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US 11,143,790 B2Granted
Modelling geological faults
AssigneeTotal SA
InventorsClarisse Vergnes, Stephane Vignau, Pierre Bergey, Florent Lallier
Life of this patent
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Abstract
To model hydrocarbon reservoirs more accurately, models of a geological volume using a three dimensional grid of cells populated with data from seismic studies are augmented by providing fine-grained stochastic models of the distribution of relays in fault zones and modelling the flow of hydrocarbons taking account the modelled relays.
Claims14
A method of simulating fluid flow in a geological volume comprising a geological fault, the method comprising:
- generating a three dimensional grid of cells representative of the structure of the geological volume, the cells comprising base cells;
- classifying a plurality of base cells as fault cells corresponding to the fault in the geological volume;
- classifying one or more sets of fault cells as relay cell sets corresponding to assumed locations of relays within the fault in the geological volume;
- generating a three dimensional relay grid of relay sub-cells in the place of each relay cell set, the relay sub-cells of each relay grid being representative of a relay structure within the geological fault and having a finer grid-cell dimension than that of the cells of the relay cell set;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay cell sets based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells, and
- determining transmissibilities between the base cells based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells, wherein the classification of the one or more relay cell sets provides a spatially even distribution of relay cell sets along the direction of the length of the fault.
4 more elements
A method of simulating fluid flow in a geological volume comprising a geological fault, the method comprising:
- generating a three dimensional grid of cells representative of the structure of the geological volume, the cells comprising base cells;
- classifying a plurality of base cells as fault cells corresponding to the fault in the geological volume;
- classifying one or more sets of fault cells as relay cell sets corresponding to assumed locations of relays within the fault in the geological volume;
- generating a three dimensional relay grid of relay sub-cells in the place of each relay cell set, the relay sub-cells of each relay grid being representative of a relay structure within the geological fault and having a finer grid-cell dimension than that of the cells of the relay cell set;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay cell sets based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells, and
- determining transmissibilities between the base cells based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub, wherein the number of classified relay cell sets is determined based on a random distribution.
4 more elements
A method of simulating fluid flow in a geological volume comprising a geological fault, the method comprising:
- generating a three dimensional grid of cells representative of the structure of the geological volume, the cells comprising base cells;
- classifying a plurality of base cells as fault cells corresponding to the fault in the geological volume;
- classifying one or more sets of the fault cells as relay cell sets corresponding to assumed locations of relays within the fault in the geological volume;
- generating a three dimensional relay grid of relay sub-cells in the place of each relay cell set, the relay sub-cells of each relay grid being representative of a relay structure within the geological fault and having a finer grid-cell dimension than that of the cells of the relay cell set;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells;
- determining transmissibilities between the relay cell sets based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells, and
- determining transmissibilities between the base cells based on the determined transmissibilities between the relay sub-cells;
- and wherein:
- the vertical faces of the fault cells are vertically offset from the fault;
- and
- the fault cells comprise cutted fault cells and non-cutted fault cells, the cutted fault cells having a reduced height as compared to the height of the non-cutted fault cells, the method further comprising:
- detecting hybrid-interface fault cells interfacing with both the fault and the cutted cells;
- generating pseudo fault cells representing the fault cells in which the hybrid-interface fault cells are represented by pseudo fault cells having a height limited to the height of the portion of the hybrid-interface fault cells interfacing with the fault;
- and
- the one or more sets of cells classified as relay cell sets are pseudo fault cells.
12 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.