Abstract
Unsteady-state (USS) core flood experiments provide data for deriving two-phase relative permeability and capillary pressure functions. The experimental data is uncertain due to measurement errors, and the accuracy of the derived flow functions is limited by both data and modeling errors.
History matching provides a reasonable means of deriving in-phase flow functions from uncertain unsteady-state experimental data. This approach is preferred to other analytical procedures, which involve data smoothing and differentiation. Data smoothing leads to loss of information while data differentiation is a mathematically unstable procedure, which could be error magnifying. The problem is non-linear, inverse and ill posed. Hence the history-matching procedure gives a non-unique solution.
This paper presents a procedure for quantifying the uncertainty in two-phase flow functions, using unsteady-state experimental data. We validate the methodology using synthetic data.
We investigate the impact of uncertain flow functions on a homogeneous reservoir model using the Buckley–Leverett theory. Using a synthetic, heterogeneous reservoir model, we estimate the uncertainty in oil recovery efficiency due to uncertainty in the flow functions.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
S. Akin L.M. Castanier W.E. Brigham (1999) ArticleTitleEffect of temperature on heavy oil/water relative permeabilities Soc. Petrol. Eng. J. 54120 1–11
J.S. Archer P.G. Wall (1991) Petroleum Engineering: Principles and Practice Graham & Trotman London
J. S. Archer S. W. Wong (1973) ArticleTitleUse of a reservoir simulator to interpret laboratory waterflood data Soc. Petrol. Eng. J. 3551 343–347
S.E. Buckley M.C. Leverett (1942) ArticleTitleMechanisms of fluid displacement in sands Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng. 146 107–116
G. Chavent G. Cohen M. Espy (1980) ArticleTitleDetermination of relative permeabilities and capillary pressures by an automatic adjustment method Soc. Petrol. Eng. 9237 1–10
G.L. Chierici (1981) ArticleTitleNovel relations for drainage and imbibition relative permeabilities Soc. Petrol. Eng. 10165 1–10
M.A. Christie (1996) ArticleTitleUpscaling for reservoir simulation Soc. Petrol. Eng. 37324 1–5
M.A. Christie M.J. Blunt (2001) ArticleTitleTenth SPE Comparative Solution Project: a comparison of upscaling techniques Soc. Petrol. Eng. 66599 1–9
F. Civan E.C. Donaldson (1987) ArticleTitleRelative permeability from unsteady-state displacements: an analytical interpretation Soc. Petrol. Eng. 16200 139–155
Civan F. and Donaldson E. C. (1989). Relative permeability from unsteady-state displacements with capillary pressure included. SPE Form. Eval. (June) 189–193.
E.R. Collins (1976) Flow of Fluids through Porous Materials PennWell Books Tulsa, Oklahoma
A.T. Corey (1954) ArticleTitleThe Interrelation between gas and oil permeabilities Producers Monthly 19 38–41
Craig, F. F. Jr. (1971). The Reservoir Engineering Aspects of Waterflooding, Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, New York.
Floris, F. J. T., Bush, M. D., Cuypers, M., Roggero, F. and Syversveen, A. R. (1999). Comparison of production forecast uncertainty quantification methods – an integrated study, in: Proceedings of 1st Conference on Petroleum Geostatistics, Toulouse, France, pp. 1–20.
S.C. Gabbanelli A.G. Mezzatesta M.S. Bidner (1982) ArticleTitleOne-dimensional numerical simulation of waterflooding an oil reservoir Lat. Am. J. Heat Mass. Transf. 6 251–273
S. Geman D. Geman (1984) ArticleTitleStochastic relaxation, Gibbs distributions and the Bayesian restoration of images IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Int. 6 721–741 Occurrence Handle10.1109/TPAMI.1984.4767596
P.E. Gill W. Murray (1981) Practical Optimization Academic Press New York City
J. Glimm S. Hou Y.H. Lee D. Sharp K. Ye (2001) ArticleTitlePrediction of oil preduction with confidence intervals Soc. Petrol. Eng. 66350 1–15
J. Glimm S. Hou H. Kim D.H. Sharp (2001) ArticleTitleA probability model for errors in the numerical solutions of a partial differential equation Fluid Dyn. J. 9 485–493
C.A. Grattoni M.S. Bidner (1990) ArticleTitleHistory matching of unsteady-state corefloods for determining capillary pressure and relative permeabilities Soc. Petrol. Eng. 21135 1–8
K.M. Hansen G.S. Cunningham R.J. McKee (1977) ArticleTitleUncertainty assessment for reconstruction based on deformable geometry Int. J. Imag. Syst. Technol. 8 506–512 Occurrence Handle10.1002/(SICI)1098-1098(1997)8:6<506::AID-IMA2>3.0.CO;2-E
M. Honarpour L. Koederitz A.H. Harvey (1986) Relative Permeability of Petroleum Reservoirs CRC Press, Inc. Boca Raton, Florida
E.F. Johnson D.P. Bossler V.O. Naumann (1959) ArticleTitleCalculation of relative permeability from displacement experiments Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng. 216 370–372
P.D. Kerig A.T. Watson (1987) ArticleTitleA new algorithm for estimating relative permeabilities from displacement experiments Soc. Petrol. Eng. Reserv. Eval. 2 IssueID1 103–112
D.J. MacMillan (1987) ArticleTitleAutomatic history matching of laboratory corefloods to obtain relative-permeability curves Soc. Petrol. Eng. Reserv. Eval. 2 IssueID1 85–91
C. M. Marle (1981) Multiphase Flow in Porous Media Gulf Pub. Co. Texas
J.S. Osoba J.G. Richardson J.K. Kerver J.A. Hafford P.M. Blair (1951) ArticleTitleLaboratory measurements of relative permeability Trans. Am. Ins. Min. Eng. 192 47–56
J.G. Richardson J.K. Kerver J.A. Hafford J.S. Osoba (1952) ArticleTitleLaboratory determination of relative permeability Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng. 195 187–196
P.C. Richmond A.T. Watson (1990) ArticleTitleEstimation of multiphase flow functions from displacement experiments Soc. Reserv. Eng. 18569 1–7
M. Sambridge (1998) ArticleTitleExploring multidimensional landscapes without a map Inverse Probl. 14 427–440 Occurrence Handle10.1088/0266-5611/14/3/005
M. Sambridge (1999) ArticleTitleGeophysical inversion with a neighbourhood algorithm – 1. Searching a parameter space Geophys. J. Int. 138 479–494 Occurrence Handle10.1046/j.1365-246X.1999.00876.x
M. Sambridge (1999) ArticleTitleGeophysical inversion with a neighbourhood algorithm – II. Appraising the ensemble Geophys. J. Int. 138 727–745 Occurrence Handle10.1046/j.1365-246x.1999.00900.x
G.B. Savioli M.S. Bidner (1982) ArticleTitleThe influence of capillary pressure when determining relative permeability from unsteady-state corefloods Soc. Petrol. Eng. 23698 1–10
L.L. Schumaker (1981) Spline Functions: Basic Theory John Wiley & Sons New York
P.M. Sigmund F.G. McCaffery (1979) ArticleTitleAn improved unsteady-state procedure for determining the relative-permeability characteristics of heterogeneous porous media Soc. Petrol. Eng. J. 6720 1–14
D.S. Sivia (1996) Data Analysis – A Bayesian Tutorial Clarendon Press Oxford
Subbey S. (2000). Regularizing the Volterra Integral Equation – the Capillary Pressure Case. PhD thesis. University of Bergen, Norway
S. Subbey M. Christie M. Sambridge (2002a) ArticleTitleA strategy for rapid quantification of uncertainty in reservoir performance prediction Soc. Petrol. Eng. 79678 1–12
S. Subbey M. Christie M. Sambridge (2002b) ArticleTitleUncertainty reduction in reservoir modeling SIAM Contemp. Math. 295 457–467
S. Subbey M. Christie M. Sambridge (2004) ArticleTitleThe impact of uncertain centrifuge capillary pressure on reservoir simulation SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 26 IssueID2 537–557 Occurrence Handle10.1137/S1064827503426747
Tao T.M. and Watson A.T. (1984). Accuracy of JBN estimates of relative permeability: part 1 – error analysis. SPEJ (April) 209–214.
Tao, T. M. and Watson, A. T.: (1984), Accuracy of JBN estimates of relative permeability: part 2 – algorithms. SPEJ (April) 215–223.
A. Tarantola (1987) Inverse Problem Theory, Methods for Data Fitting and Model Parameter Estimation Elsevier Science Publishers Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A.T. Watson R. Kulkarni J.-E. Nordtvedt A. Sylte H. Urkedal (1998) ArticleTitleEstimation of porous media flow functions Meas. Sci. Technol. 9 898–905 Occurrence Handle10.1088/0957-0233/9/6/006
H.J. Welge (1952) ArticleTitleA simplified method for computing oil recovery by gas or water drive Trans. Am. Inst. Min. Eng. 195 91–98
Willhite G. P. (1986). Waterflooding, Society of Petroleum Engineers, Richardson, TX.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Subbey, S., Monfared, H., Christie, M. et al. Quantifying Uncertainty in Flow Functions Derived from SCAL Data. Transp Porous Med 65, 265–286 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-005-5998-2
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11242-005-5998-2
Keywords
- unsteady-state
- relative permeability
- capillary pressure
- uncertainty
- Buckley–Leverett
- heterogeneous reservoir
- oil recovery potential