- KR Bharat
- 2025-09-24
Penn State team uncovers hidden structures missed by traditional seismic scans that prevent oil extraction.
A frequent challenge in oil drilling is that wells can stop producing even when seismic scans suggest oil remains underground.
To address this, researchers at Penn State University used PSC’s Bridges-2 supercomputer to incorporate a time dimension into seismic imaging and to examine how oil reduces the strength of sound waves passing through it. Their early results indicate that hidden rock formations inside reservoirs may block access to portions of the oil. The team is now expanding its work to study full-scale oil fields.
