HR: 1340h
AN: H13C-1388    [Abstracts]
TI: Dependence of Upscaled Effective Permeability Upon Fracture Orientation and Connectivity in Naturally Fractured Reservoirs
AU: * Gulamali, M Y
EM: m.gulamali@imperial.ac.uk
AF: Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
AU: Matthai, S K
EM: s.matthai@imperial.ac.uk
AF: Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, United Kingdom
AB: Although geologically informed models of hydrocarbon reservoirs are available at relatively high resolution, i.e. the pore scale, numerical reservoir simulators require descriptions at a larger scale, i.e. the grid-block scale, in order to produce exploitable information about the reservoir. This process, known as upscaling, is especially complicated, yet relevant, in the case of naturally fractured reservoirs which contain over half of the global hydrocarbon reserves, and are extremely heterogeneous, exhibiting complicated multiphase flow behaviour at all scales. In this work we study the effect of discrete fracture networks upon the upscaled effective permeability of the system, using a sophisticated numerical pressure-solver method based upon a finite element-finite volume scheme. We begin by examining an idealized scenario consisting of a single discrete fracture in two dimensions, and show how the upscaled effective permeability is a non-additive property. This investigation is extended to real fracture networks using outcrop data, where we find the upscaled effective permeability to be dependent upon the orientation and connectivity of the fracture network. Finally, we present our ideas for examining the influence of three dimensional fractures upon upscaled reservoir parameters.
DE: 1800 HYDROLOGY
DE: 1805 Computational hydrology
DE: 1857 Reservoirs (surface)
DE: 1894 Instruments and techniques: modeling
SC: Hydrology [H]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting