Accelerating enhanced oil recovery (EOR) processes with on-demand reservoir simulation (ODRS) in a complex carbonate formation
Cloud-based reservoir simulation enabled faster CO₂ EOR scenario evaluation, reducing simulation time by up to 50 times and accelerating decision-making. The collaborative digital environment improved efficiency, delivering approximately 15% project performance improvement while supporting CCUS deployment.
Accelerating CO₂ EOR planning for a mature carbonate reservoir
PT Pertamina Hulu Energi aimed to design and develop a CO₂ enhanced oil recovery (EOR) pilot and full-field deployment for Field A, a mature carbonate reservoir in East Java. The goal was to increase estimated ultimate recovery while advancing Indonesia’s first CCUS project in alignment with Pertamina’s net-zero emissions program.
The project required:
- Reservoir characterization and modeling
- CO₂ injection strategy optimization
- Pilot design and monitoring planning
- Evaluation of long-term field development scenarios
Cloud-enabled simulation accelerates reservoir evaluation and planning
The adoption of a cloud-based, on-demand reservoir simulation environment enabled a step change in performance and collaboration. This significantly accelerated simulation workflows , reducing runtime by approximately 28 times for black oil models and up to 50 times for CO₂ compositional simulations.
Agile reservoir modeling workflows further improved project performance, delivering an approximate 15% gain against the planned timeline. Collaboration across global teams was also enhanced by an integrated digital environment that connected multidisciplinary teams around the world and helped overcome distributed data and personnel challenges.
Reservoir understanding and decision-making were strengthened using advanced technologies including machine learning for secondary porosity prediction. Digital rock analysis further improved modeling accuracy.
In addition cloud infrastructure enabled on-demand access to high-performance computing (HPC), without reliance on physical hardware, increasing efficiency and reducing operational constraints.
