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The Pangea III supercomputer at Total's scientific centre in Pau, France

French oil and gas giant Total has announced it has a new supercomputer, built by IBM, that is now the most powerful computer in the global energy industry, and the 11th most powerful supercomputer globally.

The Pangea III computer is designed to help geologists find oil cheaper, faster and with a higher success rate, by processing complex seismic data to find hydrocarbons 10 times faster than currently possible.

"What used to take a week, now takes us a day to process," said Total's senior vice president for exploration Kevin McLachlan.

Total hopes to make tens of millions of dollars of savings on oil wells by getting better seismic images