Using representative elemental volume to determine subset volume in an area of interest earth model

摘要

Method for determining a subset volume in a 3D geocellular model of an oil and gas reservoir includes creating a 3D geocellular grid of the reservoir, defining a thick cross section for an area of interest within the 3D geocellular grid, iteratively increasing the volume of the thick cross section by a predetermined number of cells on each side, moving the thick cross section throughout the 3D geocellular grid, and performing a representative elemental volume (REV) analysis based on porosity for the resulting thick cross section. One embodiments allow incorporating REV analysis to determine a subset reservoir model volume which is smaller than the full field model but representative of the petrophysical property distribution in the full field model. This is done so that subset models act as theoretical proxies to the full field models and allow more detailed analysis before building the full field model.