The company is undergoing a strategic corporate transformation, covering every function including major new business areas, as part of its effort to become a fully integrated energy company, Khaled Al-Buraik, vice president of petroleum engineering and development at Saudi Aramco, said at a topical luncheon.
The new strategy is consistent with Saudi Aramco’s development plans for its oil and gas fields, because it will allow the company to maximize reservoir performance and add further value to its integrated energy value chain, he said. “The same far-reaching time horizon applies to our investments in both talent and technology. We are emphasizing high-impact technologies that typically involve long-range strategies. We are pursuing research and development to bring about breakthrough achievements, not simple or merely incremental enhancements,” he said.
Al-Buraik revealed that his company’s upstream research and development roadmap includes the characteristic subsurface technology domains of the geosciences—geophysics and geology—production and reservoir engineering, and computational modeling. “Our focal points of research were carefully selected through a rigorous process based on the greatest potential business impact addressing our highest priorities,” he said.
Through its new strategy, Saudi Aramco will be striving to find answers to key questions that are crucial to its growth. “Can we acquire four times the data yet reduce acquisition time and cost by 50%? Can we achieve 5-ft seismic resolution at 15,000 ft depth? These are the types of questions we are trying to find answers to,” he said.
In reservoir engineering, Saudi Aramco’s areas of focus include enhanced oil recovery, pore-scale physics, waterflooding using modified water or “smart water,” and unconventional resources. The company is trying to increase recoveries by 15% to 20% and more accurately increase reservoir data.
Saudi Aramco is also continuing the development of its reservoir nanoparticle program. The program has two goals. “The first is for the injected particles to help us characterize and describe reservoirs better. The second is to increase recovery,” Al-Buraik said. “We have already conducted a major field test of our in-house manufactured nanoparticles. This year, we will conduct two more major field tests. One will focus on enhancing reservoir characterization, the other on recovery.”
As for the computational modeling technology, Saudi Aramco has its own simulator, GigaPOWERS, which was fully developed in-house. “Our research focus areas under computational modeling include reservoir simulation, basin modeling and simulation, massive visualization, and modeling of unconventional resources,” he said.
Regarding unconventional resources, Al-Buraik said that Saudi Aramco is focusing on three major regions. In the northwest, the search is characterized by shale at shallow depths. In the east, excellent tight gas opportunities have been identified for appraisal, and the company could lower costs by using its existing infrastructure. In the southeast, prospects are economically attractive given the existing petroleum system. Al-Buraik said that his company knows that its success with unconventional resources will depend on an integrated solution involving the geosciences and engineering.
Saudi Aramco believes that achieving its research and technology goals will require some of the best talent worldwide, he said. “Therefore, we are establishing upstream global research centers in strategic locations, while maintaining core research in Dhahran,” Al-Buraik said.
The goal of these centers is to use international scientific expertise, allow the company better access to technology, and to strengthen collaboration with the industry and academia.
Al-Buraik said Saudi Aramco’s largest international research center will be in located in Houston, with a second North American center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focusing on computational modeling and nanotechnology research. “Both of these centers will be operational by the third quarter of this year,” he added.