SPE Seminar : Open Source Software Potential

Open Source Reservoir Simulators

Last week I was asked to present as part of the first SPE Seminar at London South Bank University. This was part of our long engagement with the Petroleum Engineering Department at the university. The student chapter invited us to participate with our work and experience in utilizing open source simulators and associated workflows. The session was kick started by Joel Turnbull from Sasol, presenting his extensive experience on asset management.

The presentation I gave was titled “Open Source Reservoir Simulation Software Tools”. In the presentation I gave, it was important for us to highlight the benefits of working in research as well in commercially utilizing these tools. Of these benefits are the following:

  • Access to license 24/7 for research.
  • Not a black box, access to full code.
  • With access to full code more challenging projects can be executed and physics and numerical methods can be edited.
  • Evolving user interface Options such as ResInsight (also open source) and integrating with Octave.
  • Develop programming skills that could be a differentiator in their careers.




Figure 1 Generating Maps Using Octave and Visualizing in ResInsight

There was great enthusiasm and interest from the students regarding the potential associated with these software not only for their personal career development but also in particular for their BEng and MSc projects. Going forward, we are keen to engage with universities and students mentoring on projects.


Figure 2 Egg Model run in MRST

If you are interested in this presentation for your company or university please let me know at amuftaha@pres.energy . We will be happy to organize an onsite or remote presentation. For companies, we offer a presentation on how we use open source simulators and tools in a Field Development Planning workflow exploiting multiple probability models and cloud computing.











Author : Ahmed Muftah
SDM & EOR Specialist

Primera Reservoir

1 comment:

  1. Excellent talk, Ahmed!

    To mention the Open Porous Media initiative (http://opm-project.org) by Sintef including the OPM simulator and ResInsight development. The project is open for public: all improvements, suggestions and questions can be raised directly to the developers via GitHub. And everyone can contribute by testing the modules, uploading the test model examples or proposing your own solutions.

    MRST is Matlab based, so very learning for the students. Also Sintef initiative.

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