Stochastic Simulation has released the world's fastest reservoir simulator, ResAssure, which is likely to change production planning and reserves reporting in the oil & gas industry.
ResAssure computes over one million realisations within a 24 hour period, a fraction of the time it currently takes with traditional methods and software packages.
The release of ResAssure is said to be a milestone in the history of reservoir simulation – claiming to be the first real industry technology advance in 30 years.
Dr Wadsley, Chief Technology Officer at Stochastic Simulation, commented "ResAssure is capable of quickly generating more accurate reserve estimates than is currently possible by any other software system.
"The approach taken generates a complete distribution of history matched models all of which are consistent with the geological model and observed production history. The time taken for this is orders of magnitude faster than current history matching methods."
"Field development planning based on ResAssure's distribution of models (rather than just upon a single history-matched model using conventional methodologies) will significantly reduce uncertainty and risk," he added.
By enabling faster and more accurate analysis of dynamic subsurface geological data than has previously been possible, ResAssure markedly reduces the risk in the development of oil and gas fields by narrowing the range of uncertainty in reserves estimates: thereby supporting better production and financing decisions, with substantial increases in project ROI.
ResAssure's innovation in reservoir simulation solves fully-implicit, dynamic three-phase fluid flow equations for every geological realisation.
The speed breakthrough was achieved by a combination of proprietary algorithms, polygonal gridding and aggressive spatial coarsening and time stepping, based upon a conventional finite-difference discretization of the reservoir.
This breakthrough pushes the boundaries of quantifying subsurface uncertainties. Oil and gas companies and associated consulting firms using ResAssure will benefit from:
• overnight automatic history matching
• faster and better understanding of reservoir uncertainty
• optimised recovery and production
• evidence-based decision support, and
• better investment decisions.
ResAssure achieves this result using a combination of advanced technologies. It provides fully implicit simulation realisations without using proxy or approximation techniques.
To demonstrate ResAssure's capability, Stochastic Simulation undertook the challenge of carrying out 1 million realisations in 1 day. This was done for a real field Cartesian model of 200,000 grid cells against 28 sensitivity parameters using 40 standard processing cores on Amazon Web Service's (AWS) cloud computing platform.
Stochastic Simulation is able to achieve overnight, what until now would take reservoir engineers years using conventional simulation technology.
ResAssure was developed by Stochastic Simulation's R&D team led by Dr Andrew Wadsley, a reservoir engineering expert with more than 37 years' experience in the oil and gas industry.
Dr Wadsley's previous software solutions have been used in the industry since the 1980s, including standard black oil simulation and integrated gas planning solutions.
The Australian Government has provided significant funding support for the technology's development and commercialisation – through the Industry Facilitation and Support Program and by Commercialisation Australia, respectively.
Commercialisation Australia funding has been used for a Proof of Concept to prove the commercial viability of this solution in the oil and gas industry and to engage an Experienced Executive to accelerate entry into global markets, drive business development and operational activities.
[Image: Courtesy Stochastic Simulation.]