A Computer Aided System of Geology-Engineering-Economy-Production Synergy for Optimization of Integrated Reservoir Management

Abstract

Abstract Reservoir management widely accepted as a concept has been paid close attention in Chinese petroleum industry. However, there are innumerable barriers in operation mainly because of the lack of powerful platform to effectively support multidisciplinary cooperation. As a result, after a period of fast development, the geology-engineering-economy synergy arrives to a plateau and becomes a mirage suitable only in theory, which in turn reduce the confidence in the viability of optimum reservoir management. This paper provides a systematic approach to integrated reservoir management by a computer aided system, based on a database of China National Petroleum Corporation. The system includes seven organic sub-systems: geology information integration, development information integration, reservoir engineering calculation, production performance analysis, economic evaluation, real-time monitoring, data management and maintenance. The function of each part and tightly mutual collaboration are presented. More specifically, through the access to the database in which data of different specialized areas are originally separate, all the information since reservoir exploration is shared orderly on the platform of this computer aided system. Graphs, curves, spreadsheets and other engineering and economic analyses can be generated automatically with any selected area or well groups. Teamwork is realized conveniently, and the dynamic-static performance combination is obtained through comfortable communications among geologists, field engineers and economists on the computer aided reservoir management system. Furthermore, because the routine production management is optimized through real-time monitoring, especially its visualized performance analysis, it is a handy assistant for high-level managers to know how the operation process works, to make reasonable decision and to adjust the strategy timely. In this way, geology, engineering, production and economy are integrated expediently and the traditional bottleneck is solved. Additionally, the successful applications of reservoir management system designed in this paper are briefly introduced in some oil fields such as Dagang Oil Field and Zhongyuan Oil Field in China.