July 12, 2022 by Andrew Seto, VP Technology, Energi Simulation
Energi Simulation’s mission is to ‘promote and fund university research in energy resource modelling with industry collaboration and technology transfer’. Playing to our core strength in oil and gas reservoir simulation research that started 44 years ago, Energi Simulation made a strategic decision in 2018-2019 to broaden the scope to include subsurface energy resource modelling in the geothermal energy and CCUS areas.
For subsurface energy resource development, it is essential to have reliable information to assess its reserves and productivity for business decisions based on economic and technical feasibilities, with considerations of the social and environmental impacts. Such information includes geologic descriptions, fluid flow characteristics, rock and fluid interactions, with geomechanical and thermal effects. In addition to thermal-hydrological-mechanical-chemical (THMC) reservoir simulators, as well as hydraulic fracturing and drilling/wellbore models, artificial intelligence/machine learning tools are often employed to help history match production performance and generate realistic forecasts. Laboratory experimentation and field data collection are also needed to provide the crucial information to help ground-truth the numerical models.
Our research chair programs worldwide have been strategically selected to support global energy transition initiatives, focusing on subsurface energy resource modelling in oil & gas, geothermal energy, and CCUS areas. Energi Simulation Summit 2022, a hybrid technical symposium to be held in Calgary on September 20-21, will showcase the research work by our Chair teams and guest speakers from 10 universities in 6 countries.