On Application of Assisted History Matching to Reliable Production Forecasting

Abstract

Summary This paper presents a workflow with application of assisted history matching tool for updating and improving reservoir models. In this approach the best-matched reservoir model or an ensemble of models is selected for production forecasting. Furthermore, the convergence of the reservoir model is rated by History-Matching Assessment Form proposed by the authors. This allows the user to visualize and control the selection of the most reliable production forecasts. Afterwards, a set of final production forecasts with uncertainty assessment is made based on ensemble of best-matched reservoir models. The proposed workflow was applied to a large producing field in Eastern Siberia. It shows the usability and meets production forecasting challenges. In addition, the method can improve understanding of uncertainty of a target formation to revisit field development strategy. This helps to obtain correct well performance for acceptable history match and production forecast. Up to threefold speed-up is reached as a result of replacement of manually corrected and time-consuming history matching by automated iterations using assisted history matching software. By analogy, it is possible to apply the workflow to development projects where reservoir parameters often tend to have wide variability, particularly those cases that are in lack of formation uncertainty studies.