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History matching and uncertainty quantification of facies models with multiple geological interpretations

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Abstract

Uncertainty quantification is currently one of the leading challenges in the geosciences, in particular in reservoir modeling. A wealth of subsurface data as well as expert knowledge are available to quantify uncertainty and state predictions on reservoir performance or reserves. The geosciences component within this larger modeling framework is partially an interpretive science. Geologists and geophysicists interpret data to postulate on the nature of the depositional environment, for example on the type of fracture system, the nature of faulting, and the type of rock physics model. Often, several alternative scenarios or interpretations are offered, including some associated belief quantified with probabilities. In the context of facies modeling, this could result in various interpretations of facies architecture, associations, geometries, and the way they are distributed in space. A quantitative approach to specify this uncertainty is to provide a set of alternative 3D training images from which several geostatistical models can be generated. In this paper, we consider quantifying uncertainty on facies models in the early development stage of a reservoir when there is still considerable uncertainty on the nature of the spatial distribution of the facies. At this stage, production data are available to further constrain uncertainty. We develop a workflow that consists of two steps: (1) determining which training images are no longer consistent with production data and should be rejected and (2) to history match with a given fixed training image. We illustrate our ideas and methodology on a test case derived from a real field case of predicting flow in a newly planned well in a turbidite reservoir off the African West coast.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Energy Resources Engineering Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Hyucksoo Park, Céline Scheidt & Jef Caers

  2. Streamsim Technologies, San Francisco, CA, USA

    Darryl Fenwick

  3. Advanced Resources and Risk Technologies, Sunnyvale, CA, USA

    Alexandre Boucher

Authors
  1. Hyucksoo Park
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  2. Céline Scheidt
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  3. Darryl Fenwick
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  4. Alexandre Boucher
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  5. Jef Caers
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Correspondence to Jef Caers.

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Park, H., Scheidt, C., Fenwick, D. et al. History matching and uncertainty quantification of facies models with multiple geological interpretations. Comput Geosci 17, 609–621 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-013-9343-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10596-013-9343-5

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