A recent deal announced by Spanish E&P firm Repsol YPF and U.S. technology provider 3DGeo Inc. proposes to radically improve subsurface imaging and lower drilling risk.

The Kaleidoscope-project partners will focus on joint development of high-level geophysical processing tools and applications, particularly those that radically improve imaging in more complex geology, enable high-resolution velocity modeling, and support wide-azimuth imaging. And they will use one of the world's most powerful supercomputers in that effort.

Kaleidoscope marries the MareNostrum supercomputer, operated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), with proprietary algorithms developed by Houston- and Santa Clara, California-based 3DGeo Inc. Repsol YPF is among the world's major integrated companies and 3DGeo is well known in the geophysical community for developing commercial 3-D wave-equation migration algorithms.

Great breakthroughs are on the horizon, says Dimitri Bevc, chairman and president of 3DGeo. "This is like the Manhattan project for the oil industry."

As today's exploration efforts push offshore into ultradeep waters and astonishing drilling depths, geophysical imaging has strained to provide clear subsurface images. Computers common in the industry have only recently become capable of handling more complex migrations in an efficient manner, which allow imaging of large but subtle structures that are deep, on the flanks of complex geology, or obscured by overlying salt layers.

However, operators in such regions as the Gulf of Mexico have found that delineating such prospects using current computers and algorithms for shot-profile migration, reverse time migration or iterative velocity modeling, among others, can be so time consuming that they are impractical.

"We believe Kaleidoscope will accelerate the exploration cycle and make these types of migrations economically feasible," says Francisco Ortigosa, Repsol YPF's worldwide manager of geophysical operations and subsurface imaging, and principal sponsor of the project. Ortigosa is based in The Woodlands, Texas.

Indeed, the capacity of the MareNostrum is remarkable. The computer, the largest in Europe and the fifth-largest in the world, has a calculation capacity of 94 trillion operations per second.

The supercomputer will make possible calculations that have never been done. "The project is an innovative approach to seismic imaging," says Bevc. "We will be able to both develop and test our algorithms on a computer that is several orders of magnitude more powerful than anything we have used before."

One of the significant innovations for the exploration industry will be the implementation of algorithms running on IBM Cell BE architecture. "This alone has the potential to make today's applications run 40 or more times faster," he says. Imaging and processing procedures that were previously uneconomic will now be accomplished within economically viable time frames.

Repsol YPF hopes to gain significant competitive advantages from the relationship. Says Ortigosa, "We have the best of the best in a very competitive environment. We expect that these technical developments will significantly reduce exploration risks and accelerate project cycles."

The software developed by 3DGeo for the Kaleidoscope project will be proprietary. Respol YPF will be the only oil company to have exclusive access to the code, and 3DGeo will be the only contractor with exclusive rights to commercialize this technology.