A Multifaceted Strategy to Achieve Significant Reservoir Simulation Work Flow Efficiency Gains

Abstract

A multifaceted strategy is presented which achieved significant reservoir simulation work flow efficiency gains at an operating company. The components of the strategy, including hardware and software, are detailed, and the relative efficiency gain is quantified with respect to the previous approach. The relative business value achieved by implementing the strategy is discussed. The new strategy improved efficiency by leveraging modern technology to impact those tasks of routine reservoir simulation work flows not directly related to reservoir engineering. This involved changes in three primary areas of the classic simulation routine of pre-processing, processing, and post-processing. A turn-key high-performance computing (HPC) solution for hosting data storage and executing simulation job processing was designed and implemented. A modern state-of-the-art simulator was configured for simulation job processing. An innovative simulation project management technology solution was deployed to organise and drive the reservoir simulation work flows and associated data management. The in-place HPC solution was constrained by the configuration of the compute nodes, lack of a master node, and the storage solution. These were configured inefficiently to the point that the expected gains from fast processing capacity were not realised due to other choke points in the compute processing and network. To realise the full potential of fast processing in a modern parallel environment, a custom HPC solution was designed. The custom solution allowed for better communication between the compute nodes and the storage, and incorporated an integrated master node. Next, simulation jobs were configured to run on a modern state-of-the-art simulator optimised for advanced HPC hardware. The new simulator significantly reduced model run times. Lastly, an innovative simulation project management technology was deployed on the reservoir engineer workstations. This technology allowed the engineers to reduce the time spent managing data, and to increase the time spent engineering. The preand post-processing engineering tasks were also made more efficient with the technology. The net result of the new strategy was to increase simulation throughput eight times. The higher volume of throughput led to more optimised engineering solutions and eventually allowed for the development of more complex simulation models. The multifaceted strategy to improve reservoir simulation work flow efficiency combines optimisation of the hardware and selecting software technologies conducive to modern HPC environments to allow engineers to focus the majority of their efforts on engineering rather than on systems and data management.