Setup VirtualBox, OPM-Flow Simulator and ResInsight to run the Volve Oilfield Model

OPM-Flow is an open source fully implicit, black oil reservoir simulator developed under the Open Porous Media Initiative. The simulator is based on a Linux workspace and requires the installation of a virtual-box in windows based machines. We’ll be using this simulator for our simulation and visualization of the Volve oilfield model.

• Virtual Box
• Install and Setup Virtual Box
• Setup Lubuntu OS
• Configure the Lubuntu OS in Virtual Box
• OPM-Flow simulator
• Install OPM-Flow simulator
• Install OPMRUN software
• ResInsight
• Install ResInsight
• Running ResInsight

Virtual Box

Oracle VM VirtualBox is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization, developed by Oracle Corporation. The core package is available, since version 4 in December 2010, free software under GNU General Public License version 2

Install and Setup Virtual Box

• Download Virtual Box here and follow the installation wizard
• Download the lubuntu-18.04 OS for the virtual machine here
• Open the Virtual Box software and click new to create a virtual machine
  • Name: lubuntu 18.04
  • Type: Linux
  • Version: Ubuntu (64-bit)
  • Memory size: 4096 MB (Higher the RAM, better is the simulation)
  • Select Create a virtual hard disk now and click Create
• In the new dialog box,
  • Select the VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) option, click Next
  • Select the Dynamically allocated option
  • Set the size of the disk to 80 GB.

Steps to setup Virtual Box

Steps to setup Virtual Box

Setup Lubuntu OS

• Select the lubuntu-18.04 virtual machine and click on Settings
• Under the Systems tab, select the Processors tab.
  • Increase the number of processors to four (Higher the better!)
• Under the Display tab, select the Screen tab
• Increase the video memory to 64 MB. Change the Graphics Controller to VMSVGA
• Under the Storage tab, select the Control IDE disk.
  • In the Attributes section, change the IDE primary master disk, by clicking the disk icon and select the lubuntu-18.04 .iso file.

Configure the Lubuntu OS in Virtual Box

We boot up the OS by clicking on the Start button the VirtualBox places the OS in a small low resolution screen. Follow the lubuntu-18.04 installation wizard to Install Ubuntu and keep the default values. On completing the installation, you would see the desktop as below.

We need to Install Guest Additions to scale up from the low resolution screen to match the resolution of your display monitor.

• Click on Devices and select Install Guest Additions CD image… This loads the VBox_GAs_6.1.10 .iso file to the file manager. Open this folder in the file manager.
• Click on Tools in the file manager. Select Open Current Folder in Terminal. In the open terminal run the following code.

sudo apt install virtualbox-guest-dkms
sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

• Reboot the system.

You’ll be able to turn on full screen by clicking View and selecting the Full-screen mode option

OPM-Flow simulator

We install OPM-Flow using the binary packages for Ubuntu. We follow the method specified on the OPM-project webpage, here.

Install OPM-Flow simulator

• Open the LXTerminal from the System Tools menu.
• Run the following code

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:opm/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mpi-default-bin
sudo apt-get install libopm-simulators-bin

To check OPM flow installation. Run the SPE1 model. Download the SPE1 model to a folder (name: SPE1CASE1 model) and save it on the Lubuntu OS desktop. Open the terminal in the SPE1CASE1 folder and the run the command to begin the simulation. (We changed the .Data file format to .txt so that I could upload it here. The content isn’t modified)

flow SPE1CASE1.txt

Install OPMRUN software

This is a Python GUI based program that provides a Eclipse Office type user-interface to run the Flow simulator. Information about this file is available from its GitHub page, here.

• Download the OPM-Utilities flow folder from Github or Download here.
• Extract the folder and place it on the Lubuntu OS desktop. Open the opmrun folder.
• Open the Terminal in the opmrun folder. Run the following commands to install the prerequisite libraries.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo apt-get install python3-tk
pip3 intall pySimpleGUI
pip3 install airspeed
pip3 install psutil

To open the OPMRUN software, run the command in the same Terminal

python3 opmrun.py

Do not close the terminal or click on the cross button on the top-right, unless you want to close the software. To run the SPE1CASE1 model follow these steps

• Click on Add Job.
• Change the types of files to All (*.*). Click on browse and select the SPE1Case1.txt file.
• Click on Submit. Close the dialog box by clicking Cancel. (Do not use the cross button on the top-right)
• Click on Run Jobs. Keep the default values Run in Standard Simulation mode and Foreground Processing.
• Click Submit and view the simulation run

ResInsight

ResInsight is a powerful open source, cross-platform 3D visualization, curve plotting, and post processing tool for reservoir models and simulations. The user interface is tailored for efficient interpretation of reservoir simulation data with specialized visualizations of properties, faults and wells.

Install ResInsight

• Open the LXTerminal from the System Tools menu.
• Run the following code

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:opm/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install resinsight
sudo apt-get install octave-resinsight

Running ResInsight

• Open the ResInsight software from Start – Education-ResInsight
• From the File menu, select Import – Eclipse Cases – Import Eclipse case
• Select the SPE1CASE1.EGRID file. You’ll be able to visualize the 3D model in the window.