Cepsa adopts On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi™ to drastically accelerate reservoir simulation activities

Cepsa, is a Spanish multinational exploration and production company which operates in Algeria, Colombia, and Peru, and continually seeks to optimize its exploration and production portfolio by focusing on the sustainability and efficiency of its asset portfolio. 

In this case study, the focus of reservoir simulation activity is an offshore shallow water field, producing both crude oil and condensate.

Challenges

Cepsa works with complex compositional fluid representation and high-resolution models. Project teams first need to history-match subsurface models before evaluating different field development scenarios under uncertainties. The correct quantification of the impact of subsurface uncertainty through multiple field development scenarios is of critical importance to minimize operational risks.

These workflows require the processing of thousands of reservoir simulations with heavy compute capacity demands—on-premises infrastructure and software tools available to Cepsa posed limitations in terms of timeframe and workflow capability.

Solution

Cepsa has adopted On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi™ to drastically accelerate reservoir simulation activities, with access to virtually unlimited high-performance computing (HPC) in the cloud, and the full breadth of capabilities offered by both the Eclipse™ industry-reference reservoir simulator and Intersect™ high-resolution reservoir simulator.

After benchmarking against other solutions, Cepsa concluded that On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi proved to be the best option for their requirements.

“Adopting On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi has allowed us to significantly scale-up our reservoir simulation activities and support our ambition to streamline project delivery. With cloud HPC and Intersect simulator capabilities unlocked, we have been able to perform high-resolution reservoir simulation studies at an unprecedent speed and with unrivalled quality.”
—Victor Blanco, CIO, Cepsa

Results

Running the Intersect simulator through On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi, Cepsa was able to perform compute-intensive, multiple-realization workflows, enabling thorough characterization of reservoir uncertainties and full capture of the risks. 

This enabled Cepsa to undertake a whole spectrum of field studies, such as building high-fidelity models, investigating complex recovery mechanisms, and optimizing field development strategies under uncertainty. This has improved forecast capabilities and created value for Cepsa in the following ways:

• Simulation studies used to take weeks on premises, they could be finalized in days with On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi—a 75% efficiency improvement
• Cepsa’s on-premises cluster was capped, so they could only run a single simulation case at the time. With On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi, they could leverage cloud scalability, and were able to run more than a thousand simulation cases concurrently
• Cepsa would have needed to upgrade their on-premises cluster, but with On Demand Reservoir Simulation on Delfi, they were able to save this investment and transform capex into opex.