HPC PROJECTS: OIL AND GAS
Super seismic
Data from seismic surveys must be processed rapidly in order to open up new oil and gas wells at the same rate as existing ones are depleted
GPUs are established in both the visualisation and the processing of seismic data. Stephen Mounsey looks at how the technology is used, and at alternative hardware types available to geophysical analysts in the oil and gas industry
rilling for oil is a tough business, and it’s only going to get tougher as global reserves begin to dwindle. Only a fraction of a per cent of the planet’s crust contains oil and, for any given reserve, only 10 to 60 per cent will be recoverable. It’s important for the corporate giants producing oil to open new wells to replace those that run dry, and so promising areas of land and sea are constantly being probed in order to locate new supplies.
D
Wherever the process occurs, be it on land or at sea, prospecting for oil and gas reserves begins with a seismic survey of a promising area. Low frequency sound
www.scientific-computing.com
waves are produced by an underwater spark or a compressed air gun, and as they travel through the Earth’s crust, they reflect off of areas in which the properties of the rocks change. Seismic surveyors use geophones or hydrophones to listen for these echoes, often collecting petabytes of raw acoustic data from a single seismic survey. In order for geophysical analysts to be able to pinpoint the locations of potential oil reserves, this data must be extensively processed into something they can visualise. Laurent Billy, CEO of Visualisation Sciences Group (VSG), explains the
steps necessary in producing a useful visualisation: ‘First the analysts start with the raw data from sensors – this needs to be interpreted in order to produce what is called the post-stack data – a seismic volume that can be analysed further. From this seismic volume, they identify horizons and geobodies (faults and cracks in the earth), and from here they can identify reservoirs in the areas where rocks are permeable enough to contain oil and gas.’ Compute-intensive reverse time migration algorithms are the technique of choice for turning seismic data into a seismic volume (3D map), and further calculations carried out on parameters within that volume are used to calculate the seismic attributes of the rock at various points in space. ‘The horizons in particular [areas where seismic properties change] are very important to visualise, and so they are modelled with a very large number of polygons,’ explains
SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING WORLD JUNE/JULY 2010
23
➤
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60