High performance computing in heavy oil

Advances in thermal reservoir simulation and high performance computing are enabling larger and more realistic heavy oil reservoir models.

Reservoir simulation is a key tool in the planning, prediction, and optimization of heavy oil fields. Simulating heavy oil reservoirs is complex due to high fluid densities and viscosities and the complicated physics involved with heavy oil recovery methods. Modern reservoir simulators can accurately model the complex physics of heavy oil recovery including the flow of steam and fluids, the flow of hot or cold water, in situ combustion, and foamy oils. Realistic and detailed full-field reservoir models can easily be millions of grid cells and require significant computational power to run. With advances in high performance computing, we can now run larger and more geologically accurate reservoir models on clusters of relatively low cost PC’s. This in turn means we can better predict and optimize heavy oil recovery processes at lower costs.

An additional reference on high performance computing can be found on the following link: Supercomputing for everyone.

Kambiz.