Session Information
Forum Session Topics and Descriptions
Why Next Generation Simulators/Emerging Simulators
Chairpersons: Rosalind Archer, Cosan Ayan, Larry Fung
Reservoir simulators have long become a primary reservoir engineering tool for recovery analyses and performance evaluation in the oil and gas industry. Multi-scale multi-domain data, geological and geophysical models are becoming more integrated with increasing resolution and complexity over time. Thus, the quest for faster, more efficient, and more comprehensive simulation engines is ongoing. In this session, we will discuss emerging simulation technology covering advances in programming paradigms and languages, new formulation and methods, gridding and discretization, linear and nonlinear solvers, parallel computing and HPC related advances.
Problems with Scales – Time and Space
Chairpersons: Hamdi Tchelepi, Michael King, William Kasischke
Reservoir simulation data involves a multitude of scales and resolution. Core measurement are in the order of inches, log measurement are in the order of feet, well tests measures distances in the order of tens to hundreds of feet, current seismic resolution is of the order of tens of feet. These data are typically integrated into the reservoir model through the geological modeling step. Today, reservoir models are frequently in the sub-million cell range. They use grid cell sizes which are in the order of a hundred feet by a hundred feet. Number of layers varies from tens of layers to a hundred layers. Thus, a homogenization step known as upscaling is frequently done to coarsen the finer geological realizations into the final reservoir simulation models. In this upscaling step, fine details are discarded such that field-scale simulation studies can be carried out expeditiously. Recent advances in reservoir simulation method such as multi-scale method holds some promise in addressing this issue. In this session, we will look at the recent advances on the issue of scales in reservoir simulation.
Managing Uncertainty in the Future
Chairpersons: Michael King, Akhil Datta-Gupta, Kurt Thomas
You have finally completed your history matching, and run prediction cases. How accurate are the predictions? There was considerable uncertainty in the prior geologic models. The production data was of variable quality. If you could quantify the uncertainty in the prior models and production data, you could do a better job of judging the uncertainties in your history matched models and in your forecasts. The ideal assisted history matching tool would aid you in dealing with the data and model parameter uncertainty, help you identify which data was critical to improving the match, and guide you in developing an appropriate range of possible outcomes in your prediction runs. This session will address gaps in our ability to manage uncertainty from the start of a simulation project through to the final prediction runs.
Enhanced Reservoir Simulations
Chairpersons: Halilu Uba, Stephen Lyons
This session will examine the current and future challenges of modeling Fractured Reservoirs, Geomechanics, and Complex Wells. Although fractures can play a major role in hydrocarbon recovery, the complexity of the dual media approach to modeling is constantly debated among practitioners. Coupled with the problems of acquisition and use of both static and dynamic data to model flow in fractured reservoirs, questions arise as to how representative these models are and how reliable are their predictions. The role that geomechanics plays in stress-sensitive reservoirs, hydraulic fractures, and natural fracture properties during production can be significant and adds to the complication of modeling. Recognizing the difficulty in modeling and the uncertainty in reservoir description, complex multi-lateral and smart wells are employed to provide operational flexibility to minimize risks in reservoir management. Modeling these complex wells remains a challenge in full field reservoir simulation.
Solving Unconventional Problems with Simulation I & II
Chairpersons: Christopher Clarkson, Shige Miyazaki, Birol Demiral, William Kasischke
With the rapid development of unconventional resources in recent years, reservoir simulation technology is facing new challenges to provide key information used for long-term development decisions. Further, growing interest in geo-sequestration of green-house gases has necessitated new applications of simulation. The two sessions will explore novel concepts of reservoir simulation for not only the recovery of unconventional gas resources (tight gas, shale gas, coalbed methane and gas hydrate) and heavy oil but also the subsurface disposal of green-house gases. Delegates will discuss simulation model formulations to deal with unique physics and flow mechanism within unconventional gas reservoirs and devise more suitable simulation techniques to improve recovery. We will also investigate thermal simulation models applied to heavy oil reservoirs and long-term (>1000 years) simulation models applied to geo-sequestration. Recent advancement and future direction of special gridding technology, coupled geomechanical flow simulation and hydraulic fracture networks will be discussed.
Integrated Sub-Surface and Surface Network Modelling
Chairpersons: Larry Fung, Stan Cullick
Historically, the simulation of the surface and the subsurface have been performed separately. The analyses might even be the domain of different departments in a major oil company, as each component involves complex numerical simulation. Increasingly however, assets are being developed as multi-reservoirs connected through complex gathering systems with multiple flow systems for production, water disposal/injection, and gas handling/injection. The modeling of gas and LNG deliverability is one such example. Planning and operating these assets require coupled surface and subsurface simulation. There has long been the quest for integrating the surface network simulator with the reservoir simulator to model a fully coupled complete system. Advances in the use of intelligent well technology and complex multi-lateral wells is another important aspect for a coupled system. In this session, we will discuss the state-of-the-art and the future technology for coupled simulation.
Impact of Future Simulation Technology on Recovery
Chairpersons: Stan Cullick, Stephen Lyons
Reservoir simulation focus is on oil and gas recovery prediction in order to make better decisions. With continuing volatility of oil prices and costs, evaluating the best decisions for optimizing recovery from mature and brown field assets will require simulators that have a lot of flexibility and scalability to enable engineers to evaluate many scenarios. The simulators will cover a range of physical processes for recovery, e.g. enhanced recovery through chemical, biological, thermal, electric, and other means. This session will focus on future techniques to optimize recovery from mature assets and the enabling simulation technology.
