The changing face of reservoir modelling

Abstract

David Hardy, product manager, and Andres Hatløy, VP Technology, Roxar Software Solutions, provides an overview of developments in reservoir modelling with a peek at what future challenges lie ahead for geoscientists and reservoir specialists. A brief look back will show how radically things have changed for reservoir professionals over the last decade and a half. Many geologists will still remember hand contouring maps and calculating the reservoir volumes with a planimeter and some graph paper. Computer based mapping changed this dramatically, enabling geoscientists to build better reservoir models, with more data and faster. Today many asset teams now rely on 3D geological models for their field development planning and reservoir modelling. Today’s tools enable interdisciplinary workflows to be executed by multidisciplinary teams. Whilst not quite commonplace worldwide, it is fair to say that 3D geological modelling has gone mainstream and is a now a central part of many peoples daily work. The impetus for change was really driven by a realization that traditional 2D map-based approaches to geological reservoir modelling were grossly oversimplifying the reservoir. Whilst geophysicists and reservoir engineers were now working in a 3D world, geologists were still producing crude 2D models. The models were often so poor that reservoir engineers commonly applied arbitrary, non-physical corrections to try and get a history match. This added up to not just a poor understanding of the reservoir but a complete failure to accurately estimate field reserves and predict future production. Poor reservoir models meant poor decisions and poor development plans which had the potential to cost millions. Early applications of these techniques were in the North Sea where complex, heterogeneous geology combined with a high cost environment led to the development of much of the technology which is now common place.