Cloud-based reservoir modeling is changing the way that we analyze and value reservoirs. Welcome to an interview with Tao Wang, who discusses a new cloud-based reservoir modeling software program.
Cloud-based analytics for reservoir modeling and characterization will be featured in Theme 9, Energy Innovation, at ACE / Salt Lake City. Please submit an abstract now: http://ace.aapg.org/2018/technical-program/program
What is your name and your relation to the oil industry?
My name is Tao Wang. And I hold a master degree of reservoir engineering from the China Petroleum University(Beijing) in 1998 and a bachelor degree of reservoir engineering from the China Petroleum University(East China) in 1995. My master research topic is "the development of reservoir simulator in C++ with fully implicit method". Since then, I have been working on reservoir simulation studies and simulator development for 20 years.
How did you get interested in modeling?
Firstly, I really like coding.
It is a highly creative process, and unlike building a piece of electronics hardware, I can get intermediate results right away and see how well it is working or not.
Then I learned reservoir simulation during my junior college. I was attracted by the 3D reservoir model on the computer screen, and suddenly, I found it pretty similar to programming because through computer modeling, I can get prediction results of real world right away. Why can't I combine coding and reservoir modeling? From that time I knew what I wanted was to devote myself to reservoir simulation software development.
It is well-known that reservoir simulation is an art. And the developer is the artist on the keyboard.
What kinds of products have you developed?
It's a huge project to develop a commercial reservoir simulator. During more than 10 years of research and development, a stable team has gradually grew up. Our members are both reservoir simulation engineers and software developers. We did it because we knew we could do it, and will continue making it better.
So far, we have released the innovative Reservoir Simulator XXSim.
XXSim is an EOS based general purpose compositional reservoir simulator with fully implicit formulation. It allows any components to appear and stay in any fluid phases (aqueous, oilec and vapour).
In other words, it uses three-phase flash to allow light hydrocarbon components dissolved in aqueous phase, and water dissolved in oilec phase and vapour phase.
Separator(s) with two or three-phase flash is used to separate all fluid phases at separator or surface condition.
It can be simplified to the conventional or traditional black oil, compositional and thermal modules. It also can be expanded to fully EOS based thermal simulator. XXsim is designed for reservoir engineers to conduct simple and quick researches or studies on recovery mechanistic, history match and forecasts.
Please describe two or three examples of successful deployment of the software.
XXSim is the new-rising force in the reservoir simulator market. And with its innovative research and technology, it will earn and gain more shares in the simulator market.
What are your plans for the future?
My partners and I will continue to upgrade XXSim to ensure reservoir engineers and simulation engineers can use it to study all kinds of recovery mechanisms in future. For instant, one of our high priority in near future is to parallel XXsim, and make XXsim useful for large full field simulation.
In the future, XXSim will provide an endless stream of computing power for smart reservoir ecology which is expanding and applying more new IT tech such as deep learning. Reservoir simulator is the brain of smart reservoir development. We like to contribute our innovations to THE BRAIN.
For more information, please visit our website at http://www.peclouds.com.
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