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Sensitivity of Reservoir Performance to Fault Zone Architecture
- Publisher: European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers
- Source: Conference Proceedings, 78th EAGE Conference and Exhibition 2016, May 2016, Volume 2016, p.1 - 5
Abstract
Access to 3D descriptions of fault zone architectures and recent development of modelling techniques allow explicit rendering of these features in reservoir models. Implementing detailed fault zone architectures in reservoir models is computationally expensive, particularly on field-scale, and should not be employed without due consideration. However, it remains to be established under which circumstances the addition of these features would significant influence production simulation. The objective of the present study was to test the sensitivity of reservoir performance to fault zone architectures, and thereby provide guidelines for when incorporating detailed fault zone structure in a reservoir simulation model would be meaningful or not. Flow simulations were performed on a set of models with varying fault zone property distributions and at different scales. Varying the spatial distribution of fault zone properties and upscaling them both influence reservoir response in different ways, depending on whether flow can circumvent the fault zone or not.