800 processors, the equivalent of harnessing the power of 22,400 computers with 32 processors per computer. Exxon Mobil geoscientists and engineers can now make better investment decisions by more efficiently predicting reservoir performance under geological uncertainty to assess a higher volume of alternative development plans in less time.
The record run resulted in data output thousands of times faster than typical oil and gas industry reservoir simulation. It was the largest number of processor counts reported by the oil and gas industry, and one of the largest simulations reported by industry in engineering disciplines such as aerospace and manufacturing.
The major breakthrough in parallel simulation results in dramatic reductions in the amount of time previously taken to study oil and gas reservoirs. Reservoir simulation studies are used to guide decisions such as well placement, the design of facilities and development of operational strategies to minimize financial and environmental risk. To model complex processes accurately for the flow of oil, water, and natural gas in the reservoir, simulation software must solve a number of complex equations. Current reservoir management practices in the oil and gas industry are often hampered by the slow speed of reservoir simulation.
Exxon Mobil’s scientists worked closely with the NCSA to benchmark a series of multi-million to billion cell models on NCSA’s blue waters super computer. This new reservoir simulation capability efficiently uses hundreds of thousands of processors simultaneously and will have dramatic impact on reservoir management workflows.
“NCSA’s blue waters sustained petascale system, which has benefited the open science community so tremendously, is also helping industry break through barriers in massively parallel computing,” said Bill Gropp, NCSA’s acting director. “NCSA is thrilled to have worked closely with Exxon Mobil to achieve the kind of sustained performance that is so critical in advancing science and engineering.”
Exxon Mobil’s collaboration with the NCSA required careful planning and optimization of all aspects of the reservoir simulator from input/output to improving communications across hundreds of thousands of processors. These efforts have delivered strong scalability on several processor counts ranging from more than 1,000 to nearly 717,000, the latter being the full capacity of NCSA’s Cray XE6 system.
ARC recommends that owner-operators, independent E&P firms and related industry stakeholders consider not only deploying IIoT-enabled solutions that can help drive down cost per boe, improve production and recovery rates, increase employee productivity, and/or improve collaboration among internal and external ecosystems but also seek out potential partners with which to collaborate on either deploying best-in-class solutions or seeking out new work processes or standards that can help realize operational excellence.
Exxon Mobil, working with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), has achieved a major breakthrough with proprietary software using more than four times the previous number of processors used on complex oil and gas reservoir simulation models to improve exploration and production results.
The breakthrough in parallel simulation used 716,800 processors, the equivalent of harnessing the power of 22,400 computers with 32 processors per computer. Exxon Mobil geoscientists and engineers can now make better investment decisions by more efficiently predicting reservoir performance under geological uncertainty to assess a higher volume of alternative development plans in less time.
The record run resulted in data output thousands of times faster than typical oil and gas industry reservoir simulation. It was the largest number of processor counts reported by the oil and gas industry, and one of the largest simulations reported by industry in engineering disciplines such as aerospace and manufacturing.
The major breakthrough in parallel simulation results in dramatic reductions in the amount of time previously taken to study oil and gas reservoirs. Reservoir simulation studies are used to guide decisions such as well placement, the design of facilities and development of operational strategies to minimize financial and environmental risk. To model complex processes accurately for the flow of oil, water, and natural gas in the reservoir, simulation software must solve a number of complex equations. Current reservoir management practices in the oil and gas industry are often hampered by the slow speed of reservoir simulation.
Exxon Mobil’s scientists worked closely with the NCSA to benchmark a series of multi-million to billion cell models on NCSA’s blue waters super computer. This new reservoir simulation capability efficiently uses hundreds of thousands of processors simultaneously and will have dramatic impact on reservoir management workflows.
“NCSA’s blue waters sustained petascale system, which has benefited the open science community so tremendously, is also helping industry break through barriers in massively parallel computing,” said Bill Gropp, NCSA’s acting director. “NCSA is thrilled to have worked closely with Exxon Mobil to achieve the kind of sustained performance that is so critical in advancing science and engineering.”
Exxon Mobil’s collaboration with the NCSA required careful planning and optimization of all aspects of the reservoir simulator from input/output to improving communications across hundreds of thousands of processors. These efforts have delivered strong scalability on several processor counts ranging from more than 1,000 to nearly 717,000, the latter being the full capacity of NCSA’s Cray XE6 system.
ARC recommends that owner-operators, independent E&P firms and related industry stakeholders consider not only deploying IIoT-enabled solutions that can help drive down cost per boe, improve production and recovery rates, increase employee productivity, and/or improve collaboration among internal and external ecosystems but also seek out potential partners with which to collaborate on either deploying best-in-class solutions or seeking out new work processes or standards that can help realize operational excellence.