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At the refinery Oil reservoirs are generally inaccessible, being thousands of feet under the ground or the ocean. Unsurprisingly, little is typically known about their exact geological features. Scientists cope with this problem in two ways. Either they solve their equations on hundreds of geological models that are equally compatible with the existing knowledge of a site, or they try to come up with additional information. Some information on geological conditions can come from real-world tests. Sound waves are blasted through the earth and bounce back to receivers on the ground or the ocean's surface. This echo can be translated into information about things like the type, density, and permeability of the rock and the amount of oil contained within. These soundings are taken over and over from different positions for a single area. They're expensive propositions, especially if they are to capture the level of precision researchers really want for their optimization. The team's seismic models are used to develop likely geological conditions, based on simulated soundings. These conditions fine tune the reservoir models, making them as realistic as possible from the get-go. The results of a single sounding passing into the ground and bouncing back can consume 20 gigabytes of space. Currently, more than eight terabytes of seismic simulation data sit on clusters at NCSA, ready to be integrated into the reservoir models. With the distributed storage and computing power of the TeraGrid and the middleware tools STORM and DataCutter, the team is looking to create more than 10 times that amount in the short term. "And a good big [seismic survey of an area] would be into the petabytes," Kurc says. The team hopes to end up with a system that allows those prospecting for oil to build a database of possible conditions that have already had reservoir optimizations run. Companies will assess the geological features of the site they are interested in, query the database for the description that most closely resembles the site, and receive an already-completed optimization in return. It might take some of the romance out of the process when compared to the make-or-break old days. But what's a little romance in the face of fewer failures, fewer environmental problems, and more dollars? This research is supported by the National Science Foundation's Information Technology Research program, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Defense. Team members Wolfgang Bangerth
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 Visualization of oil reservoir simulation. Pumps, represented by asterisks, push oil toward wells, represented by small white circles, that draw oil from the ground. Blue areas indicate areas of high water concentration. Brown areas indicate areas of high oil concentration. |
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