Alejandro Albertoni's thesis
by
Alejandro Albertoni, MSE
University of Texas at Austin, 2002
Supervisor: Larry W. Lake
Reservoir characterization is one of the most important factors in successful reservoir
management. The knowledge of reservoir heterogeneities and discontinuities is particularly
relevant to the optimization of the operations and the economics of waterfloods. Moreover,
developing efficient methods to appropriately describe the reservoir behavior has always
been one of the most challenging goals in reservoir engineering because the information
necessary for a good characterization is, most of the times, either scarce or very
expensive to obtain and process.
This research project presents a practical technique to quantify communication between
wells in reservoir using only production and injection rate data. The technique combines
a constrained multivariate linear regression analysis with diffusivity concepts to provide
information about permeability trends and the presence of transmissibility barriers.
The technique presented in this research project calculates the fraction of flow in a
producer caused by each of the injectors. This procedure also performs the analysis on a
field-wide basis and analyzes multiple well influences in a single step. It uses filters
to account for the time lag and attenuation that occurs between the stimulus (injection)
and the response (production).
The method was developed and tested in synthetic fields using a numerical simulator and
then applied to two waterflooded fields in Argentina. Application to numerically
simulated fields reproduced input trends quite well. The simulation results indicate
that the connectivity between wells is described by coefficients that only depend on
geology and relative position between wells; they are independent of injection/production
rates. Such validation on the field data is impossible; however, the results do seem to
indicate the presence of known geological features.
The results of this work can be used to improve the performance of an existing waterflood
by suggesting how well patterns might be changed or managed. They could also be used to
model flow in the reservoir. Thus, valuable reservoir management and characterization
tools are provided from the always-available measurements of production and injection
rates at existing wells without the need for additional data. Several recommendations
for further research on this topic are also presented.
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