The Saudi Aramco EXPEC Advanced Research Center (EXPEC ARC) debuted recently its giga-cell reservoir simulation technology, GigaPOWERS-TM. GigaPOWERS™ is the second generation of Saudi Aramco's leading reservoir simulator, POWERS (Parallel Oil, Water and Gas Enhanced Reservoir Simulator), which is used to simulate fluid movement in the reservoir to optimize production and injection, and the management of the reservoir. GigaPOWERS-TM sets a new industry record of being able to simulate giant fields at seismic or near-seismic resolution, thus doing away with the conventional industry practice of averaging the simulation model cells in order to reduce their number, which also reduces the amount of information in the model. It can simulate models in excess of one billion cells (“giga-cell”), producing a more accurate simulation, according to a press release of Saudi Aramco. Chief technologist Ali H. Dogru worked on the development of the POWERS and GigaPOWERS system for 15 years to bring what may be the best reservoir simulation tool to date to Saudi Aramco. “This is an exciting day for Saudi Aramco and a testimony of our success in providing cutting-edge technical solutions to manage our fields and reservoirs,” said Amin H. Nasser, senior vice president of Exploration and Producing, who kicked off the event with the live full-field simulation of the largest field in the world, Ghawar. “This cornerstone technology, GigaPOWERS™, allows us to more accurately simulate and predict the behavior of our fields and reservoirs and better optimize our production strategies.”
