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Analysis of flowrate fluctuations for reservoir communications

Turning production 'noise' into reservoir flowpath information

 Reactivated structural features are likely to be major influences on the hydraulic flow paths in the reservoir and therefore their identification is of substantial advantage to efficiency in reservoir management.  Recent research, in partnership with The University of Edinburgh, has developed a methodology for extracting inter-well communications from the correlations in rate between wells.

What value is added?

Whilst much is generally known about reservoir properties at well locations, the communications between wells are arguably more important to reservoir performance, particularly in flooding schemes.  Conventionally, interwell properties are either inter-/extra-polated geostatistically from well data; or measured with tracers (only informative after breakthrough of injected fluid), or expensive geophysical surveys (e.g. 4D seismic); even where measurements have been made, there is generally inherent uncertainty in interpretation.  The extraction of interwell communications from readily available production data using our technology can complement and enhance the understanding of reservoir behaviour.  Various potential entry points exist for applications of the results in the processes of operational reservoir management. Rate correlations can be compared with other known structural knowledge of the field to indicate potential features that may have been activated by field development. Such features might be introduced into a conventional reservoir simulation as increased permeability or, better, used as calibration or validation of a geomechanical model. The updated reservoir simulation, preferably coupled to the geomechanical model, can then be used for improved predictions of short- or long-term production.