Novel Methods for Simulating Reservoirs with Tilted Fluid Contacts

Abstract

This paper introduces two new approaches for modeling reservoirs with tilted fluid contacts. We first introduce a method based on local capillary pressure adjustments, which uses adjustments of the capillary pressure near the oil-water contact to ensure that the contact surface does not move during production. The second approach uses hydrodynamic aquifer flow to support the oil-water tilt. A non-linear inverse problem is solved to determine the parameters that control the aquifer flow. Both approaches are implemented in a parallel reservoir simulator and applied to a synthetic reservoir case.