A Procedure to Integrate Well Test Data, Reservoir Performance History and 4-D Seismic Information into a Reservoir Description

Abstract

This paper deals with the problem of estimating the distributions of permeability and porosity in heterogeneous and multiphase petroleum reservoirs by matching the dynamic behavior. The dynamic data is in the form of field measurements from well testing, production history, interpreted 4-D seismic information, and other data such as correlations between permeability and porosity, geostatistics in the form of a variogram model and the inference of large scale geological structure. The issue was posed as an inverse problem and solved by using nonlinear parameter estimation. The procedure developed here is capable of processing all the information simultaneously and this results in a fast and efficient method. The procedure is also able to determine the uncertainty associated with the estimated permeability and porosity fields. Examples of different parameter types that may be estimated by this approach include: (a) individual block permeabilities and porosities; (b) geological objects such as channels and faults; (c) pilot points that form the basis of a kriged distribution; and (d) seismic attenuation values from 3-D seismic images. An important conclusion of this work is that the value of each piece of information does not reside in its isolated use but in the value it adds to integrated analysis of the complete set of information. Thus data that traditionally was considered to be of low information content for reservoir characterization becomes useful and enhances the value of the data set as a whole.

Technique to Integrate Production and Static Data in a Self-Consistent Way

“…This algorithm is based on the Gauss-Newton algorithm. Details concerning the implementation were reported in previous work 1,2,3 . d) Interfaces for the above modules.…”

“…In previous work 1,2,3 it has been demonstrated that it is possible to compute the derivatives of the primary variables of an implicit numerical simulator with respect to any kind of parameter by using Eqn. 1.…”

“…The work presented in this paper is an extension of previous work in the area of inversion using object-modeling techniques combined with reservoir simulation 1,2,3 .…”

Advanced Integrated Workflows for Incorporating Both Production and 4D Seismic-Related Data into Reservoir Models

“…As soon as 4D seismic is also considered, advanced workflows must be designed to incorporate both production and seismic data in a consistent way. The improvements in the quantitative processing of 4D seismic motivated many works about this topic (Landa and Horne, 1997;Pianelo et al, 2000;Gosselin et al, 2001;Waggoner et al, 2002;Stephen and McBeth, 2006;Roggero et al, 2007;. However, there is still no definite matching methodology and several issues remain to be addressed.…”

Mapping of Reservoir Properties and Facies Through Integration of Static and Dynamic Data

“…Huang et al (1997) used amplitude difference or other seismic attributes difference while Arenas et al (2001) used velocity difference. Landa and Horne (1997) assumed that saturation changes could be obtained directly from time-lapse surveys.…”