Integrating gravimetric and interferometric synthetic aperture radar data for enhancing reservoir history matching of carbonate gas and volatile oil reservoirs

Abstract

Reservoir history matching is assuming a critical role in understanding reservoir characteristics, tracking water fronts, and forecasting production. While production data have been incorporated for matching reservoir production levels and estimating critical reservoir parameters, the sparse spatial nature of this dataset limits the efficiency of the history matching process. Recently, gravimetry techniques have significantly advanced to the point of providing measurement accuracy in the microgal range and consequently can be used for the tracking of gas displacement caused by water influx. While gravity measurements provide information on subsurface density changes, i.e., the composition of the reservoir, these data do only yield marginal information about temporal displacements of oil and inflowing water. We propose to complement gravimetric data with interferometric synthetic aperture radar surface deformation data to exploit the strong pressure deformation relationship for enhancing fluid flow direction forecasts. We have developed an ensemble Kalman‐filter‐based history matching framework for gas, gas condensate, and volatile oil reservoirs, which synergizes time‐lapse gravity and interferometric synthetic aperture radar data for improved reservoir management and reservoir forecasts. Based on a dual state–parameter estimation algorithm separating the estimation of static reservoir parameters from the dynamic reservoir parameters, our numerical experiments demonstrate that history matching gravity measurements allow monitoring the density changes caused by oil–gas phase transition and water influx to determine the saturation levels, whereas the interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements help to improve the forecasts of hydrocarbon production and water displacement directions. The reservoir estimates resulting from the dual filtering scheme are on average 20%–40% better than those from the joint estimation scheme, but require about a 30% increase in computational cost.

Uncertainty Quantification and Global Sensitivity Analysis of Subsurface Flow Parameters to Gravimetric Variations During Pumping Tests in Unconfined Aquifers

“…Among the sets of geophysical data which can be of interest, gravimetric measurements are increasingly considered to carry valuable information to effectively complement drawdown data for aquifer characterization. Monitored gravity variations have been shown to embed a remarkable information content and are employed in several applications, including, e.g., geothermal energy (Hunt, ; Hinderer et al, ; Hunt & Bowyer, ; Hunt & Graham, ; Sofyan et al, ) or petroleum engineering (Alnes et al, ; Eiken et al, ; Kabirzadeh et al, ; Katterbauer et al, ; Young & Lumley, ). Local variations in the acceleration of gravity are due to the Newtonian attraction and to deformations created by loads/stresses.…”

Efficient big data assimilation through sparse representation: A 3D benchmark case study in petroleum engineering

“…Therefore, there is a high demand from the petroleum industry for efficient methods of big data analytics to extract, analyze and utilize the information from big 4D seismic data. Similar problems are also faced in many other fields that involve abundant data obtained through, for example, satellite remote sensing [ 4 ], medical imaging [ 5 ], geophysical surveys [ 6 , 7 ], and so on. As a result, big (geophysical) data assimilation has become an important topic in practice.…”