The Design and Implementation of Grid Computing platform for Oil field Simulation

Olaleye, Sunkanmi Kuwam CSC/2003/127

A Research Summary Submitted to Department of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty of Technology Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, Nigeria

Mr. Ckuks Kalu Senior Reservoir Engineer, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company 21, Freeman House, Marina Lagos, Nigeria

October 23, 2009

INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background

The oil and gas industry has used the unique capabilities provided by supercomputing for over three decades, when it took buildings to house the hardware and months to completely iterate through a project's dataset. Oil and gas professionals are still keen on tapping the processing power of leading high-performance computing technologies, but the game has changed significantly. The focus on emerging technologies, burgeoning data volumes and advanced analytical processes place unprecedented demands on decision makers. To achieve the desired business resultsfast, thorough decisions that lead to low risk and high returnsupercomputing capability virtually at end users fingertips is required. This is especially true in seismic analysis and reservoir simulation. Emerging technologies such as Microsoft's new Windows-based Computer Cluster Server 2003 and standard commodity-based processors are already being adopted by leading oil and gas application providers and fashioned into computing solutions that can be elegantly merged in oil and gas companies' existing computing infrastructures for powerful and easy-to-use high-performance computing support that geoscientists and engineers desire. Many of the technological and cost barriers that have kept daily supercomputing just beyond the reach of many end users, particularly those in small- to medium-sized teams, are now being erased. Grid computing, most simply stated, is distributed computing taken to the next evolutionary level. The goal is to create the illusion of a simple yet large and powerful self managing virtual computer out of a large collection of connected heterogeneous systems sharing various combinations of resources. The standardization of communications between heterogeneous systems created the Internet explosion. The emerging standardization for sharing resources,

along with the availability of higher bandwidth, are driving a possibly equally large evolutionary step in grid computing (Foster and Kesselman, 1999; Foster, 2002). The Infrastructure of grid is a form of networking. Unlike conventional networks that focus on communication among devices, grid computing harnesses unused resources of all computers in a network for solving problems too intensive for any stand-alone machine. Grid computing appears to be a promising trend for three reasons: i. its ability to make more cost-effective use of a given amount of computer resources ii. as a way to solve problems that can't be approached without an enormous amount of computing power, and iii. because it suggests that the resources of many computers can be cooperatively and perhaps synergistically harnessed and managed as collaboration toward a common objective. 1.1.1 Reservoir Simulation (Oil Field Simulation)

A reservoir is composed of a unique combination of geometric form, geological rock properties, fluid characteristics, and primary drive mechanism. Although no two reservoirs are identical in all aspects, they can be grouped according to the primary recovery mechanism by which they produce. It has been observed that each drive mechanism has certain typical performance characteristics in terms of: 1 2 3 4 ultimate recovery factor; pressure decline rate; gasoil ratio; water production.

The recovery of oil by any of the natural drive mechanisms is called primary recovery. The

term refers to the production of hydrocarbons from a reservoir without the use of any process (such as fluid injection) to supplement the natural energy of the reservoir. (Pinczewski, 2002) Reservoir simulation is a sophisticated mathematical/numerical tool which allows the engineer to apply classical reservoir engineering principles to reservoir analysis in the context of realistic reservoir descriptions which display variations in reservoir rock and fluid parameters in space and time. Reservoir simulation divides the reservoir into a number of small blocks (usually 1,000 to 100,000 blocks) and applies the fundamental equations of fluid flow through porous media (Darcys law), phase behavior (equation of state), and conservation (material balance) to each block. (Pinczewski, 2002) Reservoir simulation requires the use of geological and reservoir modeling: 1 The geological model consists of a geological description of the reservoir (usually based on a highly detailed geostatistical description of reservoir structure) and a description of the fluids distribution within the reservoir. 2 The reservoir simulator is the means of calculating fluid and pressure distributions as a function of space and time during reservoir production. 1.2
The

Scope of Research exploration and production of the oil and gas industry are faced with some problems which

require the enormous computing resources. These problems are as a result of the following; 1 2 3 Discovery of new reserves is urgent Companies need better resource management Ability to tap existing reserves demands increased simulation accuracy

Grid Computing is a way of managing and dynamically sharing disparate sets of resources i.e. a hardware and software infrastructure that connects distributed computers, storage devices,

databases and software applications through a network, and is managed by distributed resource management software. It is a dependable, universal information infrastructure that builds on the power of the Net and enables more efficient computation, collaboration, and communication. 1.3 Research Justification

Presently, all the offshore and onshore platforms of the oil and gas company has data communication systems equipment which includes desktop PCs, servers, VSATs, routers, switches, distribution frames and printers. A LAN and a WAN allow transmission and reception of voice and data within the platforms. Existing schemes for Exploration and Production processes such as data acquisition, data management, seismic processing, visual interpretation, modeling automation, petrophysical analysis and most especially property modeling and simulations have failed to adequately address the issue of resource management and increased simulation accuracy. In this research effort, an enhanced high performance and parallel computing platform will be implemented to deploy oil field simulation using an Material balance equations for estimation of hydrocarbon in place, recovery and pressure decline, gravity drainage, pressure maintenance, gas and condensate recovery factors, active aquifer/water flood, water-gas-condensate relative permeability, residual (trapped) gas and condensate. 1.4 Research Objectives

The major goal of this research work is i. To formulate a numerical solutions using Newton Raphson, Jacobian and finite difference method for material balance equations. ii. To design and implement 2 three (3) nodes Linux cluster grid testbed in OAU using OAUNet backbone to deploy the model in (i). 1.5 Research Methodology

The execution of the study is divided into phases and the goals are achieved through phases i. An extensive survey of existing reservoir (Oil field) simulation technology such as Eclipse, Rapid Response Reservoir Simulator by Schlumberger and Parallel Oil Water Reservoir Simulation (POWERS), Simulation & Modeling Advanced Reservoir Technology System (SMARTS) by Saudi Aramco. ii. Formulation of a material balance model, which is a good approximation for low to moderate volatility oil systems where the oil consists mainly of high molecular weight components and the gas phase mainly of methane - most conventional oil reservoirs are satisfactorily modeled in this way. iii. Specification of performance metrics for (ii) above. iv. Simulation program development to implement (ii) and (iii) above using MPJ framework of Java Programming language. v. Performance evaluation/comparison of the various models developed in (ii) and simulated in (iv). vi. Actual implementation will be conducted by using simulated program to demonstrate the performance in terms of CPU time for a single CPU, a cluster grid and the grid i.e. after WAN connection of cluster 1 and cluster 2. 1.5 Arrangement of the Report

The organization of this thesis is as follow. Chapter 1 deals with the introduction of the research. In chapter 2, this research makes a background review of Cluster Computing, MetaComputing, Grid Computing and their application to Oil Field (Reservoir) Simulation. In chapter 3, this research concentrated on the material balance equations and numerical analysis of the equations. In chapter 4, grid computing environment is proposed and constructed on multiple Linux PC

Clusters by using Globus Toolkit (GT) and SUN Grid Engine (SGE). The experimental results are also conducted by using the reservoir simulation to demonstrate the performance. The experimental result are presented and discussed. chapter 5 deals with the project conclusion. The software installation, setup detail, model algorithms and programming abstractions proposal are presented in Appendix.

Abbreviations CPU LAN MPJ OAU PC WAN Central Processing Unit Local Area Network Message Passing in Java Obafemi Awolowo University Personal Computer (Workstation) Wide Area Network

References Chuan-Lin Lai and Chao-Tung Yang (2003) Construct a Grid Computing Environment on Multiple Linux PC Clusters, Tunghai Science Vol. 5: 107124 107 July, 2003. Chao-Tung and Chi-Chu Hung (2001) High-Performance Computing on Low-Cost PC-Based SMPs Clusters, Proc. of the 2001 National Computer Symposium (NCS 2001), Taipei, Taiwan, pp 149-156 Dec. http://www.saudiaramco.com/irj/portal/anonymous?favlnk=%2FSaudiAramcoPublic%2Fdocs% 2FOur+Business%2FOil+Operations%2FTechnology&ln=en 8 March, 2009 http://www.slb.com/redirect_recent.asp?url=content/services/consulting/infrastructure/petrotech/ eclipse_rapid_response.asp 8 March, 2009 I. Foster, and C. Kesselman, eds. (1999) The Grid: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, Morgan Kaufmann; 1st edition January. I. Foster. (2002) The Grid: A New Infrastructure for 21st Century Science. Physics Today, 55(2):42-47. Val Pinczewski (2001.) Numerical Reservoir Simulation, Lecture of UNSW, August.