SBIR Phase I: Grid Computing for Energy Exploration and Development

3dgeo Development Inc, Santa Clara CA

Investigators

Abstract

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the implementation of a virtual computer environment that leverages the bandwidth and connectivity of the Internet and computer resources available from multiple geographically dispersed computer systems. This solution will be applied to one of the most compute intensive commercial industries: the 2 billion dollar worldwide seismic imaging market for energy exploration and development. This is a powerful and compelling demonstration of the abilities of the Internet and grid computing to enhance the real time value chain for the end consumer, and will usher in a new business approach for the energy exploration industry, and for other compute intensive markets such as: fluid flow modeling, aeronautics, genetic simulation, computational chemistry, astrophysics, nuclear simulation, and computational physics. The particular demonstration of the Grid technology will be in the seismic computing market ($2 billion per year). This market has been expanding because of the dwindling supply of known reserves and the increased worldwide competition for new sources of oil and gas. The capability to accurately image and evaluate reservoirs before drilling is fundamentally important to exploration companies because of the high cost of drilling wells.