Identifying Reservoir Compartmentalization and Flow Barriers Using PrimaryProduction: A Streamline Approach

摘要

Reservoir compartmentalization and flow barriers such asrnsealing faults or continuous low permeability trends can haverna significant impact on the field development strategy.rnIdentifying the location and spatial distribution of suchrnbarriers will be critical to optimizing infill well locations,rnparticularly in the early stages of field development withrnlimited well data.rnRecent advances in streamline modeling allows us torncompute drainage volumes during primary production using arn'diffusive' or 'pressure' time of flight during streamlinernsimulation. We propose a novel approach that utilizes thernstreamline-based drainage volume computations to inferrnreservoir compartmentalization during primary production.rnOur approach consists of two steps. First, we perform arntraditional decline type curve analysis of the primaryrnproduction data to identify well communications and estimaternthe drainage volume of individual wells. Second, starting withrna geological model the drainage volumes of each well arernrecomputed using a streamline-based flow simulation. Finally,rnreservoir compartmentalization and flow barriers are inferredrnthrough a matching of the streamline-based drainage volumesrnwith those from the decline curve analysis. Our approach isrncompletely general and can be applied to reservoirs in thernearly stages of field development and with very few wells. Itrnrelies on commonly available data, that is, primary productionrnand bottom-hole pressure data. Also, the results are relativelyrninsensitive to the fine-scale heterogeneity that can be difficultrnto characterize.rnWe demonstrate the power and utility of our proposedrnmethod using synthetic and field examples. The syntheticrnexamples validate the approach and include a 3Drncompartmentalized reservoir with multiple wells. The fieldrnexample is from a field in the Gulf of Mexico. Starting with arnreservoir model based on well log and seismic data, reservoirrncompartmentalization and flow barriers are identified fromrnthree years of primary production response. The results arernverified via performance forecasting and subsequently utilizedrnto optimize field development and infill well locations.