ADVANCED TECHNIQUES FOR RESERVOIR SIMULATION AND MODELING OF NONCONVENTIONAL WELLS

Durlofsky, Louis J. ; Aziz, Khalid

Stanford University (United States)

关键词: Hydrocarbons;    02 Petroleum;    Forecasting;    Multiphase Flow;    Reservoir Engineering;   

DOI  :  10.2172/834134
RP-ID  :  NONE
RP-ID  :  AC26-99BC15213
RP-ID  :  834134

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

Nonconventional wells, which include horizontal, deviated, multilateral and ''smart'' wells, offer great potential for the efficient management of oil and gas reservoirs. These wells are able to contact larger regions of the reservoir than conventional wells and can also be used to target isolated hydrocarbon accumulations. The use of nonconventional wells instrumented with downhole inflow control devices allows for even greater flexibility in production. Because nonconventional wells can be very expensive to drill, complete and instrument, it is important to be able to optimize their deployment, which requires the accurate prediction of their performance. However, predictions of nonconventional well performance are often inaccurate. This is likely due to inadequacies in some of the reservoir engineering and reservoir simulation tools used to model and optimize nonconventional well performance. A number of new issues arise in the modeling and optimization of nonconventional wells. For example, the optimal use of downhole inflow control devices has not been addressed for practical problems. In addition, the impact of geological and engineering uncertainty (e.g., valve reliability) has not been previously considered. In order to model and optimize nonconventional wells in different settings, it is essential that the tools be implemented into a general reservoir simulator. This simulator must be sufficiently general and robust and must in addition be linked to a sophisticated well model. Our research under this five year project addressed all of the key areas indicated above. The overall project was divided into three main categories: (1) advanced reservoir simulation techniques for modeling nonconventional wells; (2) improved techniques for computing well productivity (for use in reservoir engineering calculations) and for coupling the well to the simulator (which includes the accurate calculation of well index and the modeling of multiphase flow in the wellbore); and (3) accurate approaches to account for the effects of reservoir heterogeneity and for the optimization of nonconventional well deployment. An overview of our progress in each of these main areas is as follows. A general purpose object-oriented research simulator (GPRS) was developed under this project. The GPRS code is managed using modern software management techniques and has been deployed to many companies and research institutions. The simulator includes general black-oil and compositional modeling modules. The formulation is general in that it allows for the selection of a wide variety of primary and secondary variables and accommodates varying degrees of solution implicitness. Specifically, we developed and implemented an IMPSAT procedure (implicit in pressure and saturation, explicit in all other variables) for compositional modeling as well as an adaptive implicit procedure. Both of these capabilities allow for efficiency gains through selective implicitness. The code treats cell connections through a general connection list, which allows it to accommodate both structured and unstructured grids. The GPRS code was written to be easily extendable so new modeling techniques can be readily incorporated. Along these lines, we developed a new dual porosity module compatible with the GPRS framework, as well as a new discrete fracture model applicable for fractured or faulted reservoirs. Both of these methods display substantial advantages over previous implementations. Further, we assessed the performance of different preconditioners in an attempt to improve the efficiency of the linear solver. As a result of this investigation, substantial improvements in solver performance were achieved.