Case Study

Cupiagua Uncertainties Offer Insight Into

Piedemonte Exploration Prospects in Colombia
David E. Tipping, SPE, BP Colombia, and Néstor Fernando Saavedra, SPE, Ecopetrol S.A.

BP Colombia has been producing gas and condensate since 1996

from the heavily fractured Cupiagua reservoir, located in the
Piedemonte area of Colombia, 195 km northwest of the capital city
of Bogotá (Fig. 1). The field contains an extremely rich gas con-
densate with a yield of about 280 STB/MMscf. Field data confirm
that the natural-fracture network in Cupiagua has a major influence
on recovery and well production performance.
Although fractures apparently play a major role in the recovery
potential of the field, it is very difficult to predict their behavior. For
starters, reservoir data are not good enough to characterize fracture
density and orientation in the formation more than 200 m from a well-
bore. Hence, a multitude of fracture patterns are possible. Each pattern
can lead to a recovery that differs markedly from the others. Secondly,
on a practical level, it is not possible to create multiple detailed models
representing the range of possible patterns in a realistic time period.
Ecopetrol, the Colombian state oil company, is directing its explo-
ration efforts within the Piedemonte trend where the Cupiagua field
is located. This is an area of extensive tectonic activity, so fractures
are expected within the hydrocarbon structures. Ecopetrol seeks to
benefit from the experience of BP with Cupiagua and is using the
field as a benchmark for evaluating the potential of its exploration
prospects. Instead of using simple volumetric methods and assumed
recovery factors, which are notoriously unreliable under these con-
ditions, Ecopetrol is building on the ideas used by BP to obtain bet-
ter estimates of its potential in this region.

Cupiagua Field-Development Decisions

To maximize recovery and brake the decline, BP Colombia has
implemented a gas-reinjection plan since early in the field life when
the pressure was still above dewpoint. Injection above saturation
pressure allows maximizing recovery from gas/condensate reservoirs.
However, with a voidage/replacement ratio of roughly 0.8, injec-
tion clearly cannot arrest the falling pressure. The average reservoir
pressure is about 5,000 psia—significantly below the dewpoint, so
condensate accumulation is widespread. Under these conditions,
given the richness of the gas, the condensate saturation can exceed
35% of formation pore volume. Although gas injection is less effec-
tive below dewpoint, BP has pursued its injection strategy because
the gas vaporizes a large fraction of the liquid, increasing recovery,
and provides pressure support, boosting well rates.
Reservoir modeling reveals the potential gains achievable with
injection. Under natural depletion, a maximum recovery of 18% of
initial equivalent oil in place (IEOIP) is achievable. However, with
gas injection, the recovery can exceed 60%. Furthermore, the mod-
eling shows that this maximum recovery can be reached with the
injection of less than 3 pore volumes of gas. Apparently, gas reinjec-
tion is the obvious development strategy.
However, now that the field has undergone significant depletion
with a reservoir pressure about 300 psia below the dewpoint, the
Fig. 1—Location of Piedemonte.
apparent gains from injection may not be possible. In particular, expe-
rience to date shows that sweep effectiveness is poor in certain areas
of the field. Within these zones, soon after the onset of injection, the
gas-to-oil ratio (GOR) jumped excessively, leading to a fall in con-
densate production. This suggests that fractures act as communica-
tion channels directing the gas from the producers to the injectors.
Another factor that must be considered is the cost of an injector.
Since well costs exceed U.S. $30 million, an additional well must jus-
tify the investment. Reservoir characterization of potential fracture net-
works shows that the incremental recovery is very sensitive to the frac-
ture pattern. The key question then becomes: How can we manage the
inherent uncertainty of the fracture patterns within the formation?
Early Field Development
BP made its early field-development decisions with simulation full-
field models (FFMs) consisting of about 55,000 gridblocks, each
with dimensions of about 250×280 m in the x-y plane and 19 lay-
ers with thicknesses ranging from 10 to 50 m in the z direction. The
FFMs were built from static models based on the seismic structural

36 NOVEMBER 2005
 Case Study
Fig. 2—Conceptual model schematic of a typical fracture
pattern. One-layer model with 100× 100 cells in the x-y
plane, 25 cm fracture width.
interpretation with formation properties derived from stochastic
mapping. Predictions of potential development options were made
after matching the model to well-production data—primarily, reser-
voir-pressure measurements, condensate rates, and GORs.
The reservoir-management group recognized early in the field
development that fractures could play a major role in the depletion
mechanisms. For example, wireline logs and cores disclosed the
presence of fractures. Further evidence surfaced soon after com-
mencing gas injection. Within certain regions of the field, gas break-
through at producers precipitated jumps in GOR trends, leading to
a fall in condensate production. BP has dealt with this gas arrival by
sealing off the zones within producer wells where gas entry is prob-
lematic or suspending injection in the nearby injector wells.
The reservoir engineers realized that this first-generation FFM
could not reproduce the preferential gas flow through fractures. It
could not predict injection-gas arrival, nor was it reliable for recovery
estimates. Simple history matching of oil rates, by adjusting formation
permeability, led to excessive recoveries. To address the influence of
fractures, in particular, within gas-swept regions, a fluid composition-
al scaling technique was adopted.1 This method can be envisaged as
applying transport coefficients to the constituents of the 12-compo-
nent hydrocarbon model. These coefficients reflect the density of the
constituents and the fracture configuration in the formation. Hence,
methane in the coarse model arrives at a producer before pentane. In
addition, the components arrive at a producer in a region that has a
higher intensity of fractures compared with a low-intensity region.
38
The compositional scaling technique has provided a major step
forward in predicting the impact of gas injection in regions where the
fracture pattern is known. However, for the northern extension of the
field, where well data are very limited, the fracture pattern is subject
to considerable uncertainty. Consequently, we decided to consider
another approach for evaluating the potential of this region.
Challenges Evaluating Remaining Potential
We recognized that future development decisions depend on the
uncertainties in the remaining hydrocarbon potential located prin-
cipally in the undeveloped northern region. These uncertainties are
greater than during the early field life, primarily because of the fol-
lowing:
• Drainage of the condensate from the undeveloped northern sec-
tion to the depleted southern region.
• Uncertainty in the density and the orientation of the natural
fractures.
• Greater structural complexity in the northern region. For exam-
ple, seismic anomalies could indicate the sealing barriers that would
sharply reduce pressure support.
As a result, we conceived a plan to address these uncertainties and
to select the best exploitation strategy—injection or natural deple-
tion. The plan is designed to give the probabilistic distributions of
production profiles under both development scenarios. The proce-
dure consisted of building simple conceptual models to understand
the in-situ flow mechanisms, deciding on an approach for charac-
terizing these flow mechanisms in an FFM for forecasting well per-
formance, and, finally, addressing the uncertainties. We outline
below the methodology adopted for each of these steps.
Characterizing Flow Mechanisms
Field data suggest that relative permeability effects, gravity drainage,
and compositional changes in the gas and liquid hydrocarbon phas-
es potentially could all have major impact on hydrocarbon recovery.
To quantify these impacts, we built conceptual models to represent
the potential recovery processes.
We designed the horizontal models to be as simple as possible to
focus on understanding the flow mechanisms. These models con-
tain about 4,000 active cells with widths of 25 cm, so the dimen-
sions are intended to approach the scale of fractures. Fig. 2 displays
a typical fracture pattern.
Fluid pressure/volume/temperature analyses revealed that the
hydrocarbon is a gas/condensate with a liquid yield that can exceed
280 STB/MMscf. We have developed a 12-component equation of
state to model fluid behavior. Because of the high condensate yield,
below saturation pressure, the condensate saturation can exceed
35% of formation pore volume. Relative permeability tests under-
taken on core plugs in the laboratory show that part of this fluid is
mobile—unlike most known gas/condensate reservoirs. The phase
recovery at the surface depends on the relative mobility of the
fluid phases.
To simulate depletion scenarios, we initially assumed a matrix-only
formation. We took relative permeability measurements based on lab-
oratory core samples to characterize the multiphase flow. These initial
models showed that recovery of the condensate and the gas is sensitive
to matrix permeability. Gas recovery is also sensitive to decreasing
reservoir pressure. Laboratory tests at Heriot-Watt U. show that the
interfacial tension decreases with falling reservoir pressure, leading to
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Case Study
7,000 6,000 5,000
Pressure, psia
Fig. 3—Theoretical recovery with different fracture patterns assuming no injection.
an increase in the relative permeability of the gas and the condensate
phases. However, the effect is more accentuated with gas.
We then sought to characterize gravity-drainage effects. A number of
producer wells exhibited behavior consistent with gravity drainage:
Several downdip producers revealed GORs that decreased as the reser-
voir pressure fell. Additionally, two updip wells have yielded GORs
increasing with time. We surmised that these GOR trends could, poten-
tially, result from relative permeability effects trapping gas or, alterna-
tively, gravity drainage, so we built simplified sector models reproduc-
ing the structural relief of Cupiagua to quantify the gravity drainage.
The modeling revealed that the vertical displacement of fluids was
determined by the proximity to faults in the dip direction. As expect-
ed, the fractures acted as channels for the gas to move updip. On the
other hand, the condensate tended to flow downdip along the
periphery of the fracture channels. With increasing depletion, the liq-
uid accumulated at the base of these high-permeability channels.
Within the model, a producer at these locations could yield a GOR
that decreased with time, as monitored in practice. Interestingly, we
noticed this behavior only in the immediate vicinity of the base of a
fracture. Further away, the GOR increased with time.
The modeling results demonstrate that, under natural depletion,
the maximum expected recovery at the reservoir abandonment
pressure of 3,000 psia is about 18% IEOIP (Fig. 3). Furthermore,
the recovery factor is not sensitive to the fracture density or the
matrix quality. With injection, however, the recovery factor is very
sensitive to the fracture pattern and, to a lesser extent, the matrix
quality. Under the injection scenario, the recovery factor varies
between 30 and 65% IEOIP (Fig. 4). If we wrongly assume the frac-
ture/matrix pattern, there will be a large error in the field potential.
To manage this huge difference, the next step of our evaluation strat-
egy consisted of a two-pronged approach: integration of field
dynamic data and uncertainty modeling.
These observations highlighted the major role fractures have on
the depletion. We sought to exploit the field dynamic data to help
constrain the possible fracture patterns. Ten years of static and field
surveillance data that included log interpretations, core production-
rate measurements, pressure-transient analyses (PTAs), gas tracer
40
50
40
Recovery, %IOIP
30
20
10
0
4,000 3,000
measurements, and fluid-compositional analyses gave insights on
potential fracture/matrix patterns.
The well tests proved to be invaluable for characterizing fracture
configurations because the pressure responses are sensitive to both
fractures and matrix. Consequently, the PTAs from these tests give
estimates of permeability-thickness products (kh) for the matrix
plus the fractures. Core and wireline-log interpretations generally
provide estimates of matrix permeability only. With this informa-
tion, we adjusted the matrix and fracture properties of the models
so that the kh compared with the well data.
Uncertainty Evaluation
We considered the conceptual discrete fracture network model
results the cornerstone for building representative predictive mod-
els. The recoveries in these models allowed creating scaled relative
permeability functions for the large gridblocks of the FFM.
Additionally, these conceptual models gave insights on the reser-
voir-description patterns that needed adjusting to achieve a match.
For example, to match the declining GOR at downdip producers,
we modeled the behavior seen in the sector models by implement-
ing high-permeability channels in the dip direction of the FFM.
These channels allowed the liquid to drain downward, as seen in the
conceptual inclined models. We felt that the match in the developed
southern sector of the field indicated a realistic fracture pattern.
In the northern sector, few well-control points existed; hence, mul-
tiple fracture configurations were possible. We decided to look at pos-
sible patterns and evaluate their impact on the predicted production
profiles. In other words, we decided to determine the probabilistic dis-
tribution of the production profile by adopting top-down reservoir
modeling (TDRM).2 Essentially, this consisted of creating multiple
cases of possible reservoir-description scenarios and extracting the
predictions for each case. We started with Monte Carlo simulation on
the reservoir parameters believed to have a significant impact on the
reservoir potential uncertainty. For the case of the northern part of
Cupiagua, the significant parameters leading to uncertainty are:
• Pore volume because of resolution limitations of the seismic.
• The matrix quality because of limited well data.
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100

80
Recovery, % IOIP
60

40

20

0
0 1 2 3 4
Injection Gas, pore volumes

Fig. 4—Theoretical recovery with different fracture patterns with reinjection.

• The fracture pattern because of the impossibility of characteriz- Acknowledgments

ing the distribution more than 200 m from a wellbore.
We chose TDRM because, although it begins with Monte Carlo
simulation to select values for reservoir-description parameters, it
updates the parameter values obtained from Monte Carlo simula-
tion to give a history match to the production data. TDRM exploits
a genetic algorithm to find values that give an improved match. Our
predictions were based on history-matched reservoir realizations
and narrowed the uncertainty range considerably.
The following individuals have been instrumental in putting in
place the plan outlined above: Marcial M. Chaverra, Peter J. Clifford,
Richard J. Jolly, and Glyn J. Williams. We are grateful to the partners
of the Cupiagua field—BP, Ecopetrol, and Total—for permission to
present this approach. Additionally, we appreciate the independent
insights of those who attended the presentation at a meeting of the
SPE Bogotá Chapter, led by Alexandra López, Jonathan Mosquera,
Mayuli Serrano, and Karen Sinza.

Conclusions
The methodology applied above has been successfully applied to
quantify the inherent risks in a reservoir where the conditions have
a major role in depletion performance and where these conditions
are subject to uncertainty. Furthermore, the principles of this
methodology are being applied to evaluate the potential of explo-
ration prospects within the Piedemonte region, where conventional
dynamic-modeling approaches are unreliable.
References
1. Ballin, P.R., Clifford, P.J., and Christie, M.A.: “Cupiagua: Modeling of a
Complex Fractured Reservoir Using Compositional Upscaling,” SPEREE.
2. Williams, G.J.J. et al.: “Top-Down Reservoir Modeling,” SPE 89974, pre-
sented at the 2004 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition,
26–29 September, Houston. JPT

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