Development of Localized Diffuse Source Basis Function for Near Well Upscaling and Compressible Flow Diagnostics Applied to Reservoir Modeling

Abstract

The topic of this study is the fast and accurate simulation and flow diagnostic techniques used for simulations of flow and transport in porous media, particularly petroleum reservoirs. Fast and reliable simulation and flow diagnostic techniques are becoming increasingly necessary for reservoir management and development. The geological models increase in size and level of detail and require more computational resources to be utilized. The upscaling framework is a promising approach to facilitate the simulation of detailed geological models.

The shale gas/ tight oil reservoir gradually becomes the critical exploration target for petroleum resources. This unconventional reservoir has commonly low permeability properties distribution and is explored by the multi hydraulic fractured horizontal well. The compressible flow diagnostic is a robust and flexible method to analyze the fluid flow behavior in any reservoir model. Combining the convective time of flight (resolution of flow diagnostic) and diffusive time of flight (solution of fast marching method) allows us to investigate further detail of unconventional reservoir model, particularly for the multi hydraulic fractured horizontal well.

This study's work includes developing a coupling Diffuse Source transmissibility upscaling and the novel near well upscaling method for the high-resolution geological model. The work contains the development of a new flow diagnostics that extended the previously proposed flow diagnostics to compressible flow and an application of the flow diagnostics for the field analysis of multi transverse hydraulically fractured well. The research indicates a great potential for flexibility and scalability suitable for high-fidelity simulators and fast and robust diagnostic methods.