Why use reservoir simulation | Petroleum engineering?

carlos84 (72)modMemberin HeartSTEM • 3 years ago

Greetings to all friends and followers of content related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. In general, a special greeting to all members of the HeartStem community.

In this opportunity I want to share with you this unpublished content and with own characteristics of petroleum engineering, in which I will address a big question to divulge to all of you, as is the case of Why the use of reservoir simulation in the exploration and production activities of hydrocarbons?

Introduction

First of all it is important to clarify that reservoir simulation is a branch within reservoir engineering, and that reservoir engineering is a sub-area of petroleum engineering.

In reservoir simulation, computer models are used to predict the flow of fluids such as oil, water and gas through the porous medium of the producing reservoir.

In relation to the term reservoir simulation, we can see that computer models are used to predict the behavior of the reservoir in the subsurface, since it is impossible to appreciate the behavior that occurs in relation to the fluid contribution capacity of the producing reservoir, that is why these computer models are adapted to predict as accurately as possible the behavior of inflow through the pores of the rock of the producing reservoir and thus have a security if it is feasible to drill and promptly put into mass production of the wells of the oil fields.

Fundamentals associated with reservoir simulation

There are simulators with traditional features that are beneficial for the development of practical and theoretical work in the realization of reservoir simulation.

The reservoir simulators under development are practically based on three physical principles that are fundamental to be able to predict as correctly as possible based on what happens in the reservoir (subsurface), these principles are:

Law of conservation of mass: this is basically to understand that all the oil in Situ cannot be extracted from the reservoir, however, based on the most sophisticated current recovery mechanisms such as fracking, a high degree of oil extraction is achieved, but there is still a remnant, the important thing is that the oil that can be extracted plus the remnant remaining in the reservoir is the total (oil in Situ).

Isothermal behavior of the fluid phase analyzed in the reservoir.

Approximation of Darcy's law, this law is very important to contribute in the reservoir simulators, since this equation gives a fairly accurate representation of the fluid flow through the porous medium, i.e. based on this law the simulators take into account the permeability and porosity of the rock and thus evaluate the mobility that oil can have to move in the production phase from the reservoir to the surface.

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The previous image shows the generation of a structural map, in which the existence of a subsurface fault can be evaluated. The structural map as such was elaborated based on a simulator, which is based on a contour map software.

The capacity of the reservoir simulation is such that it can simulate the behavior of any variable that is useful for the prediction of any oil reservoir in relation to its production behavior, as can be seen in the previous image there is a data simulation that represents the relative permeability of the reservoir.

Conclusion

Finally we answer the question:

Why the use of reservoir simulation?

Logically if we analyze the aspects studied and evaluated in the development of this post we come to the conclusion that reservoir simulation is used to facilitate the study, analysis and evaluation of the oilfield based on its future production, however it is important to note that if we do not want to use reservoir simulation can also be estimated certain variables of study based on analytical techniques including material balance equations and more.

However, reservoir simulation arises due to the existing need that analytical methods generally cannot capture all the details of the given reservoir or process, but they are usually numerically fast and sometimes sufficiently reliable.

In conclusion the more resources used to predict reservoir behavior the better because we can minimize the uncertainty of finding oil in experimental fields, and for developing fields it also helps us to increase production through the application of recovery mechanisms.