Advanced technology for predicting the fluid flow attributes of naturally fractured reservoirs from quantitative geological data and modeling
This report summarizes the work carried out during the period of September 29, 2001 to September 28, 2002 under DOE Research Contract No. DE-FC26-00BC15308. Our goal is to establish an integrated methodology of fractured reservoir characterization and show how that can be incorporated into fluid flow simulation. We have made progress in all of our proposed tasks this year. We have continued to study the microstructures associated with fractures to document the interaction between fracture growth and diagenetic mineral growth in subsurface reservoir rocks. We have developed a model to simulate the geochemical controls on fracture mineralization. Under certain geologic conditions, the process can be classified as convection- or reaction-dominated using Peclet number and Damkohler number. The model shows that to have a relatively uniform deposition of calcite within a fracture, the velocity of supersaturated solution must be very high or the solution must be only slightly supersaturated with respect to calcite. We have postulated a preliminary model to explain the dependence of subcritical crack index on lithologic and diagenetic parameters. Grain size, cement content, and porosity dominate the subcritical index value, given the same chemical environment. Finally, using subcritical crack growth measurements from a West Texas dolomite reservoir and our fracture propagation model, we generated natural fracture networks that were imported into a reservoir simulator. We found that reservoir block permeability depended not only on the intensity of fracturing (as measured by the cumulative length of fractures per area) but also the degree of clustering and the average length of the individual fracture segments in a population. This type of modeling at the outcrop scale will be a stepping stone to determining effective simulation block permeability for field scale modeling. Finally, we have developed a technique for a direct analysis of well rate fluctuations that allows determination of the connectivity between well pairs in injection processes. The results of this analysis appear to agree with independently-determined geological features and should be useful in determining fracture patterns flow characteristics at the field scale.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-00BC15308
- OSTI ID:
- 820624
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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