Developing Parallel Computing Algorithms Using Gpu’s to Determine Oil and Gas Reserves Presented in the Upstream (Exploration) Sector

Abstract

Oil and Gas companies keep exploring every new possible method to increase the likelihood of finding a commercial hydrocarbon bearing prospect. Well logging generates gigabytes of data from various probes and sensors. After processing, a prospective reservoir will indicate areas of oil, gas, water and reservoir rock. Incorporating High Performance Computing (HPC) methodologies will allow for thousands of potential wells to be indicative of its hydrocarbon bearing potential. This study will present the use of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computing as another method of analyzing probable reserves. Raw well log data from the Kansas Geological Society (1999-2018) forms the basis of the data analysis. Parallel algorithms are developed and make use of Nvidia’s Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA). The results gathered highlight a 5 times speedup using a Nvidia GeForce GT 330M GPU as compared to an Intel Core i7 740QM Central Processing Unit (CPU). The processed results display depth wise areas of shale and rock formations as well as water, oil and/or gas reserves.