PetroChina's Homegrown FrSmart Software Named 2024 Top Technology Advance

Domestic industrial software has made new progress in oil and gas exploration and development. For a long time, core industrial software in this sector relied mainly on imports, with single procurement costs running into millions of yuan and steep follow-up upgrade service fees. Imported software also showed compatibility problems when handling China's complex geological conditions, with simulation results diverging from actual construction performance and customization cycles taking one to two years. According to incomplete statistics, import spending on reservoir stimulation optimization design software alone has accumulated to more than RMB 1 billion.

The research team at PetroChina's Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development spent more than six years developing FrSmart, a large-scale geological-engineering integrated fracturing optimization design software with fully independent intellectual property, drawing on theories of rock mechanics, fracture mechanics and seepage mechanics and incorporating decades of reservoir stimulation experience from major domestic oil and gas fields. The software has passed field verification on more than 10,000 wells and was selected among PetroChina's top 10 technological advances for 2024. During development, the team formed a joint research body with multiple oilfield companies and universities, overcoming technical hurdles including non-planar full three-dimensional fracture simulation and complex fracture simulation accounting for two-dimensional natural fractures, and building a geological-engineering integrated algorithm system.

The application of domestic industrial software advances oil and gas extraction from an experience-driven to a data-driven stage. In reservoir stimulation, engineers use the software to simulate fracture paths, calculate construction parameters, avoid risky layers and optimize construction plans in real time. The software follows a development model of simultaneous development, application, feedback and iteration, with each version's functions tested at oilfield sites and feedback channeled into subsequent iterations. Domestic industrial software has extended across the entire oil and gas extraction chain, converting industry experience accumulated over generations into reusable digital assets.

Trainees from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission's special training class on basic and industrial software recently visited the PetroChina research institute, where young technology professionals from more than 40 central enterprises observed the research and application results of domestic oil and gas industrial software. Domestic industrial software has now entered a large-scale iteration period, with cloud and platform development emerging as key directions. The application of digital twin technology will improve numerical simulation accuracy in oil and gas exploration and development, supporting scientific management of oil and gas reservoirs across their full life cycle.