Multiscale reservoir simulation

The objective of this project is to gain experience and build the expertise necessary to establish a proof-of-concept in an industrial setting for multiscale reservoir simulation.

Multiscale Simulation of Highly Heterogeneous and Fractured Reservoirs

We seek to demonstrate that multiscale methods can be used to simulate fluid flow with acceptable accuracy directly on industry-standard geomodels (corner-point and S-faulted grids) of highly heterogeneous and fractured reservoirs. This objective will be achieved by:

• Combining a multiscale mixed finite-element formulation with mimetic discretisation principles in the underlying fine-grid solver to develop a pressure solver that is robust with respect to grid geometries and the choice of coarse grids
• Developing a set of different transport solvers for two-phase compressible black-oil models:
  • fast direct solvers to be used if one is only interested in a single run with a large degree of sub-scale resolution
  • a multiscale solver to be used as an alternative to pseudo-functions if one is interested in multiple runs with minor changes in the parameters
• Developing a general methodology and an application for choosing coarse grids semi-automatically in the multiscale pressure solver to meet requirements with respect to accuracy and computational resources
• Combining the items above to develop an inhouse reservoir simulator and apply it to industry-standard geomodels consisting of multimillion cells or multiple geostatistical realisations to demonstrate proof-of-concept.

Key Publications

1. V. L. Hauge and J. E. Aarnes. Modeling of fractured two-phase flow in fractured porous media on unstructured non-uniform coarse grids. Transport in Porous Media, to appear.
2. J. E. Aarnes, V. L. Hauge, and Y. Efendiev. Coarsening of three-dimensional structured and unstructured grids for subsurface flow. Advances in Water Resources, Vol. 30, Issue 11, November 2007, pp. 2177-2193. DOI: 10.1016/j.advwatres.2007.04.007.
3. J. E. Aarnes, S. Krogstad, and K.-A. Lie. Multiscale mixed/mimetic methods on corner-point grids. Computational Geosciences, Special issue on multiscale methods, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 297-315, 2008. DOI: 10.1007/s10596-007-9072-8