TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Reservoir Simulation
Simulation is about building a mathematical model of the reservoir and then
using it to predict, for the purpose of making decisions. That may be restating the
obvious, but there are a few points that bear a little re-emphasis. First, it is only a
model. Second, if the model does not predict adequately, it does not serve its purpose. There is a growing tendency in some quarters to use very simple models
mainly because they are faster. As my colleague Ed May recently put it, I know
everyone pushes for faster, faster, but doing it right has definite advantages.
Following my recent move into well testing, I have been rereading the late
Laurie Dakes The Practice of Reservoir Engineering. Dake often is regarded as
hostile to simulation, but what he really was about was understanding your
assumptions, and using the most appropriate model for the decision to be made.
At the 2011 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, many papers focused on
re-examining original basic assumptions. Correcting or removing those assumptions (improving the model) often led not only to better predictions, but to faster
simulation. For example: Is the most recent solution of the well model the best
starting point for the next solution? As the industry develops more-complex
reservoirs (e.g., shales, naturally fractured, and heavy oil), we are called on to
apply our simulation tools to new environments, and we must check constantly
that the assumptions that are implicit in those tools are still valid. For example:
Do assumptions for light-oil flow in homogeneous sandstone also apply to gas
flow in shale?
The need to check assumptions applies as much to the data as to the tools. In
simulation support, we often see data sets in which hundreds of warning messages about bad data are ignored or even suppressed, and the complaint is about the
final failure to converge. Is that discontinuity in the pressure/volume/temperature
data really a property of the fluid, or just a measurement artifact?
A good way to consistently challenge your assumptions is to read the best of the
JPT
best technical articles: JPT is here for you!

Martin Crick, SPE, is a Principal

Reservoir Engineer with Schlumberger
and recently became Product Champion
for Interpretation in their Testing
Services business. Previously, he was
responsible for the design of the reservoir-engineering features in Petrel.
With more than 23 years in the industry, Crick has focused on reservoir
engineering, and especially simulation,
in support of field-development planning, initially with AEA Technology
on contact to the UK government on
a wide range of North Sea fields and
then with Texaco on Erskine, the first
high-pressure/high-temperature field on
production in the UK North Sea, and on
Karachaganak, the giant gas/condensate field in Kazakhstan. He holds a BS
degree with honours in physics from the
University of Bristol. Crick has served
on the SPE London Section Board and
serves on the JPT Editorial Committee.

Reservoir Simulation additional reading

available at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org
SPE 144401 Design and Examination of Requirements for a Rigorous
Shale-Gas-Reservoir Simulator Compared to Current Shale-Gas Simulators
by Juan Andrade, SPE, University of Oklahoma, et al.
SPE 140882 Multilateral Complex-Well Optimization by P.I. Crumpton,
Schlumberger, et al.
SPE 137507 Reservoir Characterization and Flow Simulation of a
Low-Permeability Gas Reservoir: An Integrated Approach for Modeling
Tommy Lakes Gas Field by H. Deng, University of Calgary, et al.
(See Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology, May 2011, page 32.)
SPE 141935 An Adaptive Newtons Method for Reservoir Simulation
by Pengbo Lu, ExxonMobil, et al.
SPE 142093 A New Method To Model Relative Permeability in
Compositional Simulators To Avoid Discontinuous Changes Caused
by Phase-Identification Problems by Chengwu Yuan, SPE, University
of Texas at Austin, et al.
78

JPT JULY 2011

RESERVOIR SIMULATION

Modeling, Simulation, and Optimal Control

of Oil Production Under Gas-Coning Conditions
Gas coning is the tendency of gas to
impel oil downward in an inverse-cone
contour toward the well perforations.
After gas reaches the well, gas production will dominate the flow stream and
oil production will decrease significantly. In this paper, the gas-coning process
in a gas/oil reservoir (completed with
a single horizontal well) is modeled,
simulated, and analyzed by applying
a nonlinear-control approach. The
model that describes the well/reservoir
interaction can be a boundary-control
problem of the porous media with
two boundary conditions: a Neumann
boundary condition describing no flow
at the outer boundary of the reservoir
and a nonlinear-boundary condition
describing the wells production rate.

Introduction
Optimizing the trade-off between oil
and gas production is important in
reservoir management. The use of secondary-recovery techniques (e.g., gas
lift and waterflood) and enhanced-oilrecovery techniques (e.g., surfactant
injection) has proved successful for
increasing oil production significantly.
These techniques are supported by the
use of smart-well technologies. A smart
well is one that is equipped with several
valves that can be regulated during production. Operating these valves can be
This article, written by Senior Technology
Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 143520, Modeling,
Simulation, and Optimal Control of
Oil Production Under Gas-Coning
Conditions, by Agus Hasan, SPE, and
Bjarne Foss, SPE, NTNU; and Svein
Ivar Sagatun, Bjrn Peter Tjstheim,
Atle Svandal, and Cato Hatland,
Statoil ASA, prepared for the 2011 SPE
Europec/EAGE Annual Conference and
Exhibition, Vienna, Austria, 2326 May.
The paper has not been peer reviewed.

Fig. 1Modeled gas/oil reservoir.

accomplished by use of optimal-control

theory, particularly when combined
with the adjoint method. Adjoint-based
optimization can be used to determine
optimal well placement and for history matching. Optimal-control theory
combined with data assimilation forms
a closed-loop reservoir management.
Although providing solutions in a
relatively short time and in an efficient
way, the adjoint method is difficult to
implement because one needs access to
the reservoir-simulator code to implement the algorithm. An alternative is
creating a mathematical model that
is simpler but can be used to explain
the same physical process. This model
is referred to as a proxy model and
serves as a representative of a complex
model that usually is contained in a
reservoir simulator. A proxy model
may be derived from a basic principle
of physics, such as mass conservation
or Darcys law. The proxy model is
simpler and easier to work with than
the high-fidelity model.
The model shown in Fig. 1 is a
reservoir that is penetrated with a horizontal well in the middle of a thin oil
rim and tends to experience gas coning. Typically, a well is produced at a
constant oil rate with a constant gas/oil

ratio in the subcritical phase (before gas

breakthrough). Gas coning at production wells may reduce oil production
dramatically because the mobility of
the gas is much higher than that of the
oil. Thus, inside the production well,
gas flow will be dominant over oil flow.
The sharp decline in the oil rate will be
followed by a sharp increase in the wellhead pressure. Because the oil price is
higher than the gas price, this condition
is not desirable. Also, the gas-handling
capacity often is a constraint. Therefore,
the incentive is to produce such wells
in their subcritical phase [i.e., before
the gas/oil contact (GOC) reaches the
horizontal-well perforation].
A control-theory approach, called
the Lyapunov method, is used here
to design an optimal-rate controller.
Optimal in this sense provides a high
oil recovery in the fastest time. This
method can be applied to a nonlineargas-coning model.
Reservoir Model
Fig. 1 shows oil and gas trapped by
overlying rock formations having zero
permeability, with the gas remaining
on the top of the reservoir. To produce
the oil, the reservoir is completed with a
single horizontal production well in the

For a limited time, the full-length paper is available free to SPE members at www.jptonline.org.
JPT JULY 2011

79

Fig. 2Smart horizontal well, consisting of three segments, each having

a downhole control valve.

middle of the reservoir. The horizontal

part of the well in Fig. 1 is perforated
between the heel and the toe to allow
inflow of the reservoir fluid. For the oil
to flow inside the horizontal well, the
pressure at the heel must be lower than
the pressure at the toe. Therefore, the
pressure drawdown between the reservoir and the heel is greater than the pressure drawdown between the reservoir
and the toe. Hence, the GOC at the heel
will be lower than toward the toe, and
the first gas breakthrough will occur at
the heel. As a result, the analysis may be
reduced to a problem that involves only
the reservoir dynamics at the heel of the
well. Equations used for this model are
detailed in the full-length paper.

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Well Model
The well is a type of smart well and
is modeled as in Fig. 2. The downhole control valves enable splitting the
well into several segments that can be
controlled individually. The incentive
is to produce as much oil as possible
during the subcritical phase (i.e., before
the GOC reaches the horizontal-well
perforations). Thus, the question of
how to produce maximum oil in the
fastest manner may be translated into a
question of how to construct the control input such that the oil thickness
approaches zero asymptotically or exponentially. The controller is designed
such that it stabilizes the system either
asympotically or exponentially to the
origin as time increases. An exponentially stable property is useful when
depletion using the control in Eq. 1.8 of
the full-length paper is combined with
more-advanced production strategies
involving injection. Moreover, it is necessary to have a stability property of all
the components of a larger automation
system comprising automatic control of
the reservoir, wells, flowlines, and production system. Further, the controller
will include a parameter that can be
tuned to maximize a suitable measure
such as oil recovery before gas breakthrough. Such controllers may be determined by use of the Lyapunov method.
Numerical Example
The reservoir has a rectangular shape
and consists of gas, oil, and water. The
oil layer is in the middle of the reservoir
and has a thickness of 25 m. The reservoir measures 20401001225 m
and was divided into 1106726
gridblocks. Porosity is 0.25 and was
assumed homogeneous in all parts of
the reservoir. The permeability in the oil
and the gas layers is 300 and 1000 md,
respectively, while it is 0.0001 md in
the water layer. Permeability in the
water layer is assumed very low to avoid
the effects of water coning, which is not
the topic of interest. The initial pressure

was set at 140 bara at the water/oil contact. The capillary pressure at the GOC
and at the water/oil contact is ignored.
To capture the dynamics of the gas
coning, the grid around the well was
refined by use of geometric-progression
rules. The pressure drop along the
horizontal well was calculated by use
of Eq. 1.9 in the full-length paper. The
simulation runs for 120 days. In the
simulation, production is controlled by
the reservoir-fluid-volume target.
The proposed control rate is calculated by use of Eq. 1.16 in the full-length
paper. The control gain was found with
a simple search-optimization method.
The optimal control rate then was
compared with six constant control
rates ranging from the minimum to the
maximum allowable rate. The minimum and maximum allowable rates
represent operational limitations. For
this simulation, the minimum allowable limit was set at 400 std m3/d and
the maximum was set at 2000 std m3/d.
The simulation used four constraints.
The first constraint was production
time, where production stopped when
the well began to produce gas (gas
breakthrough). The second, third, and
fourth constraints were related to the
total gas produced, where the gas-processing capacity often has a certain limit.
Conclusions
This work suggests developing an
optimal rate controller for nonlinear
partial-differential equations associated
with the gas-coning flow in the reservoir by use of the Lyapunov method.
The rate controller is written explicitly
and requires measurement only at the
boundary of the reservoir. The controllers use a control gain that can be
used as a tuning parameter in an optimal-control framework. For different
production constraints, the simulation
applying a fine-gridded model showed
that the proposed rate controller yielded a better result of total oil production
compared with constant rates, especially in the subcritical phase.
The optimal control rate can be used
as a feedback controller in a closed-loop
system. The next challenge may be how
to estimate the height of the oil column
at the heel, which is needed to calculate the control rate. Because seismic
data can be expensive to acquire, the
height must be estimated by combining
estimation theory (filter method) and
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reservoir simulation.

JPT JULY 2011

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RESERVOIR SIMULATION

Integration of 3D Seismics and Reservoir Simulation

for Remaining-Oil Exploitation in a Heavy-Oil Field:
SAGD Case Study
Soil

Integrated research on steam-assisted

gravity-drainage (SAGD) production
was carried out for an oil field in northeastern China by use of full-azimuth 3D
seismics (cell size 6.256.25 m with a
coverage area of 14 km2) and reservoir simulation on a well group [40
vertical wells and five horizontal wells
in an area of 600375 m (Fig. 1)].
The research indicated that the configuration of steam chambers caused
by steam injection could be delineated
from the high-resolution 3D-seismics
results, and that this is more accurate
than the reservoir-simulation model
alone in the local-variation description
of the chambers.

Introduction
It has been observed in laboratories that
a large seismic-velocity change can occur
in rocks containing heavy oil when the
oil is replaced by steam. The Duri heavyoil field in Indonesia uses steam injection, and time-lapse seismics is used to
monitor production. However, the effectiveness and reliability of the method
depend on the quality and repeatability
of the surveys. The technique of combining 3D-seismic exploration for the
remaining oil with historical production
data (called 3.5D seismics) avoids the
nonrepeatability problem commonly
associated with time-lapse seismic. This
This article, written by Senior Technology
Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights
of paper SPE 134092, Integration of
3D Seismics and Reservoir Simulation for
Remaining-Oil Exploitation in a HeavyOil Field: A Case Study, by Yun Ling,
BGP CNPC; Xuri Huang, SPE, SunRise
PetroSolutions Tech; and Xiangyu Guo
and Yintao Cai, BGP CNPC, prepared
for the 2010 SPE Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition, Florence,
Italy, 1922 September. The paper has
not been peer reviewed.

0.75
0.6
0.45
0.3
0.15
0

Fig. 1Ng reservoir simulation well group. (Soil=oil saturation)

technique was applied to the Ng reservoir in northeastern China.

Geological and Seismic
Background
The main producing reservoir, Ng, is
on a monoclinal structure covering
1.95 km2. Its maximum thickness is
145 m and is found at a depth between
540 and 800 m. The reservoir porosity
is 36%, permeability is 5.5 darcies, and
the reservoir has edge, top, and bottom
water. Production started in 1997, and
10 to 12 cycles of steam stimulation have
been implemented in a well interval of
70 m. Enhanced oil recovery (EOR)
reached 20 to 25%. Starting in 2005,
five SAGD well pairs were used, and
they are still in production. The SAGD
process raised the EOR by 5 to 10%. A
high-density 3D-seismic survey (with
a wide azimuth and an aspect ratio of
0.874) was acquired in February 2009.
The processing procedure that was used
enhances the vertical resolution and preserves reservoir information.
Feasibility Study
Laboratory tests on cores exhibited a
strong response to temperature chang-

es, resulting in a significant seismicvelocity decrease through the reservoir

zone. Laboratory tests were on P-wavevelocity variation vs. reservoir-temperature changes under various oil-saturation conditions. For 100% oil saturation,
when the temperature increases from 20
to 200C, the P-wave velocity decreased
by 60%. When the oil saturation was
50%, the P-wave velocity decreased by
40% for the same temperature increase.
Therefore, the P-wave velocity is highly
dependent on the reservoir temperature,
making the use of time-lapse seismics
to monitor the thermal evolution of the
steam over time possible. A high-density
3D-seismic survey acquired in February
2009 was the first measurmemt, and the
second measurement was planned for
early 2011.
Seismic Processing
Detailed seismic interpretation at the
reservoir level included picking the
chronostratigraphic-sequence boundaries at both the top and the base of the
reservoir interval, studying various seismic attributes, and performing seismicfacies analysis. The reservoir model
was built by integrating core, well-log,

For a limited time, the full-length paper is available free to SPE members at www.jptonline.org.
82

JPT JULY 2011

Soil

Steam
chambers

Remaining oil

Steam chamber

Soil

Fig. 2Amplitude slice of the 3D-seismic data with

pink and blue showing the weak amplitude and red
corresponding to strong amplitude. The oval outlines
the oil-bearing area of the Ng reservoir, and the box
outlines the location of the well group.

and seismic information. The seismic

layer and facies information was used
as constraints for building the reservoir
model. Some of the seismic attributes
were studied for the 3D-data volume.
Fig. 2 shows the amplitude difference.
The weak amplitude in seismic reflection is caused by the steam injection,
which indicates that the seismic amplitude reflects the steamflooding effect
and the local amplitude variation may
indicate the distribution of the steam
chambers and the remaining oil.
From the geological interpretation,
some overall understanding of the steam
chambers could be reached and the local
amplitude variation could be observed.
However, differentiating the influence of
geological sedimentation or small-sized
fractures from that of the steam chamber
is difficult, which in turn makes further
prediction of the distribution of the
remaining oil difficult.
Integrated Interpretation
Two steamflooding methods were
used: cyclic-steam stimulation with
vertical wells in the early stage, and
later SAGD with vertical wells as injectors and a horizontal well as the producer. Production was divided further
into four stages. From May 1997 to
November 2000, only the vertical wells
in the northern part were used in the
cyclic-steam stimulation. From January
2001 to October 2003, all the vertical
wells in the research group were put
into cyclic-steam stimulation. From
November 2003 to June 2006, both the
vertical wells and the horizontal wells
underwent the cyclic-steam stimulation; and from August 2006 forward,
SAGD production was used.

JPT JULY 2011

Fig. 3Section of reservoir-simulation result: (a) L1

and (b) L2 sections.

The complicated injection pattern

resulted in very complicated steam
chambers. At the bottom of the simulation model, the steam chambers correspond well with the injection wells.
Inside the reservoir, the steam chambers have complicated connectivity and
configurations. In the top of the reservoir, steam chambers cover only a very
small area. Fig. 3 is a cross section of
the reservoir-simulation model. The
complexity of the steam chambers in
the vertical direction is shown along
with the distribution of remaining oil.
The reservoir-simulation model was
obtained by history matching production
data with the initial geologic model. The
reservoir-simulation-technique accuracy
was affected by the density, porosity,
and permeability fields that were applied
in the heat-conduction equation. It is
hoped that the integrated interpretation
of the high-precision 3D seismics and
reservoir simulation will enhance the
ability to predict remaining oil.
The integrated display of the reservoir simulation and the seismic section showed that, at the top of the
steam chambers, the waveform became
thinner (frequency increase) and the
reflection time was shorter. In those
parts of the reservoir without steam
influence, the waveform was relatively larger (frequency decrease) and
reflection time was longer. These phenomena are caused by the steam and
heavy-oil replacement driven by steam
injection, so that the overlying formation appeared to move upward and
the reflection coefficient varied. Inside
the steam chambers, an increase in
frequency and a decrease in reflection
time were noted, while outside the

steam chambers, frequency decreased

and reflection time increased.
If using only the seismic data, certain
layers might be interpreted as small
faults or geological-sedimentation variation. But with the integrated interpretation, it could be concluded that these
areas actually are the reflection of the
steam chambers, which could confirm
the spatial distribution of the remaining
oil, enabling remaining-oil exploration.
Remaining Oil
Certain differences existed in both the
spatial location and the shape of the
steam chambers when the reservoirsimulation slice and the seismic attributes were considered, indicating a difference between the reservoir-simulation model and seismic measurements.
The accuracy of a reservoir simulation
is influenced by the accuracy of the
density, porosity, and permeability data,
while the seismic attributes are the
result of the actual seismic wavefields.
Therefore, local variation in the seismic
attributes is more realistic. Seismic attributes were more accurate than the reservoir simulation in describing the local
variation. The integrated interpretation
of reservoir simulation and seismic data
could describe the shape of the steam
chambers better, enabling predicting
the location of remaining oil.
As in SAGD, light fluid (steam) tries
to penetrate a heavier fluid (heavy
oil/bitumen) above it, and the steam
chamber grows upward and outward
simultaneously. The remaining-oil
zones were associated with relatively
strong amplitudes on seismic data and
the high-oil-saturation area on the resJPT
ervoir-simulation result.

83

RESERVOIR SIMULATION

Discrete-Fracture and Dual-Permeability Models

for Multiphase Flow in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs
Two discrete-fracture models (DFMs)
based on different numerical techniques have been developed for
studying the behavior of naturally
fractured reservoirs (NFRs). One
model uses unstructured gridding with
local refinement near fractures, while
in the second model, fractures are
embedded in a structured matrix grid.
Both models capture the complexity
of a typical fractured reservoir better
than conventional dual-permeability models.

Introduction
Regarding flow behavior, NFRs can be
considered as comprising two media
(rock matrix and fractures) with very
different properties. Generally, the
rock matrix provides primary storage of hydrocarbons while fractures
serve as highly conductive flow
paths. Fracture apertures are very
small compared to matrix dimensions
(often 0.1 mm or less in petroleum
reservoirs); hence, fractures hold very
little fluid, yet the permeability can be
very high (e.g., hundreds of darcies).
The large contrast between matrix
and fracture permeability, coupled
with small fracture volumes, makes
numerical simulation of fluid flow in
NFRs challenging.
This article, written by Senior Technology
Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights
of paper SPE 142295, Comparison of
Discrete-Fracture and Dual-Permeability
Models for Multiphase Flow in Naturally
Fractured Reservoirs, by Ali Moinfar,
SPE, University of Texas at Austin, and
Wayne Narr, SPE, Mun-Hong Hui,
SPE, Bradley Mallison, SPE, and Seong
H. Lee, SPE, Chevron Energy Technology
Company, prepared for the 2011 SPE
Reservoir Simulation Symposium, The
Woodlands, Texas, 2123 February. The
paper has not been peer reviewed.

A dual-porosity model presumes that

flow occurs in fractures, and that the
rock matrix acts only as fluid storage.
Interconnected fractures provide the
flow path to injection and production wells. In this model, matrix and
fracture domains are linked through
an exchange term that connects each
fracture cell to its corresponding matrix
cell in a gridblock.
The dual-porosity model is a simplistic representation of a geologically complex reservoir. Consequently,
considerable effort has been devoted to make the dual-porosity model
more realistic. DFMs were developed
to reduce the number of nonphysical abstractions inherent in dualcontinuum models. Most DFMs rely
on unstructured grids to represent a
fracture network explicitly. Compared
with dual-porosity models, DFMs
can simulate realistic fracture-system
geometry; hence, they account explicitly for the effect of individual fractures
on fluid flow. DFMs are not overly
constrained by grid-defined fracturegeometry constraints; hence, the fracture model is adaptable and updatable.
Specification of the exchange between
matrix and fracture is more straightforward because it depends directly
on fracture geometry. A disadvantage, however, is that DFMs typically
lead to discrete systems of equations
that have a complex structure and
that are difficult to solve numerically.
However, advances in numerical-solution methods have helped to minimize
this disadvantage.
The accuracy of two recently developed DFMs was studied. Sensitivity of
DFMs to background-grid orientation
was tested. Comparisons were made of
the two new modeling methods with
dual-permeability modeling in sparsely
fractured reservoirs and in highly and
more variably fractured systems.

New DFMs
The unstructured DFM (UDFM) is
based on unstructured gridding with
local refinement near the fractures. The
embedded DFM (EDFM) incorporates
fractures directly into a conventional,
structured grid. Both modeling methods allow large-scale bedding-normal
fractures to be included into sector
and full-field models. In both techniques, fractures are approximated by
planar rectangles that are orthogonal to
the bedding plane, but have arbitrary
orientation in the horizontal plane.
This approximation is justified because
in most NFRs, fractures form a very
high angle with respect to the bedding
plane. The techniques can be applied to
fractures with an arbitrary orientation
in 3D; however, for simplicity of geometric design, they are implemented
only for vertical fractures.
The UDFM uses a discretization approach on unstructured gridding with a so-called lower-dimensional approach to DFM gridding in
which the rock matrix is modeled by
3D-polyhedral cells and the fracture
network is represented by a subset of
the 2D interfaces separating the grid
cells. The material balance for each
control volume requires knowledge of
neighboring control volumes (a connectivity list) and of the transmissibility associated with each connection to
compute the fluid exchange between
neighboring control volumes. A twopoint-flux approximation is applied in
the transmissibility calculations.
Grid generation is a critical step for
all DFMs that rely on unstructured
gridding. Available general-purpose
grid-generation tools are not well
suited for gridding fracture networks,
and new grid-generation algorithms
for simulating fluid flow in NFRs have
been developed. Because there is inherent uncertainty in the precise position

For a limited time, the full-length paper is available free to SPE members at www.jptonline.org.
84

JPT JULY 2011

and geometry of fractures in an NFR,

exact agreement of fracture geometry is
not imposed between the geologic and
flow-simulation models. Instead, gridgeneration algorithms are designed to
capture only the geometric features
that are larger than the specified grid
resolution. Compromises are made
between maintaining good cell quality and honoring fracture geometry.
These gridding tools make it possible
to construct multiple models during
the course of a single simulation study.
A different model for simulating flow
in an NFR is the EDFM, for which
challenges associated with gridding
fracture objects are circumvented. A
conventional, structured grid is used
to represent the matrix, and additional
fracture-control volumes are introduced
by computing the intersection of fracture objects with the matrix grid. The
approach was extended for modeling
a long fracture explicitly as a 2D plane
crossing multiple cells, and a systematic method was developed to calculate
transport parameters between the fracture network and discretized, homogenized matrix media. Ideas similar to
the concept of the wellbore productivity index were applied to derive the
transport index between matrix and
fractures in a grid cell. In so doing, fluid
flow was formulated as a well-like equation inside the fracture and as a source/
sink term between fracture and matrix.
The source/sink term allows coupling
multiphase-flow equations in fractures
and matrix. Pressure is assumed to vary
linearly in the direction normal to each
fracture. Furthermore, flow in the fracture blocks is governed by Darcys equation, as is flow in the matrix medium.
Fractures are parallel to the z-axis of the
grid and may have arbitrary orientation
in the xy plane, as is the case for the
UDFM. The examples detailed in the
full-length paper demonstrate the applicability of EDFM for modeling NFRs.
DFM Accuracy
DFM accuracy was tested for different recovery mechanisms (i.e., depletion, water injection, and gas/oil gravity
drainage) and for a variety of model
configurations. The DFMs and finegrid simulations were performed with
the same flow simulator. For the purpose of validation, flow curves (such as
oil recovery and water cut) and saturation and pressure maps were compared. Results of the three models were

JPT JULY 2011

very similar; hence, the DFMs captured

the effect of fractures. Good agreement
between models was confirmed by field
water cut and by oil-production rate
calculated by the three models. Both
DFMs demonstrated a general level of
accuracy and consistency.
Grid Sensitivity
Because grid orientation can affect the
accuracy of modeling, the sensitivity
of the DFMs to grid design was investigated. EDFM uses a fixed Cartesian
grid. Therefore, the only relative differences between model realizations were
locations of wells and fractures. In contrast, the simulation grid for the UDFM
approach is constructed on a coarse,
background-structured grid that is
refined locally near the fractures and
adjusted to approximate the fracture
geometry. These local changes vary,
depending on the location and orientation of fractures within the background
Cartesian grid. Hence, the three choices
for the coordinate axes lead to three
distinct grids. The same resolution was
used for the EDFM Cartesian grid and
the UDFM background grid.
The saturation maps were in good
agreement, with no appreciable effect
of grid orientation on EDFM performance. This observation confirmed
that the model parameters of EDFM
are accurate for cases in which fractures
are not aligned with the grid.
Dual-Permeability Modeling
To integrate DFMs with dual-porosity
models, parameters used for dual-porosity simulations are derived through
geologically more-realistic DFMs to
reflect the connectivity, heterogeneity,
and anisotropy of fractured reservoirs
more accurately. Directional fracturesystem permeability was derived from
stochastically generated fracture models. The obtained flow parameters then
were used as a basis for dual-porosity
simulation. This approach provided an
opportunity to improve dual-porosity
simulations. Here, the focus was on
dual-permeability rather than dualporosity modeling because allowing
flow to occur between matrix gridblocks can provide a more-accurate
simulation of NFRs than dual-porosity
modeling can provide.
This dual-permeability simulation
requires calculating effective-fractureporosity and effective-directional-permeability tensors for each cell contain-

ing fractures. This method improves

modeling of connectivity and heterogeneity in fractured porous media.
Fracture porosity is the volume of fractures embedded in a cell divided by the
cells bulk volume. Also, a single-phase
upscaling tool is used to compute the
fracture-system directional (tensor)
permeability from small-fracture and
matrix permeabilities and their interaction. To simulate large (multicell)
discrete fractures in these 2D models, active dual-permeability cells are
arranged stepwise to form connected
linear pathways.
Discussion
The EDFM is a fundamentally simpler
approach than the UDFM because the
EDFM does not require specialized
gridding. With the same backgroundgrid resolution, EDFM simulations usually are faster than UDFM simulations
because the local refinement of the
unstructured grid leads to a larger number of grid cells. Conceptually, EDFM
is similar to dual-media approaches.
Fluid transport between matrix and
each individual fracture is calculated
systematically on the basis of fracture
geometry, rather than general transfer
functions that rely on effective parameters for fracture spacing. Embedded
fractures are able to transport fluids in
any direction relative to the grid axes,
which makes it possible to construct
models that reflect the high localized
anisotropy observed in NFRs.
The UDFM technique requires specialized gridding and, hence, substantial modifications from conventionalsimulation workflows that are based
on structured grids. However, studies show that multiple grids can be
constructed for simulation during the
course of practical studies. Although
focused exclusively on fractures that
are orthogonal to bedding, it is possible to construct grids that honor moregeneral fracture geometry. In addition,
the UDFM approach is attractive for
multiphase-flow problems that require
high resolution in the vicinity of fractures to capture localized physical
processes (e.g., chemical adsorption
or desorption). While it is possible
to combine EDFM with conventional
local-grid-refinement techniques, the
unstructured-refinement techniques
used in UDFM are particularly wellsuited for natural- and induced-fracJPT
ture systems.

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