Denis Schiozer 

University of Campinas

Model-based short-term reservoir management

There are many challenges of the pre-salt complex carbonate reservoirs with high content of CO2 in Brazil: complexity of the models, size of the fields, high production rates, high CO2 content that demands complex EOR processes, complex operation including intelligent completions and 4D monitoring and gas-driven optimization processes (since gas rate is the main limitation for current platforms).

Numerical Simulators have been used to model the problem yielding better decisions for reservoir management. In order to do that systematically, we have developed a specific methodology composed by 12 Steps to apply the concept of Closed-Loop Reservoir Development and Management.

In this methodology, we have included several aspects from pre-salt fields such as reservoir characterization of carbonate reservoirs, data assimilation, including 4D, optimization processes for life-time decisions and risk analysis.

The methodology and several aspects of each step generated several thesis, dissertations, articles and tools and the applications were very well accepted by our industry partners which are now very interested in expanding the concepts in the direction of Petroleum Digital Fields.

Therefore, the presentation will show some ideas that are being developed in the second phase of the Chair program entitled "MODEL BASED AND DATA DRIVEN RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT THROUGH DIGITAL FIELDS CONCEPTS". The main idea is to expand our research in order to incorporate the preparation to integrate the CLFDM to the idea of Digital Fields, i.e, work with shorter cycles allowing fast decisions.

The research aims the study of the use of reservoir simulation models for short-term decisions considering a typical closed-loop time timeframe from 6 months to 1 year. The idea is to: (1) improve the quality of the production forecast, (2) improve the quality of the decisions, (3) speedup the process and (4) verify the possibility to use data-driven analysis to help in the process. In the future, the idea is to work with more frequent loops and to investigate the use of simulation model in real time decisions.