Fractured Reservoir Modelling: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly скачать в хорошем качестве

Fractured Reservoir Modelling: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Since the early years of the Oil and Gas industry, geologists have used outcropping rocks to derive and validate conceptual analogue models for the subsurface. Typically, these outcrop-derived lessons are limited to static geological descriptions of a reservoir, as their value for answering flow-related questions is considered to be limited. Since outcrops are typically dry rocks at exhumed surface stress conditions, they are never a direct analogue for flow and stress conditions in the subsurface. Instead of trying to use outcrops as direct analogues for specific reservoirs, this lecture investigates the use of outcrops in combination with numerical modelling techniques for deriving general relations between outcrop geometries, geomechanics and fluid flow. These general relations provide means for improving the geological representativeness of reservoir flow models. This approach is used to optimize well planning and the development strategy for production from unconventionals in Argentina, where the potential contribution of natural fractures to flow in the Vaca Muerta Fm. is modelled. The flow analysis focuses on the role of fracture aperture, a notoriously difficult parameter to determine. Using fracture patterns digitized from outcrops as input for stress- and flow modelling, fracture and reservoir permeability are quantified as a function of network geometry and reservoir stress conditions. Kevin Bisdom is a research geomechanicist at Shell Global Solutions in Amsterdam, working in the CO2 storage research team. He holds an MSc degree in Reservoir Geology and a PhD (with honors) in Applied Geology, both from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. His research interests include numerical modelling of stress and flow through fractured media and integrating outcrop studies with subsurface models.