Use of Streamline Simulation (3DSL) in Reservoir Studies at UNICAMP

(Reservoir simulation Team - UNISIM)

3DSL simulator has been successfully used in several applications in reservoir studies at Department of Petroleum Engineering - UNICAMP.

Principal applications are:

• Upscaling
• Risk Analysis
• History Matching

The simulator 3DSL has been used for evaluation e validation of new upscaling techniques. Upscaling is really justifiable for very fine-scale reservoir models, usually with more than one million blocks or when many runs are necessary and the computational performance is very important. Due to the size of such fine-scale models, problems the problem is that flux simulation, in order to validate a given upscaling technique, is very difficult and sometimes impossible, through traditional simulators.

Figure 1 shows a reservoir with 240x120x96 cells and Figure 2 shows results of 3DSL simulation for validation of a developed upscaling technique (Maschio, 2003).

(a)
 

Figure 1 - (a) 3D model, (b) layers samples
 

Figure 2 - Evaluation of upscaling techniques using 3DSL
 

In the area of risk and uncertainties analysis, streamline reservoir simulation offers good potential, speeding up optimization processes. A high level of geologic uncertainties characterizes the appraisal field and initial field development, such as in these stages, a fast simulation technique can be used. Even with less accuracy in some cases, streamline can be very useful. Figure 3 shows a comparative result of a risk curve obtained with 3DSL and a finite difference simulator (Ligero, 2003). Results are very similar, however, run times using 3DSL were significantly lower.

Figure 3 - Examples of risk curves
 

3DSL is being used in conjunction with an assisted history matching program developed at Unicamp, as a support tool in the process.