Flow Diagnostics for Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs

Lead Research Organisation: Heriot-Watt University
Department Name: Sch of Energy, Geosci, Infrast & Society

Abstract

The accurate static and dynamic characterisation of natural fractures is fundamental to successful hydrocarbon recovery from carbonate reservoirs because (i) fractures are ubiquitous in carbonate formations, (ii) fractures can cause early water breakthrough and low final recovery, and (iii) fractures are a primary source of uncertainty. The classical approach to production forecasting in support of reservoir development is to build one or more static models, translate selected models into dynamic models, and perform Black-Oil or compositional reservoir simulations that are tuned to production data. This is a time-consuming approach that often does not address the full range of geological uncertainties due to time limitations inherent to asset teams. Therefore, reservoir models tend to have limited shelve-life and require frequent modifications, leading to missed economic opportunities.

This project will be based at the Carbonate Reservoir Group (http://carbonates.hw.ac.uk/) at the Institute of Petroleum Engineering (IPE) and combines long-standing research efforts from IPE and SINTEF in Norway. Using the state-of-the-art Open Source Matlab Reservoir Simulation Toolbox MRST (http://www.sintef.no/Projectweb/MRST/), the project will extend and apply a novel technology termed "flow diagnostics" to improve classical reservoir characterisation and simulation workflows for fractured carbonate reservoirs. Flow diagnostics calculate and visualise key dynamic reservoir properties (e.g. drained and swept reservoir volumes, time-to-breakthrough, decline rates, sweet spots, well-allocation factors) directly on the grid blocks of multi-million cell static models in negligible time. Flow diagnostic tools hence allow us to quickly approximate the dynamic response of multiple static reservoir models to estimate their production behaviour without running computationally intensive full-physics reservoir simulations. Results from flow diagnostics tools can be used to screen, rank, and cluster static reservoir models based on their dynamic response, offering a robust and efficient way to identify production trends while accounting for uncertainty.

Studentship Projects

Project Reference Relationship Related To Start End Student Name
EP/N509474/1 30/09/2016 29/09/2021
1879863 Studentship EP/N509474/1 02/10/2016 01/04/2020 Victoria Spooner
 
Description My PhD has addressed the need for faster reservoir model screening in production forecasting and uncertainty quantification workflows. Flow diagnostics can rapidly approximate reservoir connectivity in seconds providing robust measures of the dynamic heterogeneity that can then be used to compare models. I have extended this technology to dual porosity models for fractured reservoirs. The extension includes the implementation of physics based transfer models int MRST, development of the dual porosity damkohler number for ranking models. The ability to rank and compare scenarios quickly allows us to consider a broad uncertainty range and multiple possible reservoir concepts, enabling us to select the cases that offer the most insight for further detailed studies.
Exploitation Route CMG have begin implementing flow diagnostics in their commercial reservoir simulation code following recent publications from myself e.g.

Spooner, V.E., Geiger, S., and Arnold, D., 2019. Flow diagnostics for naturally fractured reservoirs, Petroleum Geoscience, 25, 490-500.

Spooner, V. E., Geiger, S., Arnold, D., (Heriot Watt), (2019), SPE-193861-MS Ranking Fractured Reservoir Models Using Flow Diagnostics, SPE Reservoir Simulation Conference, 10-11 April 2019, Galveston, Texas

Spooner, V. E., Geiger, S., Arnold, D., (Heriot Watt), Nørgård, JP., (Lundin Norway AS), (2018), The Application of Dual Porosity Flow Diagnostics to a Fractured Carbonate Field, EAGE ECMOR, 3-6 September 2018, Barcelona, Spain

Spooner, V. E., Geiger, S., Arnold, D., (Heriot Watt), (2018), SPE-190877-MS Flow Diagnostics for Naturally Fractured Reservoirs, SPE Europec featured at 80th EAGE Annual Conference & Exhibition, 11-14 June 2018, Copenhagen, Denmark

Spooner, V. E., Geiger, S., Arnold, D., (Heriot Watt), (2018), Flow Diagnostics for Naturally Fractured Reservoirs - Extended Abstract, Third EAGE Workshop on Naturally Fractured Reservoirs, 05 February 2018, Muscat, Oman, DOI: 10.3997/2214-4609.201800035
Sectors Energy

 
Description The developments I have made for dual porosity flow diagnostics and the wider technology is currently being implemented into commercial reservoir simulation codes. Following a successful internship with Lundin Norway AS, where I demonstrated the value of my code and the technology as a whole, they requested their software vendor to implement flow diagnostics in their reservoir simulation software (TNavigator). As my research group is supported by a different software vendor (CMG), we have been collaborating with them to implement flow diagnostics in their simulation packages. The easy access to the flow diagnostics technology in user friendly commercial means that it will actually be practical to perform for asset teams in industry. Ultimately using this technology will save asset teams time and help them to more robustly validate reservoir models for production forecasting.
First Year Of Impact 2018
Sector Energy
 
Description Conference Presentation with CMG 
Organisation CMG Technologies
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution I created an ensemble of realisations of the Teapot Dome reservoir and performed flow diagnostics on them.
Collaborator Contribution CMG provided a deck converter usually only available to certain clients. CMG used the ensemble of models I created and compared the flow diagnostics results with the results from their commercial full-physics simulator.
Impact A presentation was given at a workshop on carbonates reservoirs in Malaysia. We have plans for a joint paper following this work
Start Year 2018
 
Title Dual Porosity Flow Diagnostics in MRST 
Description I have extended the flow diagnostics module in MRST (Matlab reservoir simulation toolbox) to account for dual porosity models of fractured reservoirs. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2019 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact MRST is a research code that allows academic developers to test new research codes. The flow diagnostics module is currently being implemented into two commercial simulation codes (this will include my dual porosity extension).