Petrel Thermal Simulation using ECLIPSE

© 2010 Schlumberger. All rights reserved.

An asterisk is used throughout this presentation to denote a mark of Schlumberger.

Other company, product, and service names are the properties of their respective
owners.
Agenda
Petrel RE Workflow

Thermal Workflow Specifics

Multi-Segment Wells

ECLIPSE Parallel

DEMO

Conclusions
Petrel & ECLIPSE: 2003

Petrel FloGrid
Schedule PVTi SCAL

ECLIPSE
Office
ECLIPSE
Black oil
SimOpt Compositional
Thermal
FrontSim

FloViz
Petrel & ECLIPSE: The Vision

Petrel ECLIPSE
Black oil
Compositional
Thermal
FrontSim
Petrel & ECLIPSE Today

ECLIPSE
Black oil
Petrel Compositional
Thermal
FrontSim
Why does Integration matter?

Original Geological
Model
Why does Integration matter?

Wells show communication 

engineering modification

Geologically
reasonable?
Predictive power?
Integration Matters!

Geological modification –
change channel direction
Thermal Simulation Capabilities in Petrel 2010

New Thermal Fluid Model

(including K-values and Viscosity
tables)
Heat loss calculation
Separator modeling
Thermal properties results
Rules for steam injection
(development strategy)
PLT, RFT simulation logs
Thermal Fluid Model
• Create or import the thermal fluid model:
• Components tab defines PVT and thermal properties of fluid:
Thermal Fluid Model

Thermal live oil option.

K-values
Fluid Specific heat
Critical properties (P &T)
Initial composition vs Depth
HO viscosity estimation
Water properties
Temperature vs depth
Heavy oil viscosity

Heavy oil viscosity calculation can be done either using tables or

using Andrade’s equation.
Thermal Fluid Model

• Viscosity tab defines

viscosity model for each
phase as function or table
 Create thermal boundary conditions
• Define area of interest
for connections
• Define thermal
properties of rock
surrounding reservoir
Thermal development strategy

New thermal injection fluid rule to provide steam properties such

as quality, pressure or temperature.
New Schedule keyword that will allow to write the keywords. No
keyword editor needed.
Create Steam drive scenario
• Development strategy rules define steam, injection and production controls.
• Can vary rule parameters in Petrel workflows and uncertainty studies.
• Thermal rules include:
• Well thermal injection
fluid properties
(WINJTEMP)
• Well steam-gas
injection control
(WCONINJE,
VFPINJ, WELSPECS/
WELSPECL)
• Well thermal
production control
(WCONPROD)
Vectors for thermal simulation

Thermal vectors added to Petrel to show results for

thermal processes such as heat losses, steam quality,
energy of the fluids, steam production rate and so on.
ECLIPSE Multi-Segmented Wells

Modelling of:
– complex well topology
– multi-phase flow effects in the wellbore

gas
oil Not single
water mixture
Multi-segmented Well Model
Well path is independent of grid
“Normal” connections are – Grid block connections are not forced to
located at grid block center depths, be at the same depth as the cell centers
so well „staggers‟ through the grid

MSW connections
can be at any depth,
allowing the well to remain
horizontal in a sloping grid Grid block centres
Multi-segmented Well Model

Heat Transfer Calculations:

• Segment-to-Segment
• Wellbore-to-Formation
• Overburden with Geothermal Gradient
Multi-segmented wells

Use of MSW in SAGD process to model

steam circulation in wells
Heat transfer from the tubing/annular to the
reservoir can be modeled
MSW, Why it matters?
No MSW MSW

Multi segmented wells capability for pressure drops calculation in horizontal wells.
In steam based processes, MSW will show accurate steam chamber displacement.
No overestimation of chamber behavior.
Thermal MSW
• Define thermal properties of completion
string
• Drop in optional temperature log
PLT / RFT logs

PLT/ RFT logs for well productivity behavior based on

simulation results.
With MSW, properties such as temperature, pressure
and steam quality can be plot as a RFT logs.
Sensitivity analysis
• Define objective function , e.g.
cumulative field oil production
• Define uncertain parameters from any
item contributing to the case e.g.
maximum temperature of heater
• Run sensitivity analysis
• Analyse results using for example
tornado plots and plots of objective
function against variables
Optimization
• Finds the optimal value of the control
variables for the objective function
• e.g. find the heater temperature or steam
quality that maximizes total field oil
production
Multiple Tubing Strings
Enhancements to the multi-segment well model for dual tubing
Dual tubing is increasingly being used in SAGD processes where
typically one or more pairs of injectors and producers are deployed in
either a side-by-side or concentric configuration.

long short inner outer

string string string string
(toe) (heel) (toe) (heel)

Side-by-side Concentric
Multiple Tubing Strings

Is Ip
Ps Pp • Define multi-segment well as per configuration
• Associate any segment with a secondary well name
• Apply production and injection controls to both primary
and secondary wells
• Any number of secondary producers or injectors.
• Choice of primary well remains with user.
Additional Capabilities

Thermal release also includes

• Equilibration with oil denser than water
• Correlations allowing the transmissibility to be altered as the porosity is modified in
rock compaction cases
• Thermal Palmer-Mansouri rock model
• Separate thermal conductivity for oil, gas, water and rock
Faster runtimes with Parallel Processing

Parallel ECLIPSE – Why?

• The total elapsed time may be reduced.

• The memory requirement per domain may be smaller.
• Parallel allows you to run problems that may not be possible because of memory
constraints with the current hardware
• Parallel opens up workflows based on uncertainty for thermal and geological
models
• Both Linux (Red Hat) and Windows HPC can be used
Parallel ECLIPSE: How does it work

• By Splitting the job into

smaller domains, and
1 2 running each domain on
3 4 a separate core
5 6 • In ECLIPSE Thermal, we
7 8 have 2D partitioning in X
9 10 and Y
11 12
• Each domain
13 14 communicates with its
15 16 neighbor
Parallel Processing communications

• Information also needs to

be “passed up the chain”
1 2
3 4
6 • Large volumes of data
5
8 exchange between
7
10 cores, therefore
9
interconnect speed is
11 12
crucial
13 14
• Consult SIS before
15 16
buying hardware
Scaling Example
E300 numbers comparing EX 8 core and 6 core

40000

35000

30000
elapsed timings

25000

20000

15000

10000

5000

0
1 2 4 8 16 32
8 core EX 35932 23400 12382 7502 5729 5520
6 core EX 29833 18670 10675 6183 4434
HP BL460 G6 18986 11360 7606 5466 3535 3338

• Current record is 512-way parallel on ECLIPSE with 16 million cell model

Realistic Modeling

ERCB
Conclusions
Petrel workflows are fully enabled for thermal reservoir simulation with ECLIPSE
Thermal Fluid models easily managed
Wellbore and reservoir heat loss accurately calculated
RFT/ PLT simulated logs provide better understanding of well behavior
MSW fully captures the physics of thermal fluid flow in the wellbore
3D visualization reveals the full complexity of interacting steam chambers

Parallel ECLIPSE allows uncertainty and run optimization workflows in practical time