Status of Dual-Continuum Models for Naturally Fractured Reservoir Simulation

Abstract

Naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR) contain significant portions of the world's proven reserves of conventional oil. However, their simulation is one of the most challenging and computationally intensive problems in reservoir engineering. Most commercial reservoir simulators use dual-continuum models to predict performance of an NFR where two overlapping continua for the fracture and matrix medium are considered. Then transfer of multiphase fluid between the two media is taken into consideration by a source-sink transfer function (Zhang and Sun, 2000). After review of different conceptual models to simulate an NFR, major pitfalls related to dual-porosity and dual-permeability models for simulation of such reservoirs will be discussed briefly within this article.