Petroleum Reservoir Simulations

In this highly anticipated volume, the world-renowned authors take a basic approach to present the principles of petroleum reservoir simulation in an easy-to-use and accessible format. Applicable to any oil and gas recovery method, this book uses a block-centered grid and a point-distributed grid. It treats various boundary conditions as fictitious wells, gives algebraic equations for their flowrates and presents an elaborate treatment of radial grid for single-well simulation to analyze well test results and to create well pseudo-functions necessary in conducting a practical reservoir simulation study.

Jamal H. Abou-Kassem is professor of petroleum engineering at the UAE University in the United Arab Emirates, where he has taught since 1993. Before joining the UAE University,he was associate professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at The Pennsylvania State University (1985-1992), where he was a tenured faculty member, supervised to completion two MS and two PhD students, and served on 10 thesis advisory committees. He held posts with the Research Institute of KFUPM (1981-1984) in Saudi Arabia and Pan Canadian Petroleum Ltd. (1978-1979) in Canada. He received a BE (Cairo U., Egypt, 1970) and MS (U. of Alberta, Canada, 1975) degree in petroleum engineering, and earned a PhD degree in reservoir simulation from the U. of Calgary (Canada) in 1981. He is a co-author oftwo textbooks, author/co-author of 32 technical articles in first class journals, and another 12 technical articles in symposium proceedings. His areas of expertise cover reservoir simulation, thermal and polymer EOR methods, fluid flow through porous media, and fundamental properties of natural gas. He has attended and presented numerous technical papers in international, regional, and local petroleum engineering symposiums. He has 36 years of experience in academia, research organizations, and petroleum industry. He is a member of SPE.Dr. S.M. Farouq Ali is Distinguished Professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Houston. He has over 40 years of experience in industry and academia, having served as a professor at Pennsylvania State University, the University of Alberta and the University of Regina. Considered one of the world's leading experts in reservoir engineering, oil recovery and simulation, Farouq Ali advises oil companies and various governments on oil policy and production strategies. He has authored more than 500 papers, conducted more than 200 petroleum reservoir studies and designed over 30 major oil fields projects. Farouq Ali earned his master's and doctoral degrees in petroleum and natural gas engineering from Penn State University. As a graduate student he conducted pioneering research on micellar-polymer flooding, a process in which a micelle solution is pumped into a reservoir to recover oil. The technique has since become the industry standard for enhanced oil recovery. He is also credited with some of the earliest experimental work on steam flooding, a method of injecting steam to extract heavy crude oil from an oil reservoir. Today steam injection is one of the primary enhanced oil recovery techniques in use. Farouq Ali has been honored with awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

PrefaceIntroductionNomenclature1 Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Milestones for the Engineering Approach 1.3 Importance of the Engineering and Mathematical Approaches 1.4 Summary 1.5 Exercises2 Single-Phase Fluid Flow Equations in Multidimensional Domain 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Properties of Single-Phase Fluid 2.3 Properties of Porous Media 2.4 Reservoir Discretization 2.5 Basic Engineering Concepts 2.6 Multidimensional Flow in Cartesian Coordinates 2.7 Multidimensional Flow in Radial-Cylindrical Coordinates 2.8 Summary 2.9 Exercises 3 Flow Equations Using CVFD Terminology 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Flow Equations Using CVFD Terminology 3.3 Flow Equations in Radial-Cylindrical Coordinates Using CVFD Terminology 3.4 Flow Equations Using CVFD Terminology in any Block Ordering Scheme 3.5 Summary 3.6 Exercises4 Simulation with a Block-Centered Grid 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Reservoir Discretization 4.3 Flow Equation for Boundary Gridblocks 4.4 Treatment of Boundary Conditions 4.5 Calculation of Transmissibilities 4.6 Symmetry and Its Use in Solving Practical Problems 4.7 Summary 4.8 Exercises5 Simulation with a Point-Distributed Grid 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Reservoir Discretization 5.3 Flow Equation for Boundary Gridpoints 5.4 Treatment of Boundary Conditions 5.5 Calculation of Transmissibilities 5.6 Symmetry and Its Use in Solving Practical Problems 5.7 Summary 5.8 Exercises6 Well Representation in Simulators 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Single-Block Wells 6.3 Multiblock Wells 6.4 Practical Considerations Dealing with Modeling Well Operating Conditions 6.5 Summary 6.6 Exercises7 Single-Phase Flow Equation for Various Fluids 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Pressure Dependence of Fluid and Rock Properties 7.3 General Single-Phase Flow Equation in Multi Dimensions 7.4 Summary 7.5 Exercises8 Linearization of Flow Equations 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Nonlinear Terms in Flow Equations 8.3 Nonlinearity of Flow Equations For Various Fluids 8.4 Linearization of Nonlinear Terms 8.5 Linearized Flow Equations in Time 8.6 Summary 8.7 Exercises9 Methods of Solution of Linear Equations 9.1 Introduction 9.2 Direct Solution Methods 9.3 Iterative Solution Methods 9.4 Summary 9.5 Exercises10 Introduction to Modeling Multiphase Flow in Petroleum Reservoirs 10.1 Introduction 10.2 Reservoir Engineering Concepts in Multiphase Flow 10.3 Multiphase Flow Models 10.4 Solution of Multiphase Flow Equations 10.5 Material Balance Checks 10.6 Advancing Solution in Time 10.7 Summary 10.8 ExercisesA User's Manual for Single-Phase Simulator A.1 Introduction A.2 Data File Preparation A.3 Description of Variables Used in Preparing a Data File A.4 Instructions to Run Simulator A.5 Limitations Imposed on the Compiled Version A.6 Example of a Prepared Data FileReferences Author IndexSubject Index