Building numerical reservoir simulation model with a view to model actual case requires enormous amount of data and information. Such modeling and simulation processes normally require lengthy time and different sets of field data and experimental tests that are usually very expensive. In addition, the availability, quality and accessibility of all necessary data are very limited, especially for the green field. The degree of complexities of such modelling increases significantly especially in the case of heterogeneous nature typically inherited in unconventional reservoirs. In this perspective, this study focuses on exploring the possibility of simplifying the numerical simulation process without compromising the accuracy of results for heterogeneous unconventional tight gas reservoir with an emphasis on optimisation of multi-stage hydraulic fractured parameters, such as fracture half-length and number of fractures towards maximization the net present value (NPV). The key objectives of this study are to mitigate the effect of reservoir heterogeneity through building an equivalent simplified homogeneous reservoir simulation model for forecasting the production performance of fractured horizontal well in a heterogeneous carbonate tight gas reservoir and optimize the fracture parameters such as number of fractures and fracture half-length based on maximizing the NPV. The homogeneous model, which is equivalent to a heterogeneous reservoir model was built based on the statistical analysis of the rock properties of heterogeneous model. The simulation results obtained were analysed for a number of cases covering a range of fracture number (from 1 to 80), fracture half-length (from 500 to 2000 ft). The result demonstrated that the simplified equivalent homogeneous model has the ability to provide a good estimate for production forecasting, and determine the optimum number of fractures and fracture half-length within a high accuracy. The model is simple, yet provides good approximation with high accuracy, but save huge computation time.
Hydraulic fracturing is considered to be a vital cornerstone in decision making of unconventional reservoirs. With an increasing level of development of unconventional reservoirs, many questions have arisen regarding enhancing production performance of tight carbonate reservoirs, especially the evaluation of the potential for adapting multistage hydraulic fracturing technology in tight carbonate reservoirs to attain an economic revenue. In this paper we present a feasibility study of multistage fractured horizontal well in typical tight carbonate reservoirs covering different values of permeability. We show that NPV is the suitable objective function for deciding on the optimum number of fractures and fracture half-length. Multistage fractured horizontal well has been found to be a feasible technique to produce from tight carbonate reservoirs with permeability in the range of 0.01-0.05 mD, while it is not economic reservoirs with permeability of around 0.001 mD. In addition, our study suggests that for feasibility study purposes simplified homogeneous reservoir models can be used instead of a heterogeneous one without compromising the quality of conclusions. This will save time, money and efforts in evaluating production performance of various options like, number, length and other fracture properties of multistage fractured horizontal wells.
Gas-lift technique plays an important role in sustaining oil production, especially from a mature field when the reservoirs’ natural energy becomes insufficient. However, optimally allocation of the gas injection rate in a large field through its gas-lift network system towards maximization of oil production rate is a challenging task. The conventional gas-lift optimization problems may become inefficient and incapable of modelling the gas-lift optimization in a large network system with problems associated with multi-objective, multi-constrained, and limited gas injection rate. The key objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of utilizing the Genetic Algorithm (GA) technique to optimize the allocation of the continuous gas-lift injection rate in a network system of a Middle Eastern oil field with 43 gas-lift injected wells through numerical modelling and simulation studies. Reservoir pressure and water cut sensitivity studies are performed to investigate the potential impacts of these parameters on well production performance and production life cycle of the field. Sample economics analysis are exercised to broaden the understanding of potential benefit of the implementation gas lift techniques in the field from both technical and economic viewpoint. In addition, while application of GA is not a new idea, this paper elaborates the GA based optimization techniques for improving the oil production rate by implementing gas lift in a large Middle Eastern oil field. The optimization model is presented step by step, so it can easily be followed, and be used as a guide, especially by frontline production engineers involved in designing and development of gas-lift system towards optimally allocation of gas injection rate to individual well in a network system for a field with limited gas injection rate.
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