Events

Speaker:  Dr. Marco R. Thiele
Co-Founder/President of Streamsim Technologies and Consulting Professor – Department of Energy Resource Engineering, Stanford University

Seminar Title: “Streamline-Based Flow Modeling”

Abstract:

Streamline-based flow modeling is an effective and complementary approach to more traditional numerical methods for solving subsurface fluid flow problems.

A brief overview of SL technology will be presented, and the usefulness and uniqueness of SL simulation illustrated in the context of what are generally considered important reservoir engineering problems. Specifically, SL simulation is discussed in the context of two key applications: (1) surveillance of mature floods in which extracting reliable pattern metrics is central to any management strategy; and (2) the screening and selection of geological models which is a key ingredient in uncertainty workflows that attempt to relate uncertainty in forecasts to uncertainties in the geological description.

Biography:

Dr. Thiele is co-founder and president of Streamsim Technologies and a Consulting Professor in the Department of Energy Resource Engineering at Stanford University. He received his PhD from Stanford University in 1994 and his Masters and Bachelors from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 and 1986 respectively, all in Petroleum Engineering. Before joining Streamsim, he was an Acting Assistant Professor at Stanford teaching graduate-level courses on Reservoir Simulation, Thermodynamics of Phase Behavior, and Applied Mathematics in Reservoir Engineering from ‘94 to ’97.

Dr. Thiele is a recipient of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) 2012 Lester C. Uren award for distinguished achievement in the technology of Petroleum Engineering, was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in the 2011/12 season, and received the 2010 SPE “A Peer Apart” award for reviewing more than 100 technical papers. In 1996 he received the SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal for professional achievement in Petroleum Engineering, and was the 1994 International SPE Student Paper Contest winner. Dr. Thiele is an SPE Distinguished Member since 2012 and a member of SPE since 1985.

Dr. Thiele was a program committee member for the 19th and 20th SPE IOR Symposium, was an Associated Technical Editor for SPEREE from 2005-2012, was a program committee member for the 2011 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium, and was a member of the SPE Primer & Books Committee from 2004 to 2010.

Dr. Thiele’s research interests revolve around the use of streamline-based reservoir simulation technology to solve outstanding problems associated with managing and optimizing brown fields, the improved modeling of IOE/EOR processes at the field-scale, and using model ensembles to quantify uncertainties associated with reservoir modeling and decision making.