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216 comments on DrumBeat: November 21, 2008
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216 comments on DrumBeat: November 21, 2008
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Hello TODers,
You may recall that I found the weblink to the 2002 Aramco Ghawar oil-sat graphic that Stuart Staniford, Euan Mearns, F_F, and so many others had great fun discussing.
Recently, Ghawar was massively modeled again using 258 million cells on a much larger, next-gen supercomputer cluster. If we could find this simulation, it could prove instructive on the remaining reserves of Ghawar.
Here are two links with some great detail [PDF Warnings]:
http://www.vrgeo.org/fileadmin/VRGeo/Bilder/VRGeo_Papers/article.pdf
-----------------------
From Mega-Cell to Giga-Cell Reservoir Simulation
..In an effort to build a giga-cell simulator, recently Saudi
Aramco’s scientists completed a reservoir simulation model
run for the Ghawar Arab-D reservoir using 258 million active
cells.
------------------------
http://www.spe.org/atce/2008/technical/schedule/documents/116675.pdf
-----------------------
From Mega-Cell to Giga-Cell Reservoir Simulation SPE116675
------------------------
Be sure to see the vertical reservoir slices and the new enhanced model for Abquaiq.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
That's some fascinating stuff. Thanks!
Unfortunately, I learned about their new modeling options... and nothing about what the models told them.
Hello Positive_Phototaxis,
Sorry, I don't know how to post graphics, but the higher resolution of the newer models appear to show more waterfront penetration, but also more areas of bypassed oil probably due to Super-K fractures. Remember that 6 years have passed since the 2002 graphic, but I am not skilled like SS, Euan, and F-F to know the relative significance of the change over time vs Ghawar's extraction and depletion. Hopefully WT, Rockman, GaryP, and other geologists/reservoir engineers will take a gander at these links.
Hint: since these are PDFs you can use the zoom-in tool to look for greater detail. JoulesBurn, GaryP, and some other TODers are pretty good at pixel and graphics manipulation.
For TOD newbies wondering what could happen if we find the NEW Ghawar Oil-Sat graphic, here is a link to what SS did earlier:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2470
---------------------
Depletion Levels in Ghawar
Posted by Stuart Staniford on May 15, 2007
----------------------
My guess is that this was the most influential and widely read TOD keypost [also presented by SS at ASPO].
Joules Bourne-
Take the delta Sw from the cross section graphic in the PDF for a watered out zone multiply it by your pore volume and divide by the formation volume factor and there is your maximum ultimate recovery under waterflood.
It's all there. I can't for the life of me figure why someone would display delta Sw from -.6 to +1.6 though.
FF
Hello F_F,
Thxs for being here [maybe you can drag SS back too]. Here is an earlier post by JoulesBurn that may help with the Abqaiq cross-section in the new links I posted today:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2945/285275
-------------------
graphic by Saleri
------------------
EDIT: F_F Quote:"I can't for the life of me figure why someone would display delta Sw from -.6 to +1.6 though."
Probably totally wrong and a total WAG on my part, but maybe using high pressure gas from the underlying Khuff formation to help sweep isolated oil towards the well?
A quick canter through shows nothing dramatic. However the dimensions on the 3D plots looks to be an order of magnitude out on the physical size expected of these areas. So I wonder if someone hasn't got wise and maybe played with the data somewhat?
Saying that, here is a capture of what looks to be a run on Ghawar, with some pertinent questions. Maybe Cycle = years since run start time? If so, and if you tie the first to the previous depletion data on the state of Uthmaniyah, cycle 10 could be the current/near future state of the field? With a heavy emphasis on the questionable nature of the data and the big assumptions being drawn.
Edit for high pressure, read low, scale confused me.
BTW, the two views of Ghawar in this presentation, from two slightly different orientations, allows you to create a stereo pair. Excepting glasses and all the other ways of viewing 3D pairs, this link presents the two images in 'wobblevision', which is about as good as you can get for 3D tricks on normal displays.
Egads, man! You have come up with a new way of doing EOR!
Just wobble that oil out!
Holographic displays, pah!
Star Wars would have been so different if the 3D imagery were in wobblevision!
Anyway, what think you of the questions arising from the images?
I'm not sure what you are trying to gather from the pressure plots. The field could be fully pressurized if the water injection pressure to all the wells. You would have low pressure at some wells if they aren't well connected hydraulically to the injectors. Changes mean ... ??
That's more a question for you. Pressure goes up when a zone is depleted. That's what it appears to show, so what 'pressure' is being shown? Remaining oil pressure? Whatever it is it follows the pattern of depletion.
If the presentations are useful for gaining an insight into what the Saudis are looking at, what does that say? And what is that area to the west of Haradh in the later cycles of the model?
Look at them closely, there is something being said there I think.
Pressure at the wells does not decrease as the oil is depleted, but it is being maintained by water injection. The oil doesn't have any pressure -- only what is being supplied externally (or by the aquifer, if you stop injection).
I also don't know what it means for there to be a pressure gradient outwards from Ghawar. There are no wells out there, so no way to measure it anyway.
I'll think about it, but ??????
Super-K fractures blowing water outside the Ghawar reservoir proper?
i think your work on khurias (sp ?) indicated that they were pressuring the entire aquifer for however many miles it is to khurias.
No. They are piping water all the way to Khurais, but it has its own injection wells.
Edit:
The basic problem with trying to read anything into these "results" beyond Ghawar's borders is that the inputs into the simulations come from individual wells within Ghawar. The billions of cells which make up the 3d volume used for the simulation get their properties by interpolation of the values of the physical properties near the wells (porosity, permeability, etc.).
Outside of Ghawar, there are no wells. Thus, there is no data on which to base simulations. So speculation about what these figures mean is just an exercise in randomness.
JB
"The billions of cells which make up the 3d volume used for the simulation get their properties by interpolation of the values of the physical properties near the wells (porosity, permeability, etc.)"
generally, and a big generally here, i question if dividing the reservoir into smaller grid blocks (cells) based upon interpolation gives any improvement in the quality of the results. the interpolated reservoir properties may or may not be accurate. if they have seismic data upon which to base changes in reservoir properties, that is a different matter and i think that is outlined in the pdf.
the golden rule of reservoir simulation is to use the least number of grid blocks that will adequately solve the problem at hand. and trying to model a reservoir with too few grid blocks may not give good results either. i know from experience that using too few layers will result in questionable results and coincidentally that was in a gravity stable case(a reservoir that was shut in for 28 yrs).
reading through the pdf, i couldnt help but think i was being given a sales job.
and wrt khurais, yes, that is not the one i was thinking of. but wasnt there a field you posted upon a few months ago that i thought was 17 miles or so from ghawar where the reservoir pressure climbed over a shut in period, probably the result of injection into the aquifer adjacent to ghawar.
Harmaliyah
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3754
Yes, the pressure there was increasing and moving the oil around. But in the present case, the pressures outside the reservoir are decreasing (and the values are all to high). Oh well.
if the saudis are showing a pressure gradient away from the reservoir, that implies pressure support from the aquifer which is kind of hard to believe.
some models have a pseudo acquifer function to account for water influx, a fudge factor, if you will, to obtain a history match on pressure. which is just another way of saying that a model, any model does not provide a unique solution to the problem at hand.
i get an adobe message that the file is damaged and cannot be repaired.
First link works for me but the 2nd also refuses here.
Sorry, not a computer guru, but the second link still works fine for me. It has the better detailed graphics too. Try finding it yourself in google, maybe that will help. Good luck.
Toto,
Right, the link is fine but the document doesn't download correctly/fully. Will try later again, at home on the old PC ;-)
BTW that SS keypost you link above, over 16000 words, is still bookmarked and clanced over now and then; truly groundbraking work. Let's hope that he can give us an occasional treat like this.
Try right clicking and "Save As" instead of letting the browser open it.
Great find, Bob!
How is the weather in Dhahra...I mean "Phoenix" today?
JB
Thxs, but I need some shuteye--up all night googling/trying to find the NEW Ghawar simulation, maybe some other TODer will get lucky as I am not a Google-guru, nor a SPE member. Hopefully, you TopTODers can 'flog this dog' for some more great Keyposts. Later!
Can't go to sleep til I point out the graphic on the 1980 well [assume this is the date it was first drilled]. Doesn't it seem awfully watered out for only being 28 years old? It should be pretty far updip; located up the anticline,shouldn't it?
It looks to be on the Northern extremity plunging nose of the Ain Dar Anticline to me just be the steep parabolic shape.
So I think it is relatively low structurally.
FF
toto,
Very interesting about the expanding modeling capability...thanks. OTOH, when I've worked with reservoir engineers on similar but smaller models the starting point begins with assumptions regarding not only the current state but also all those myriad assumptions regarding the dynamics of the flow. As I'm sure and most others here know, a prejudicial selection process can lead towards a presumed answer.
I not knocking modeling per se. It can be handy to produce future dynamic changes. All my efforts in recovery projects have been based on historical production data. Of course, when a field just begins producing the task is the most difficult. A model might predict how the water front may move through a field but this again requires many assumptions. OTOH, if a field has produced for a long period, such as Ghawar, and the operator has maintained good records (we hope the KSA has) then modeling becomes much easier: with the exception of introducing new factors, the past will do a pretty good job of predicting the future. as one example, if the KSA has been following standard procedures, they have a very clear picture of the movement of the water front through various segments of the field. Simply measuring monthly the water cut in each well would give not only a very good model for the front movement but also the recovery efficiency. Granted the size of Ghawar is unique, but these production mapping methods are decades old. As I mentioned in an earlier post, nothing is more difficult to estimate than oil recovery from a water drive reservoir before it begins producing. At this time you're left with only volumetric analysis and a ton of assumptions. But later in the life of a water drive reservoir, as wells are beginning to cut water, or even water out, the process becomes much easier. Regardless of how a model might predict the water front movement, nothing matches the accuracy of actually watching it move across the reservoir. Ever the positive effects of water injection can clearly be seen if the historical data is available.
Modeling the effects of future injection or redevelopment plans is critical. But estimating field performance to date doesn't require any modeling. Just the simple analysis individual well production history. An Excel spreadsheet is all one needs.
Which one are you referring to?
The graphic on page 13 (Well D) depicts a cross section somewhere in Abqaiq in 1981. Water injection was not used in Ghawar until 1965 or so.
Page 5
Shows the change in water saturation over 30 years between coarse and fine cell simulation.
That change in water saturation divided by the formation volume factor is the oil recovery.
FF
FF,
I understand your point about page 5, but the well there ("new well") isn't the one he is referring to in his comment above mine, or is it?
JB
Joules-
All I am trying to say is that Aramco has to load a relative permeability curve in that simulator to capture the displacement process of oil by water.
Now the most critical component for estimating recovery from that process is what we call the displacement efficiency. It is the waterflood mobile oil divided by the original oil in place. In theory, the waterflood mobile oil saturation is 1- Sor- Swc. Where Sor is residual oil saturation (I think Saleri shows it to be about 0.20), the connate water saturation is about .21. But under a Buckley Leverett construction, we draw a tangent to the fractional flow curve and the average water saturation after water breakthrough is defined by the tangent to that curve. This will always result in a lower mobile oil saturation than 1- Sor-Swc at water breakthrough. Water breakthrough in a layer in this field really is the death of its practical producing life (for our purposes).
All of these critical saturation values are buried in the colors in figure 5. But to me they are not easy to extract.
FF
Given that a delta Sw only gives you the change in water saturation (over 30 years), it would seem you need more information. How would you extract a FF curve from those cross sections?
In the SPE paper Bob found:
http://www.spe.org/atce/2008/technical/schedule/documents/116675.pdf
I am interested in which graphics apply to which fields, and there are some hints and (more fun!) hidden clues.
If you mouse over the well log, the tool tip text reads "ahd_wellLog_cropped".
AHD is Abu Hadriya, recently redeveloped as part of the Khursaniyah project.
tool tip says "utm283", meaning Uthmaniyah (Ghawar) well 283.
"ut654" -- I still say Uthmaniyah well 654
ttips say "abqq0100_48_1981" and "abqq0100_192_1981a", so definitely Abqaiq. Not at the top, though, because there is no gas cap in the XSXN.
ttip says "ElGr_684_SO_1964". "ElGr" means nothing to me, but the arrow points to Abqaiq, which does have a gas cap. It looks to be a north-south cross section, but seems a bit watered out for 1964.
Obviously taken at Disneyland Dhahran.
from the 1st pdf:
"This example was chosen for the largest company asset, the Ghawar reservoir, since a one percent recovery increase would yield an additional billion barrels"
there you have it: aramco expects to recover 100 Gb from ghawar...... and we are left to wonder, are they claiming 100 Gb remaining or ultimate ? or does it matter ?