Advances in Tightly Coupled Reservoir/ Wellbore/Surface-Network Simulation

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Summary One of the most perplexing and difficult challenges in the industry is deciding how to develop a new oil or gas field. It is necessary to estimate recoverable reserves, design the most efficient exploitation strategy, decide where and when to drill wells and install surface facilities, and predict the rate of production. This requires a clear understanding of energy distribution and fluid movements throughout the entire system, under any given operational scenario or market-demand situation. Even after a reservoir-development plan is selected, there are many possible facility designs, each with different investment and operating costs. An important, but not always considered, fact is that each facility scheme could result in different future production rates owing to various types, sizes, and configurations of fluid-flow facilities. Selecting the best design for the asset requires the most accurate production forecasts possible over the forecast life cycle. No other single technology has the ability to provide this insight, as well as tightly coupled reservoir and facility simulation, because it combines all pertinent geological and engineering data into a single, comprehensive, dynamic model of the entire oilfield flow system. An integrated oilfield simulation system accounts for all dynamic flow effects and provides a test environment for quickly and accurately comparing alternative designs. This paper provides a brief background of this technology and gives a review of a major development project where it is currently being applied. Finally, we describe some recent significant advances in the technology that make it more stable, accurate, and rigorous.