SPE Journal
Volume 16, Number 2, June 2011, pp. 318-330

SPE-118916-PA

Joint Updating of Petrophysical Properties and Discrete Facies Variables From Assimilating Production Data Using the EnKF

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DOI  More information 10.2118/118916-PA http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/118916-PA

Citation

  • Agbalaka, C.C. and Oliver, D.S. 2011. Joint Updating of Petrophysical Properties and Discrete Facies Variables From Assimilating Production Data Using the EnKF. SPE J.  16 (2): 318-330. SPE-118916-PA. doi: 10.2118/118916-PA.

Discipline Categories

  • 6.8 Fundamental Research in Reservoir Description and Dynamics
  • 6.5 Reservoir Simulation
  • 6.6 Reservoir Monitoring/Formation Evaluation
  • 6.4 Primary and Enhanced Recovery Processes

Keywords

  • EnKF, Truncated Gaussian simulation, pseudo-model variables, facies, multimodal properties

Summary

The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF), is a sequential data-assimilation technique that has been shown to work quite well in obtaining conditional facies models from assimilating production data. Because the problem of history matching geological facies is quite complex, most efforts at solving this problem typically assume that facies properties are constant and spatially homogeneous. In this paper, we propose a method for updating both the categorical facies variables and the spatially heterogeneous and nonuniform properties of the facies in a consistent manner within the EnKF framework. Tests of our proposed approach on two representative examples with different features of nonstationarity resulted in satisfactory history-match solutions and geologically consistent estimates of the nonuniform and heterogeneous petrophysical properties.

© 2010. Society of Petroleum Engineers

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History

  • Original manuscript received: 4 November 2008
  • Meeting paper published: 3 February 2009
  • Revised manuscript received: 15 April 2010
  • Manuscript approved: 13 May 2010
  • Published online: 11 November 2010
  • Version of record: 17 June 2011