Arabian sedimentary basin simulator launched by Saudi Aramco

The company's first in-house basin simulator is designed to track migration of Saudi Arabia's oil over time and assist efforts to discover new hydrocarbon deposits.

The facility, which was recently presented by Aramco's TeraPOWERS Technology Team (TPT), will be used to simulate the geologic evolution of the Arabian sedimentary basin at a new level of detail, according to the company. Its technology can handle the vast models required to simulate the petroleum systems of the Arabian Peninsula, while it also allows integration of geological information from reservoirs with a very high resolution.

The simulator combines geologic, geochemical and geophysical data to determine when and where oil and gas were formed over a period of more than 500 million years, with the ability to calculate prospect "charge risk."

The company plans to add a Hybrid Darcy migration system to the facility, designed to generate migration pathways for hydrocarbons over millions of years more accurately, in order to allow for its exploration teams to drill for potential trapped hydrocarbons along the migration pathways for additional reserves.

Moreover, additional graphical software will be added in the near future, to provide graphical tools to prepare and input data in the company database easily, as wells as the capability to graphically input and edit erosion and kinetic data.