Not long after Alan Turing, the visionary British mathematician, was creating computer science history, American geologist Max Steineke was scouring the sands of Saudi Arabia in search of his own breakthrough that would justify years of investment in oil exploration. When Steineke’s moment finally came in 1938, with the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in Dhahran, neither man could have predicted just how intertwined their respective fields would become.
Steineke’s find, aided in no small part by the local knowledge of a skilled Saudi tracker, occurred just two years after Turing first outlined his vision for a machine that could solve mathematical problems – an early signpost to the digital computer. More than 80 years later, the energy sector has come to depend as much on technology as it does on the geological formations from which it rose.
That, in a nutshell, is why Aramco has invested in one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.
Named after the first commercial oil well discovered by Steineke all those years ago, the Dammam 7 supercomputer is one of the 10 most powerful supercomputers in the world. With its high-performance computing capability of 55.4 petaflops, it presents new opportunities in both exploration and development – paving the way for building accurate subsurface models. It enhances Aramco’s ability to predict the location of new reserves, thanks to sophisticated imaging and AI deep learning technologies that will run on this hub and guide decision-making on exploration, development and unconventional well design and placement.
Remote sensing techniques, such as seismic acquisition, have become the eyes and ears of our subterranean explorers. With seismic imaging we can now see far below the Earth’s surface, building 3D models that represent hundreds of kilometers of underground formations with a high resolution. There is a correlation between the accuracy of such images and that of our drilling operations, while the faster delivery of this information is key to operational efficiency.
But advances in our seismic survey capabilities mean the quality and size of the data we acquire continues to grow rapidly. In fact, over the past 10 year the amount of such data has grown over 2000%. This trend will continue as geological targets become more complex. Processing such data with sophisticated algorithms require a leap in computing capacity.
It is far removed from the speculative approach adopted by oil pioneers of the early 20th Century, for whom guesswork and luck played a part. We are now able to make informed choices about investment in production and resource allocation – and Dammam 7 is the logical next step in Aramco’s Digital Transformation journey, complementing an expanding suite of advanced technologies that are reshaping our core operations and driving efficiencies. These include Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) breakthroughs in analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), sensing, robotics, mobility, modeling, cloud, Saudi Aramco: Public Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), 3D printing, the Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain and autonomous vehicles.
Aramco is not the only beneficiary from this investment. Such state-of-the-art solutions are enhancing our ability to meet the world’s energy needs, both reliably and sustainably. As an industry leader in research and technology deployment, Aramco’s investments in this field are geared towards ensuring long-term energy supplies that can sustain a growing and rapidly developing global population.
In addition, they support our goal to achieve further emissions reductions, having already achieved the lowest upstream carbon intensity of any major oil producer.
The strides we are making also provide a roadmap for others – across multiple industries – seeking to adapt to the fast pace of development in the 21st Century. For example, two of our facilities have already been inducted into the World Economic Forum’s elite Global Lighthouse Network, which recognizes industrial sites that have successfully deployed 4IR technologies at scale.
Meanwhile, our progress – either through projects we are spearheading in-house or through partnerships with specialized companies – is a catalyst for further development of Saudi Arabia’s domestic technology landscape. The Dammam 7 supercomputer was developed at Dhahran Techno Valley in partnership with STC-Solutions – part of Saudi telecom provider STC – and CRAY, a subsidiary of Hewlett Packard (HP). Through such high-profile projects we are uplifting the technical skills of our own workforce, while injecting cutting-edge expertise into the local market. Our Aramco Upstream Solutions Technathon is an extension of this, encouraging university students and researchers to develop 4IR-based solutions that address oil and gas industry challenges.
Advances in computing continue to reshape our world, accelerating human development and changing the way we learn, communicate and make decisions for ourselves and for our planet. Latest breakthroughs in geoscience provide the energy sector with insights that, just a few years ago, would have seemed impossible in our industry. As one of the world’s largest integrated energy companies, Aramco is committed to driving forward this trend – setting the pace for digital deployment across the oil and gas sector and, in the process, ensuring even more responsible management of our natural environment.
