oa Keynote Address: Challenges of Incorporating Dynamic and Fracture Behaviour into the History Matching Process

Integrating dynamic data into reservoir numerical models is essential for capturing the actual dynamic flow behaviour and the true performance of a reservoir. History matching efforts could prove to be fruitless without including such data into the reservoir model. Fractures and super-high permeability streaks are two examples of important flow features that open-hole logs and core sampling do not provide a satisfactory characterization and can be overlooked. Thus a log and core-based models will not be able to predict the actual performance of the field. It is not uncommon to measure dynamic permeability values, through pressure transient testing, at magnitude(s) of order higher than those obtained from core samples and core-log correlations, indicating presence of un-interpreted high permeability intervals within the reservoir. This integration of dynamic data, and the identification of reservoir fractures, in their different forms, poses a challenge for the simulation engineer during the history matching process. Variable impact of the different types of fractures (due to their varying size, shape, proximity and continuity) on the flow performance and water cut development forms an additional difficulty during. The presentation discusses some of these challenges associated with modeling of a giant carbonate Middle East reservoir, aiming as starting a brainstorming discussion of what options and alternative approaches are there for incorporating the dynamic permeability into the simulation model, and for identification of fractures presence, type, size and continuity in the reservoir.