A Framework for Multiphase Nonisothermal Fluid Flow in a Deforming Heavy Oil Reservoir

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ABSTRACT The problem of multiphase (oil, water, gas), non-iso-thermal fluid flow in a heavy oil reservoir is of great interest in thermal recovery operations, especially steam injection. The much more complex problem of simultaneous stress-strain calculations in the reservoir and adjacent media, and reservoir compaction or dilation is of great importance in regions of Canada, Venezuela and the U.S.A. Such an extended problem is the theme for this paper. The subject problem is being solved by the finite element method (FEM) for a three dimensional system. Flow of oil, water and a gaseous phase including steam, with the flow of heat, and simultaneous reservoir deformation is expressed by the appropriate partial differential equations (PDEs). The flow equations are formulated by the Petrov-Galerkin technique applied to the weighted residual method, and the stress-strain equations are solved by standard finite element techniques. The simulator is being developed on the CDC Cyber 205 vector processor, which provides the high computational speeds needed for such a complex problem. The computational effort required by the finite element method has limited its wider use in reservoir simulation, where finite difference methods are the norm.