Understanding fluid flow and transport within clay rock is essential for predicting caprock integrity in underground gas storage or as host rock in deep radioactive waste storage. The connectivity and topology of the nanopore space, which drive the transfer mechanisms of these materials, are still poorly known and direct 3D imaging is particularly challenging. In this work, we investigate and compare different stochastic reconstruction approaches based on two-point and multiple-point statistics (MPS) methods and using information from 2D training images for 3D volume rendering at submicron scale. A particular emphasis is given to the maximal critical distance of sampling between two consecutive 2D images which is necessary to obtain a coherent 3D reconstruction of the nanopore structure. We assess how these realizations honour various crucial transport properties of material, namely permeability, effective diffusion and longitudinal dispersion. Morphological features such as pore volume, specific surface, Euler characteristic and tortuosity are used to analyze the results. The methods are employed on a synthetic clay of nanometric porosity for which FIB-SEM images are available. Results indicate that the 3DA-MPS and weighted-3DA-MPS approaches are the most suited for preserving pore space features and transport properties, the choice depending on the level of conditioning data available.
Understanding subsurface hydrocarbon migration is a crucial task for petroleum geoscientists. Hydrocarbons are released from deeply buried and heated source rocks, such as shales with a high organic content. They then migrate upwards through the overlying lithologies. Some hydrocarbon becomes trapped in suitable geological structures that, over a geological timescale, produce viable hydrocarbon reservoirs. This work investigates how intelligent agent models can mimic these complex natural subsurface processes and account for geological uncertainty. Physics-based approaches are commonly used in petroleum system modelling and flow simulation software to identify migration pathways from source rocks to traps. However, the problem with these simulations is that they are computationally demanding, making them infeasible for extensive uncertainty quantification. In this work, we present a novel dynamic screening tool for secondary hydrocarbon migration that relies on agent-based modelling. It is fast and is therefore suitable for uncertainty quantification, before using petroleum system modelling software for a more accurate evaluation of migration scenarios. We first illustrate how interacting but independent agents can mimic the movement of hydrocarbon molecules using a few simple rules by focusing on the main drivers of migration: buoyancy and capillary forces. Then, using a synthetic case study, we validate the usefulness of the agent modelling approach to quantify the impact of geological parameter uncertainty (e.g., fault transmissibility, source rock location, expulsion rate) on potential hydrocarbon accumulations and migrations pathways, an essential task to enable quick de-risking of a likely prospect.
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