Application of the Fast Marching Method in Heterogeneous Dual Porosity Reservoirs
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AbstractFor unconventional reservoirs, the role of accurate reservoir characterization is becoming increasingly important for optimization of field development. The Fast Marching Method (FMM) has provided a novel approach for rapid flow simulation for unconventional fields, as it reduces the depletion in a 3D heterogeneous reservoir model to that of an equivalent 1D model. In this paper, a practical approach to handle highly heterogeneous matrix properties for dual porosity FMM simulation is established. Various averaging methods for the heterogeneous matrix properties are examined through integrated case studies.Current implementation of FMM simulation can directly account for fracture heterogeneity but requires averaging of the matrix property variations. In this study, we examine the error in the fluid production rate between the 3D heterogeneous reservoir model and the equivalent 1D averaged reservoir model. For some amount of matrix heterogeneity given by the standard deviation of the natural logarithm of permeability, 100 different realizations are created with a commercial geostatistical simulator. This paper evaluates the averaging approach in terms of the mean error and the distribution of errors for each value of the standard deviation.The error shows significant dependence on averaging methods especially for the reservoirs with high heterogeneity. Geometric based averaging shows the smallest error from the viewpoint of the mean error for high heterogeneity. Also, its distribution of the errors is narrowest, which indicates that the geometric based averaging method demonstrates the most stable performance. In contrast, the harmonic based averaging method represents the biggest error in terms of the mean value and has the least stable error from the viewpoint of its distribution.The work establishes an approach to consider the matrix heterogeneity in unconventional reservoirs with FMM. Through the integrated case studies, the most appropriate method for the different heterogeneities is evaluated. This study makes a significant contribution on the development of Fast Marching based reservoir characterization for more robust application for unconventional reservoirs.
