A bold advance in reservoir

simulation performance

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulator

The industry first integrated modeling and data analysis framework centered
on dynamic reservoir simulations combining interactive 3D graphics and
supercomputer parallel performance with no extra per core charge.

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulations

MAJOR REASONS TO APPLY tNavigator

Universal software: from sector waterflood and
history matching to running giant models on cluster
Black-oil
Compositional

Thermal Compositional
Computational performance
Turns your workstation into an interactive desktop
supercomputer with 1016 times parallel
performance boost.
The license price is per computer and does not
depend on the number of CPUs, cores used.
Clusters: Revolutionary Hybrid technology.
Record breaking parallel scalability: from x100 to
x1300+ acceleration factor.
All basic simulation model features including
Multi-component, fully-implicit calculations, dual
porosity, dual permeability.
Corner point, general mesh formulation (NNC, LGR,
faults, pinchouts, etc.), unstructured grids.
Multi-reservoir option.
THP, drawdown well controls; unlimited hierarchic
group structure and controls.
Multiple flow, PVT (including multibranching),
equilibrium regions.
Vertical, deviated, horizontal, multi-segmented
wells, fractures.
Aquifers (Fetkovich, Carter Tracy, constant flux,
constant head pressure, numerical).
Simulation of tracers and chemical injections.
Surface network option, compressors, chokes, VFP
lifting tables.
Auto well drilling options.
Loading LAS data, trajectories, comparison with
dynamic well profiles.
Flux options for sector modeling.
New technologies
Fractured well model.
Quantitative estimate of waterflood efficiency.
Fully-automatic split/merge models.
Smart loading routines for sparse models.

Wise approach to dual porosity/permeability

simulation speed-up.
Desalination for collectors with salt.
Interactive tracers with activation conditions for
injection of chemicals.
Fully Interactive Simulations
Monitor all 3D dynamic reservoir & well data at
runtime.
Add wells, patterns, restart runs, generate forecasts
interactively at runtime.
Pre-, post-processing, monitoring through one
intuitive multiplatform GUI.
Runtime analytics, 3D streamlines, waterflood
optimization.
Uncertainty quantification and assisted history matching
Part of the simulation package. Easy workflow set
up.
Experimental design methods.
Optimization algorithms.
Analytic toolbox.
Seamless support of the existing
industry standard input formats
Converts E100, Tempest MORE, IMEX input deck
formats on the fly.
The simulation results can be saved as E100 binaries
to link the simulator with the software in your
workflow.
Basic geological modeling features
Handling of well log data.
Arithmetics on the grid.
Reservoir properties interpolation in the interwell
space.
Deterministic and stochastic approaches.
Kriging. Sequential Gaussian simulation method.
Voronoi grids.
Flexible well data format.
Comprehensively benchmarked against industry
standard packages.
Corporately used by international oil and gas companies.

Maximize your reservoir

simulation performance
for free!
tNavigator is the industry leading parallel
dynamic reservoir simulator that efficiently
utilizes all available computational resources.
Based on the recent hardware developments,
tNavigator provides record boost to reservoir simulation performance. Smart balancing of the computational resources of multi-CPU multicore systems
allowed breaking through the existing industry standard acceleration limits, and reaching almost an order
of the magnitude improvement in cluster performance.
All elements of the simulator are parallel.
System thread parallelization for multicore workstations.
MPI algorithms for clusters.
Superscalable hybrid technology for multicore CPU
clusters.
Efficient memory utilization.
Uniform load distribution between the cores.
Non-uniform memory access.

No additional fee for multicore computations. tNavigator software uses power of all the avail able CPU
cores of the workstation.

We do not tax your hardware!

INTERACTIVE RESERVOIR
SIMULATION TOOLS
tNavigator offers reservoir engineers and geologists unique runtime monitoring of the simulation
runs, advanced field development planning and waterflood optimization functionality interactively with a
3D graphical user interface:
Run dynamic reservoir simulations 1020 times
faster with modern multicore computers.
No painful data migration, since tNavigator directly
loads and exports industry standard ASCII and
binary formats.
Monitor every dynamic grid property and well data
live at runtime, while running simulations on
workstations or clusters.
Easily handles small sector and large full-field
models with minimum or no upscaling.
Run full finite difference simulations, perform 3D
streamline-based waterflood analysis in the same
interface with no additional software to buy.
Create and run forecast models instantly from any
time step, right after the history matching is
completed.
Load your well log data directly from LAS files and
plot it against the well production profiles
Update your grid parameters based on 3D interpolation or kriging directly in the simulator without
going back to the geological package
Novel hydraulic fracture simulations for full-field
models applied for generic, shale gas, and oil
reservoirs.
Efficient sidetrack optimization modeling.
Split and merge dynamic reservoir model grids with
no additional geological packages needed.
Visualize dynamic well production and injection
profiles perforation by perforation, at runtime.
Switch wells from production to injection, add new
wells and well patterns, plan new horizontal well
trajectories doesnt make sense, inject tracers, plan
new se with a few mouse clicks.
Include simulations of near well bore treatments
into full-field modeling.

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulations

tNavigator provides fantastic scalability on shared

memory workstations and high-performance clusters

CPU computational efficiency grows rapidly today due to an increase in the number of cores. At the same time,
the cost of high-performance computational systems is constantly decreasing. Taking into account the availability
of computational power, there is a growing demand for efficient software, which would be able to utilize all the
computational resources in hand with a wise approach to parallel reservoir simulations. We know how to make it
efficient.

Shared Memory Thread Based

Parallelization
Direct thread based parallel algorithms are the most
efficient approach for workstations with multicore
CPUs. With minimal computation costs for data exchange between the cores, this technology takes full
advantage of CPU evolution.
Software & Hardware hand-in-hand: fast CPU cache,
Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA), Hyper-threading,
all parts of tNavigator are parallel (not just linear solver), special compiler settings, and many other tricks to
maximize the computational efficiency.

Hybrid Technologies
for Multicore CPU Clusters
Over the last few years, the cluster system architecture has changed dramat. cally. These changes represent the most significant advance over the last 20
years. Every computational node of a cluster is now a
multicore computer with non-uniform access to RAM.
Losing sight of these changes during software development leads to a dramatic loss of efficiency and poor
CPU utilization.
tNavigator Hybrid uses a conceptually new
approach to parallel computations on clusters

Real Field Example:

From days to hours!

(SPE 162090, 163090). The main idea of the hybrid

algorithm is to adopt different parallel algorithms for
every stage.
Cluster level: model is loaded into cluster and its
grid is divided between the cluster nodes according
to an equal number of active grid blocks.

 Node level: the parallelization between CPU

coresis done on the matrix level.
Simulator solver software integrates both MPI and
thread system calls.
The number of MPI processes is limited to the
number of cluster nodes, not the number of cores.

The approach in tNavigator Hybrid

removes the bottlenecks in parallel
scalability!

Hybrid Performance Results

Giant Field Challenge
The algorithm performance was studied on the RFD
cluster with 20 nodes, 40 Xeon 5650 CPUs, 240cores, 480
Gb DDR3 1333MHz RAM, QDR 4x Infiniband (40Gb/s).
This is a portable cluster which can be placed in a small
server room.
The three phase black-oil model for one of the
worlds largest oil fields was used for tNavigator Hybrid
performance tests. It contains 43 million active blocks,
nearly 14000 wells, and covers 42 years of production

history.
The huge number of well perforations used in this
reservoir model presents a very big challenge for parallel simulations. But even in this extreme environment, the hybrid algorithm shows excellent scaling
results, and exhibits continuous growth of efficiency.

The total simulation time for this model was

39minutes compared to 61 hours with one CPU core
demonstrating a parallel acceleration factor of 94!
The acceleration factors for the less complex dynamic
reservoir models on that cluster are found in the range
of 80120.
Extreme Scalability Challenge
We have not seen algorithm saturation in any of the

calculation series. To check the limitations we applied

a more powerful 512 node cluster. Each cluster node
consisted of two four-core Intel Xeon 5570 Nehalem
processors, which sums to 4096 simulation cores.
A real field three-phase model with 39 wells and 10
years of history was chosen as the study test object.
The model contained 21.8 million active grid blocks.
The model calculation time was reduced from
2.5weeks down to 19 minutes. The resulting speedup coefficient compared to one calculation core is
equal to 1328! This can be called the world record for
commercial solutions in this field!

From days to minutes!

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulations

Runtime 3D Visualization
Package
Simulation in progress!
Preprocessing, run monitoring, and the
simulation result post processing are done using
a single multi-window graphical interface working
under Windows and Linux.
Start, pause, restart simulation runs and configure
multiple forecast models with a few mouse clicks.
Every static and dynamic reservoir property in the
model can be viewed as 2D, 3D maps, histograms,
and user defined vertical profiles.
Multifunctional 2D bubble maps to display well
production and injection instant and accumulated
rates, historical data and mismatches.
Runtime graphs of rates and property changes with
time for each model grid block, for each well perforation.
Dynamic contour lines of any 2D property map.
Dynamic well production and injection profiles can
be visualized at the perforation level at runtime.
Waterflood optimization tools: 3D and 2D streamlines are calculated on each time step from the
current pressure distribution, drainage matrix and
injection efficiency graphs, user arithmetic, etc.
Flow maps on the grid: accumulated flux in the
gridblocks, influx through the faces at each time
step.
Interactive tracer simulations.
Advanced comparison tables and graphs for efficient history matching.
Advanced user map calculator.
Well log data comparison with production profiles
along the wellbore
Well log correlation maps.
Static model update in the GUI without going back
to geological software.
Click of the button comparison of multiple simulation results.

The package allows interactive adjusting of the dynamic model in the GUI with immediate visualization
on maps and plots. All visualization features are available during the run for results monitoring. tNavigator
offers various options for results interpretation, e. g.
tables, graphs, bubble maps, contours, 1D and 2D histograms, well profiles, and various reports. The GUI provides an unlimited number of windows with different
types of data synchronized for detailed results monitoring.
Available for cluster as client-server application. All
simulation results for individual models or simulation
queues can be monitored in real time from a remote
terminal.

Dramatic boost to cluster usage efficiency!

Hydraulic
Fracture Modeling
tNavigator introduces a new approach to hydraulic
fracture simulation. The fracture is considered as part
of the well. To simulate fractures, a network of new
virtual perforations is generated in the grid blocks
intersected by the assumed fracture surfaces. The fracture efficiency is modeled through the individual virtual perforation efficiencies and proppant properties
(SPE 138071).
This approach provides the most realistic calculation of fluid inflow to the well. This new technology
was successfully tested on large full-field models of giant Western Siberia reservoirs with a large number of

fracture properties as a function of time, and a high

degree of flexibility in the definition and re-configuration of fracture networks. The orientation and shape of
fractures can be easily changed by modification of the
few keywords in the model stack file.
The new technology of fracture modeling can be
easily extended from single to multiple fractures per
well. The approach is found to be very efficient for simulation of shale reservoirs with multistage fractured

wells (SPE147021).
Multiple hydraulic fractures changing pressure distribution

hydraulic fractures.
Hydraulic fracturing in tNavigator can be defined
quickly via the graphical interface. User defines fracture parameters in the dialogue (azimuth angle, length,
width, proppant type etc.). The fracture is immediately
visualized in the 3D map as a plane. Fracture geometry
can be any shape.
The main benefits of such an approach include a
more realistic description of fracture physics featuring more direct coupling of the well and the parts of
the reservoir connected through the fracture. This approach offers a simple way to define various complex

Multiple realizations of fractures and reservoir properties can be applied for uncertainty quantification of
the reservoir performance.

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulations

Well trajectory
optimization
Well path definition with a mouse.
Run multiple simulations and compare results
obtained with different sets of trajectories and
input parameters.
Instant visual evaluation of different production
scenarios.
Vertical and horizontal wells can be modeled with
fractures.

3. Different model versions are handled by tNavigator in batch mode. Simulation results for different
models can be evaluated at one plot or diagram to pick
the optimal development scheme.
tNavigator provides alternative options for well
data specifications directly from the original trajectory
input:
Loading ASCII files with well trajectories, groups,
events, history.
Basic well trajectory file formats are supported:
GWTD, LAS, Dip-circle, well heads.
Combined formats for the Schedule sections:
trajectory and event files can be combined with
standard completions in the gridblocks.
Run multiple simulations and compare results obtained with different sets of trajectories and input
parameters.
Well trajectories can be visualized directly on the
maps.

tNavigator helps to find the optimal horizontal

well paths in a short period of time:
1. A few alternatives for horizontal well trajectories
can be defined with clicks of the mouse on 2D, 3D maps
and user-defined vertical profiles.
2. The vertical profiles are most useful for defining
the horizontal and deviated wells. It takes just a few
minutes to define several alternatives.

tNavigator also allows direct definition of well

parameters by including trajectories, events,
history in the DATA-file.
No well section revision is required when you
change the grid. As the well definitions are given
in absolute coordinates it is common for all realizations of the model.
Production optimization applications can change
the trajectories and well controls directly in the
tables without any additional scripting.

Advanced waterflood
optimization
Add 2D, 3D streamline visualization and analytics,
while running full finite difference dynamic reser-

Runtime graph of injection efficiency for all the injector wells

in the model. The amount of water injected X axis, effective oil production rate associated with a given injector Y

voir simulations.
Generate tables of injector-producer cross couplings
and respective water, oil production allocation fac-

Introduce tracers interactively to mark the water

component based on its origin. See how water
front moves from the injectors and examine the
reservoir water flow explicitly with maps and production plots.

Tracer maps and plots

tors.
Runtime table of injector-producer couplings calculated via
3D streamlines

Interactively adjust the production plan: shut

wells, change the injection/production controls,
switch wells from production to injection, add new
wells, well patterns.
Restart the run with a new production plan interactively, see the changes in the production rates and
their effective allocations, pressure distribution,
and watercuts.
Check for underperforming injectors in the injec
tion efficiency graphs.

Production profiles along the well completion intervals

Parallel Interactive Reservoir Simulations

Sector modeling tools.
Automatic model split/merge
This unique feature in tNavigator provides the user
with tools for automatic splitting of large models with
single and dual porosity/permeability into self-consistent sector models and merging them back together
again after updates. The input decks for sector models
are generated automatically, and include all features
and keywords from the initial model applied to the
small model grid.
Efficient framework for project teams.
Reduced overall simulation time.
Simplified history matching and production optimization problems on sector models.
Reduced project time frames.
No painful data preparation work.
The model can be split using any trajectory: a spe-

cific region of the model, or via an arbitrary user map.

After running the large model one time before splitting, the flux boundary conditions are applied to all
fragments and used in the calculations. Model updates
recorded in the fragments are then merged back into
the large model.
The technology was applied to a number of giant
models in West Siberia (SPE 162090).

EOR modeling
tools
tNavigator proposes an elegant method for chemical injection simulations based on active tracers. The
particles of chemicals in the water phase can be fully
traced in the reservoir from the injection date, and can
induce changes in reservoir properties when the activation conditions are fulfilled. Based on user defined tables the tracers can change reservoir properties, such
as permeability, porosity, relative permeability etc. The
model can be applied directly to the data available from
the laboratory core measurements.
tNavigator was successfully applied to a number
of polymer flooding problems. The model takes into
consideration the hydrolysis swelling rate and polymer
type. The technology was verified on real field cases
with BrightWater injections.

tNavigator also has an option of surfactant injection simulation. Admixture influence on surface tension is simulated using relative phase permeability
scaling.
A similar mathematical approach is applied to waterflood problems, where the injected water salinity is
different from formation water salinity. A new mathematical model is proposed, taking into account basic
physical parameters of the undergoing process, such as
maximal salt concentration (saturated solution concentration), viscosity and water density dependence on
salt concentration, porosity, and permeability changes
with fresh water flooding (SPE 162091).
The EOR functionality also includes modelling of
wettability alteration in naturally fractured reservoirs.

Full modeling workflow with tNavigator

All modules are implemented on the same platform. Easy setup for
integrated workflows involving static and dynamic modeling

Uncertainty quantification
and assisted history matching
Internal queuing system for distributing multiple
simulation runs locally or on remote clusters
Various experimental design methods for sensitivity analysis
Iterative algorithms for automatic history matching and production optimization
Analysis toolbox: plots, histograms, tornado charts,
correlation analysis

Direct variable definitions in the data files

Workflow wizards
Well trajectories, perforation intervals, fracture
geometry can be adjusted directly
Variable LGRs along well paths and fractures
Corey functions for relative permeability modifications
Reservoir property correlations with keywords
Flexible user arithmetic for complex cases no
external scripting required
Local adjustments on sector models with flux
boundary conditions

Geological
modeling
Software for building static models from scratch
Using tNavigator platform for parallel computations and visualizations of large volume of data
Very fast even on large models
User friendly intuitive workflow manager
Loading well trajectories, markers, horizons and
well log data in conventional formats

Creating mesh using seismic trends

Various methods for reservoir property interpolation from the well logs:
3D interpolation of reservoir maps
Kriging
Sequential Gaussian simulation method

Flexible reservoir property calculator

Export to dynamic model
Basic correlations of fluid properties
Corey functions for relative permeability parameters
Standings PVT correlations

The tNavigator technology represents a game-changer for us compared to other

reservoir simulation software in our organization. We not only can tackle far more
complex reservoir models with the software, but we are also able to fully exploit the
exceptional speed of tNavigator in combination with our assisted history matching
software to significantly reduce project cycle times. This in turn has made reservoir
simulation a much more valuable tool to our organization.
- Larry Murray. Manager, Waterflood Modeling, Occidental Oil and Gas California Operations

With tNavigator we managed to reduce the simulation time of the Samotlor field
model from one day to 39 minutes. It completely changes the approach to development planning and waterflood optimization of this huge brown field.
RFD reduced the complexity of routine operations with the models to the general
PC user level
- Vladislav Dzyuba. Director of Reservoir Modeling, TNK-BP

tNavigator is applied to a model of complex multizone gas condensate reservoir.

It exhibits parallel acceleration of over 100 times on our 256-core cluster compared
to single core runs. This allows our reservoir engineers to try many different production forecast scenarios each day
- Alexey Yazkov. Deputy Director, NOVATEK Research and Development Center

I would like to express my appreciation for RFDs outstanding support and thank
your development team for adding surfactant modeling capabilities to tNavigator.
Use of this feature in our simulation work has advanced our understanding of surfactant flooding potential in the Spraberry oil field in West Texas.
- oil and gas exploration and production company

1980 Post Oak Boulevard, Suite 2030, Houston, TX 77056, USA

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Email: info-rfd@rfdyn.com