Helping petroleum engineers maximise Saudi Arabia's hydrocarbon reserves, the Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Centre (EXPEC) is one of the most advanced earth science facilities in the world. It has also enabled Aramco to eliminate dependence on technological support from other companies. saudi Aramco's Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Centre (EXPEC) has played a crucial role in the company's exploration successes.
The facility has also served as an extremely useful tool for petroleum engineers in charting the programme to return the maximum sustained crude production capacity of the Kingdom to 10 million barrels per day (bpd) and in mapping the delivery of more gas into the Master Gas System (MGS).
EXPEC is one of the largest and most advanced earth science facilities in the world and second to none in the Middle East.
Since opening in 1982, EXPEC and its associated Laboratory Research and Development Centre have enabled the company to essentially eliminate its dependence on upstream (exploration and production) technological support from other oil companies.
Exploration data collection, processing and interpretation all take place within relatively close proximity, enhancing coordination, improving efficiency and speeding the pace of work.
Using the expertise and advanced technology at EXPEC, the company can most efficiently produce required volumes of oil and gas at minimum cost while maintaining the best possible reservoir conditions, according to Aramco.
The use of advanced 3D seismic technology, for example, has benefitted both exploration and production.
Because it involves a much higher density field coverage than two-dimensional seismic data acquisition, and because of the large size of the Kingdom's fields, 3D seismic surveying generates huge volumes of digital data which is processed and analysed at EXPEC.
This data has been used to uncover new oil reserves where earlier exploration proved unsuccessful and to optimise field development in areas with reservoir complexities.
EXPEC also introduced horizontal well drilling technology to Saudi Aramco in 1991.
This technology has allowed the production of significantly more petroleum per well from both onshore and offshore fields than is possible using conventional vertical drilling techniques.
The EXPEC Computer Centre (ECC) employs the latest technology hardware and applications software to improve Saudi Aramco's profitability and overall competitiveness in the industry.
To achieve the most efficient use of resources, Saudi Aramco is constantly seeking applications for emerging computer hardware and software technologies.
The ECC's supercomputer network consists of two supercomputers and numerous high-end workstations linked through a high-speed communications system.
Another advanced computer provides general purpose scientific capabilities for specialised studies and data management, and serves as a focus for communications with the company's remote field operations throughout Saudi Arabia.
Computing capacity has increased dramatically to provide required functions for exploration and production technology. Since the ECC opened, its computing capacity has increased by more than 300 times while on-line data storage capacity has grown by a factor of 10.
This powerful computing environment allows the company to process and interpret all seismic well-bore data.
It also makes possible simulations of all reservoirs using sophisticated 3D reservoir modelling techniques and assists in designing production facilities.
These reservoir models are among the world's largest, matching the size and complexity of the Kingdom's huge hydrocarbon reserves.
