BP Opens New Facility in Houston, TX

BP, plc announced it has opened a new facility in Houston to house the world’s largest supercomputer for commercial research, highlighting its commitment to technology in support of its core oil and gas business around the globe.

The Center for HPC, located at BP’s US HQs in Houston, TX will serve as a worldwide hub for processing and managing huge amounts of geophysical data from across BP’s portfolio and be a key tool in helping scientists to ‘see’ more clearly what lies beneath the earth’s surface.

Ever-more precise images of the subsurface-made possible by greater computing power, speed and storage capacity – will enhance BP’s ability to find new energy resources, by reducing the time needed to analyze massive quantities of seismic data and enabling more detailed in-house modeling of rock formations before drilling begins. Such advances will help BP build on its historic strength in oil and natural gas exploration.

Better imaging capability will also help the company appraise new finds and manage complex reservoirs once production starts. In addition, the center opens up possibilities for research into other important aspects of BP’s business activities, from oil refining to enhanced oil recovery. For example, it will help facilitate BP’s development of ‘digital rocks,’ a proprietary technology for calculating petrophysical rock properties and modeling fluid flow directly from high-resolution 3D images – at a scale equivalent to 1/50th of the thickness of a human hair.

“‘BP’s investment in this new supercomputing center not only highlights the increasingly high-tech nature of today’s global oil and gas industry, it underscores our company’s long-held belief in the vital role technology plays – and will continue to play – in solving the world’s biggest energy challenges,” said Jackie Mutschler, BP’s head of upstream technology.

The HPC is housed in a three-story, 110,000 square foot building at BP’s Westlake campus. Built to withstand the strong Gulf Coast weather events, reduce energy consumption and accommodate future growth, the building replaces BP’s previous supercomputing complex, which had been located within an office tower at the campus.

The previous supercomputing facility was the world’s first commercial research center to achieve a petaflop of processing speed – or one thousand trillion calculations per second. But it had reached maximum power and cooling capacity, limiting options for growth.

BP worked with HP and Intel to grow its computing power to over 2.2 petaflops, almost doubling our capability this year.

It will also boast total memory of 1,000TB and disk space of 23.5PB – the equivalent of over 40,000 average laptop computers.

Over the past five years, BP has invested more than $55 billion in the US – more than any other energy company. BP is the nation’s second-largest producer of oil and gas and provides enough energy annually to light nearly the entire country for a year. Directly employing more than 20,000 people in all 50 states, the company supports more than 260,000 jobs in total through all of its business activities.

Performance computing has been vital to advances BP has made in seismic imaging over the past two decades, including the development of wide azimuth towed streamer (WATS) seismic technology for subsalt imaging, which has transformed the way data in the Gulf of Mexico and other major offshore basins is acquired and processed.

Tested in the computer before they are taken to the field, the breakthroughs have been instrumental in some of BP’s largest oil and gas discoveries in recent years.

BP’s computing needs are 20,000 times greater today than they were in 1999.

BP scientists can now have the computing power to complete an imaging project in one day that would have taken 4 years using computing technology from just 10 years ago.

In addition to enabling future growth, the new center for performance computing in Houston will also feature improved electrical and cooling systems that reduce power consumption by 30% over the current facility, as well as space for other BP technical support systems and offices.