On the feasibility of re-stimulation of shale wells

As a result of advances in horizontal completions and multi-stage hydraulic fracturing, the U.S. has been able to economically develop several decades of worth of natural gas. However, a considerable concern has risen on the economic viability of shale gas development for reasons associated with the fast production declines as well as recent down-turns of natural gas prices besides rises in the costs of new technologies. Therefore, an economic analysis is required to investigate the profitability of the refracturing treatment of unconventional gas resources. Net present value of cash flows and internal rate of return are calculated for a range of gas prices considering 20 years of natural gas production from a typical unconventional shale gas reservoir. A systematic comparison is then accomplished for three scenarios: (1) re-fracturing versus no refracturing, (2) combination of re-fracturing and drilling new wells, and (3) time-dependent re-fracturing treatment. Further, this paper incorporates the cost of re-fracturing treatment, the cost of drilling a new horizontal well, the water treatment cost, as well as the current and future price of natural gas in the model. The findings of this work would help the future re-stimulation development plans of the emerging unconventional shale gas plays.     

An Automatic History Matching Module with Distributed and Parallel Computing

Abstract

The data assimilation process of adjusting variables in a reservoir simulation model to honor observations of field data is known as history matching and has been extensively studied for a few decades. However, limited success has been achieved due to the high complexity of the problem and the large computational effort required in the real fields. Successful applications of the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) to reservoir history matching have been reported in various publications. The EnKF is a sequential method: once new data are available, only these data are used to update all the unknown reservoir properties while previous geological information is unused directly. In this method, multiple reservoir models rather than one single model are implemented, and each model is called a member. Conventionally, the impact of each member on the updating is equally treated. Another approach is the weighted EnKF. During the updating, the method weighs the contribution of each member through the comparison between the simulation response and the measurements. Better matching performance has been found in the weighted EnKF than in the conventional EnKF. To improve computational efficiency, two-level high-performance computing for reservoir history matching process is implemented in this research, distributing ensemble members simultaneously while simulating each member in a parallel style.

An automatic history-matching module based on the weighted EnKF and high-performance computing is developed and validated through a synthetic case operating from primary, waterflooding to flooding of water alternating with gas. The study shows that the weighted EnKF improves the matching results, and the high-performance computing process significantly reduces the history matching execution time.     

Wettability Modification of Fractured Carbonates Using Sodium Metaborate Part II: History Match Results and Sensitivity Simulations

Abstract

Chemical-based wettability modification has become important for the worldwide abundance of fractured carbonates with the potential to enhance water imbibition to expel more oil from a matrix to the fractures. A systematic experimental and modeling approach on the combined benefit of wettability alteration for enhanced water imbibition and interfacial tension reduction is presented. Brine, alkali, and alkali–surfactant solutions are injected sequentially to improve oil recovery from a fractured mixed-wet carbonate core. The experiment was successfully modeled with a 3D chemical flooding reservoir simulator with wettability alteration capability. Part I discussed the laboratory results and presented the modeling approach and the waterflood history match results. The history match procedure and results for wettability modification using an alkali agent and interfacial tension (IFT) reduction with surfactant are discussed in this article. Sensitivity simulations to some key parameters are also presented.     

Simulation of Wettability Alteration by Low-Salinity Water Injection in Waterflooded Carbonate Cores

Low-salinity water injection is an emerging improved oil recovery technique due to its simplicity compared to other water based improved oil recovery methods. In this study, the wettability alteration option in the authors’ in-house simulator is used to history match and provide some insights in different seawater dilution cycles based on recently published corefloods. Two newly proposed methodologies to model dilution cycles are employed. The authors successfully modeled the experiments enhancing the wettability alteration model in the simulator using two different scaling factors. The study also revealed that the process is more sensitive to oil relative permeability compared to that of the water phase. A linear interpolation model for residual oil saturation (S_or) was proposed.     

Application of a Coupled Wellbore/Reservoir Simulator to Estimate Accumulated Liquid Phase in Gas Wells

Abstract

Knowledge of the phase distribution and liquid accumulation in gas wells is very important in determining the restrictions that may exist for the inflow from the formation. It is also critical to determine if the flow rate of a well is itself sufficient to remove the loaded liquid phase or if other techniques should be applied. In this article, we used a developed non-isothermal transient multiphase wellbore/reservoir simulator to model liquid accumulation in gas wells. The simulator can be used as a tool to predict the amount of loaded liquid as a function of well flow rate and to design new flow strings to remove accumulated liquid.     

A Weighted Ensemble Kalman Filter for Automatic History Matching

Abstract

The ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) performs the initial sampling, forecasting, and assimilation steps for automatic history matching in the petroleum industry. It tunes multiple members sequentially and updates the statistical mean and variance of the model. Many applications have been reported in various publications. The forecasting step is implemented by running the reservoir model simulator. In the assimilation equation, the ensemble mean is calculated through equally weighting all the members. Therefore, the contribution factor to the mean from each member is the same. This paper proposes a modified assimilation equation by introducing a weighting factor for each ensemble member. Both the proposed weighted EnKF and the traditional EnKF are applied to a modified field case of a complex seventeen-layer reservoir. The performances of the weighted EnKF on production history match, forecasting, and field permeability match are better than those from the traditional EnKF. In addition, we investigate the impact of geological uncertainty in the initial ensemble generation on the final matching results. Two scenarios which have the same semivariogram as the reference field are implemented, and their results show that the initial geological information is important to the history matching performance.     

液氮磨料射流破碎高温花岗岩机理

液氮磨料射流是一种高效的破碎干热岩方式。为进一步探究其破岩机理,开展液氮磨料射流喷射高温花岗岩室内实验。从宏观角度分析岩石破碎形式、射流孔眼形态及表面特征,从微观角度分析断裂面形貌和微裂缝分布等,探究液氮磨料射流破碎高温岩石特征。同时,开展磨料水射流和氮气磨料射流破岩实验作为对照。实验结果表明,液氮磨料射流形成的孔眼形状不规则,表面凹凸不平,且破碎体积明显大于磨料水射流和氮气磨料射流。扫描电镜实验显示,低温、冲击载荷作用下,在孔眼壁面和孔眼附近区域生成大量微裂缝,其主要断裂方式为拉伸、剪切作用下岩石的脆性断裂,表现为穿晶断裂和沿晶断裂。理论分析和数值模拟研究表明,液氮低温作用对岩石造成损伤,而热应力、磨料冲击载荷和流体水楔作用在损伤岩石基础上主要以剪切和拉伸两种方式破碎岩石。     

Axially symmetric compositional simulation of formation tester measurements

This paper describes the development, testing, and successful application of a new compositional code for the numerical simulation of oil-based mud invasion and formation tester measurements that involve arbitrary miscibility between oil-based mud and native oil. The simulator assumes axially symmetric variations of petrophysical properties as well as axially symmetric flow-rate sources and boundary conditions. However, there are no restricting assumptions to the degree of miscibility between the fluids involved in the simulations. We solve the time–space evolution of component concentration with a time-marching implicit pressure explicit concentration (IMPEC) scheme. This method of solution considers the complete equations of state and implements flash calculations to describe the thermo-dynamical evolution of the various compositional phases due to space–time variations of pressure and concentration.Simulations described in this paper consider the process of oil-based mud–filtrate invasion into reservoirs containing mixtures of connate water and oil. Subsequently, we simulate formation tester measurements by enforcing fluid withdrawal through the dual-packer section of the tester. Measurements consist of fluid pressure, fractional flow rates, fluid density, and fluid viscosity. Examples of application include homogenous and multi-layer formations as well as a capillary transition zone. Comparison of simulation results against those obtained with a commercial code confirms the efficiency, accuracy, and reliability of our method of solution.Sensitivity analysis indicate that time evolution of fractional flow rates, fluid density, and fluid viscosity measured with the formation tester remain influenced by the petrophysical properties of the formation, volume of mud–filtrate invasion, and by saturation-dependent rock–fluid properties (relative permeability and capillary pressure). The simulations described in this paper provide suitable guidelines for the acquisition of clean samples of in-situ formation fluids in the presence of invasion and heterogeneous conditions of petrophysical and rock–fluid properties.     

Investigation of Several Interpolation Functions for Unstructured Meshes in Conjunction with Compositional Reservoir Simulation

One of the key parameters in numerical simulation of fluid flow problems is the interpolation function used for adjusting the numerical value from the position where it is evaluated to the interface of the control volumes; for instance, if the finite-volume method is employed. In this article, we present an investigation of several interpolation functions in conjunction with the element based finite-volume method (EbFVM) using unstructured triangular meshes. We investigate the mass weighted upwind (MWU) and a modified version of this method, the upwind scheme, a streamline based upwind scheme, and a limited second order upwind scheme. These interpolation functions are implemented in a compositional simulator using vertex cell unstructured grids. The accuracy of these interpolation functions are evaluated for several case studies. For some of them, we also compare the results with the available analytical solutions.     

A compositional wellbore/reservoir simulator to model multiphase flow and temperature distribution

Production of hydrocarbon often involves gas and liquid (oil/water) concurrent flow in the wellbore. As a multi-phase/multi-component gas–oil mixture flows from the reservoir to the surface, pressure, temperature, composition and liquid holdup distributions are interrelated. However, nearly all two-phase wellbore simulations are currently performed using “black oil” simulators. In this paper, a compositional-wellbore model coupled with a reservoir simulator to compute pressure and temperature distribution is presented. In this work, compositions of liquid and gaseous phases in the wellbore can be determined by two-phase equilibrium flash calculations and by considering the slip between phases. Our simulator has the capability of predicting the temperature profile in the wellbore, which helps to predict multiphase flow physics such as liquid holdup and pressure drop more accurately. As the wellbore model is coupled with a reservoir simulator, it can be used as a tool to calculate fluid-flow compositions between reservoir and wellbore. The simulated results of our compositional model were compared to the equivalent blackoil model for pressure and temperature distribution. Although the input requirements and computing expenses are higher for compositional calculations than for blackoil, our simulations show that in some cases, such as those involving highly-volatile oil and retrograde condensate gas, ignoring compositional effects may lead to errors in pressure profile prediction for the wellbore.