Petroleum Science >2017, Issue 2: 286-301 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12182-017-0162-5
Naturally fractured hydrocarbon reservoir simulation by elastic fracture modeling Open Access
文章信息
作者:Mehrdad Soleimani
作者单位:
Faculty of Mining, Petroleum and Geophysics, Shahrood University of Technology, Shahrood, Iran
投稿时间:2016-08-31
引用方式:Soleimani, M. Pet. Sci. (2017) 14: 286. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12182-017-0162-5
文章摘要
Accurate fluid flow simulation in geologically complex reservoirs is of particular importance in construction of reservoir simulators. General approaches in naturally fractured reservoir simulation involve use of unstructured grids or a structured grid coupled with locally unstructured grids and discrete fracture models. These methods suffer from drawbacks such as lack of flexibility and of ease of updating. In this study, I combined fracture modeling by elastic gridding which improves flexibility, especially in complex reservoirs. The proposed model revises conventional modeling fractures by hard rigid planes that do not change through production. This is a dubious assumption, especially in reservoirs with a high production rate in the beginning. The proposed elastic fracture modeling considers changes in fracture properties, shape and aperture through the simulation. This strategy is only reliable for naturally fractured reservoirs with high fracture permeability and less permeable matrix and parallel fractures with less cross-connections. Comparison of elastic fracture modeling results with conventional modeling showed that these assumptions will cause production pressure to enlarge fracture apertures and change fracture shapes, which consequently results in lower production compared with what was previously assumed. It is concluded that an elastic gridded model could better simulate reservoir performance.
关键词
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Reservoir performance, Discrete fracture model, Naturally fractured reservoir, History matching Elastic gridding