Supercomputers Deliver $500 Million Savings in BHP Hunt for Oil
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Diane Jurgens.
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Supercomputers that create 3-D seismic maps of BHP Billiton Ltd.’s oil and gas assets are accelerating work to bring new fields into production and have already notched savings of $500 million in development costs at a project in the Caribbean.
The computers are among initiatives aimed at using technology such as drones and robot drills to cut operating costs and lower the development bills of potential projects including the Jansen potash deposit in Canada, Chief Technology Officer Diane Jurgens said Friday in an interview. Crunching exploration data at a center in Houston is cutting the time needed to produce oil from sites in Trinidad and Tobago to three years from seven years, she said.