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SPE 66362

Applications of Streamline Simulations to Reservoir Studies


P. Samier, L. Quettier (TotalFinaElf), M. Thiele (StreamSim)

Copyright 2001, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.


This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium held in
Houston, Texas, 1114 February 2001.
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Abstract
Computer models of oil reservoirs have become increasingly
more complex in order to represent geological reality and its
impact on fluid flow. Memory and CPU time limitations by
finite difference/volume simulators force a coarser resolution
of reservoirs models through upscaling.
Upscaling can lead to significant difficulties in reservoirs
studies: (1) while the fine-scale geological model is build from
petrophysical, log, and seismic data, its dynamic behaviour is
never checked. As a result, a coarse-scale reservoir study can
be linked to a fine-scale geological model but the two might
be inconsistent in their dynamic behaviour. (2) Conversely, the
upscaled model cannot be properly tested since the flow and
production behaviour at the fine-scale level is not available.
There is no reference solution for guiding important decisions
for building a consistent upscaled model. (3) A large number
of sector models are required in designing optimal well
patterns.
Streamlines simulation is now an attractive alternative to
overcome some of these drawbacks since it offers substantial
computational efficiency while minimising numerical
diffusion and grid orientation effects. It allows the integration
of fine-scale geological models into the reservoir engineering
workflow.
In this paper, we demonstrate the usefulness and efficiency of
a streamline simulator (3DSL5) in the reservoir engineering
workflow. We evaluate its speed, memory requirements and
scalability using tracer and black oil test data sets on an SGI
Origin 2000 (250 MHz MIPS). Our data are based on real
fields and range from 200000 to 7 millions cells with cells as
small as 30x30x0;5 meters. We examine problems with preand post-processing of large data sets and visualising such
simulations. Streamlines allowed us to check the validity of a

large geological model and to optimise wells patterns with


more than 30 producers and injectors. Application of
streamlines to the 10th SPE comparative solution project is
also discussed.
We demonstrate how streamline-based simulation has matured
from a research tool to an industrial application providing real
benefits to engineers as a complementary tool to existing
conventional simulation technology based on finite volumes.
Introduction
Dynamic flow simulation is still a bottleneck in most
integrated reservoir studies that attempt to reconcile the
geological model with seismic data and well data. Threedimensional, high resolution (3DHR) seismic data as well as
improved 3D static modeling tools produce models that are
ever more detailed and allow significantly more faults than the
previous generation of static models. Todays fine-scale
models are commonly in the range of 1 to 10 million cells. On
the other hand, flow simulation technology based on finite
volumes (FV) or finite differences (FD) is mature. Any
improvements are expected mainly from parallel processing of
key modules such as the simultaneous solution of the
linearized flow equations or PVT calculations. As a result,
only relatively small dynamic models ( 100000 active cells)
can be considered in routine engineering studies. Dynamic
flow simulation has also suffered from recent cost cutting by
reserving large-scale computing power (machines with more
than 1000 processors) to seismic processing, while shifting
most other simulations to PC clusters with a limited number of
processors (8 to 32).
Upscaling fine-scale geological models remains a reality
for most studies causing significant deterioration in the
geological model. In many cases, the fine-scale and coarsescale models do not superimpose, with coarse blocks being
traversed by fine-scale faults. Under realistic reservoir
conditions, rigorous upscaling becomes difficult forcing the
engineer to make dubious approximation (fault location and
transmissivity, layer resampling, etc). The fact that these
approximations often cannot be quantified since a fine-scale
reference solution is not available makes matters worst. A
methodology that allows solutions on the original geological
model is therefore desirable, allowing some quantification of
errors due to upscaling. Streamline-based reservoir flow
simulation is one alternative currently available1,2 .

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

S j

Streamlines simulation versus Finite Volume


simulation

Streamline-based flow simulation has made significant


advances in the last ten years. Todays simulators are fully
3D1,3, account for gravity1,4 as well as complex well controls.
Most recent advances also allow for compressible flow5 and
compositional displacements6,7.
A number of recent
publications demonstrate how streamline-based simulation is
now coming into the mainstream13,14,15,16.
Finite volume methods are based on the fundamental concept
that fluids are moved from cell-to-cell. The problem with this
methodology is an exponential increase in CPU time with a
linear increase in model size. The reason for this is that larger
models dramatically reduce time step sizes (both in implicit
and explicit mode) due to reduced cell volumes and often
increased heterogeneity. This means that locally higher fluxes
have to be pushed through blocks with smaller volumes.
Routine solutions of million-cell models with FV or FD
technology are therefore out of reach for most practical
applications. Even with significant simulation power, a single
solution can take weeks. Data debugging and sensitivity
calculations under these circumstances can become difficult.
Streamline-base simulation is an attractive alternative
because of the fundamentally different approach in moving
fluids. Instead of moving fluids from cell-to-cell, streamline
simulation breaks up the reservoir into one-dimensional
systems, or tubes. The transport equations are then solved
along the one-dimensional space defined by the streamlines
using the concept of time-of-flight9,10. By decoupling the
transport problem from the underlying 3D geological model,
fluids can be transported much more efficiently. Large
timesteps can be taken, numerical diffusion is minimized, and
cpu time varies near linearly with model size.
Description of the streamline simulator
Modern streamline-based simulation rests on 5 key principals:
(1) tracing streamlines in a velocity field9; (2) writing the mass
conservation equations in terms on time-of-flight10 (TOF); (3)
numerical solution of conservation equations along
streamlines17; (4) periodic updating of the streamlines18,2; and
(5) operator splitting to account for gravity4. Details of the
methodology can be found elsewhere1. We only give a brief
overview here.
The TOF along a streamline traced form a source to a sink is
given by
s ( )
= v
d ,
0 u ( )
t

and leads to the following definition

v
v
ut
ut =
,

allowing to rewrite the conservation


incompressible, immiscible flow as

equation

SPE 66362

for

f j

v
1
Gj = 0,

where Gj accounts for flow due to density differences only.


This equation is solved using a two-step approach (operatorsplitting): (1) first saturations are transported along
streamlines ignoring any gravity effects and then (2)
saturations are allowed to segregate due to density differences.
Recent key advances have pushed the technology to allow for
3phase, compressible and compositional flows5,7.
The elegance of streamline-based simulation is that once a
streamline paths have been defined, any transport problem is
reduced to a one-dimensional problem. Furthermore, by
decoupling the actual transport problem from the underlying
grid, CFL constraints imposed by small grid blocks and/or
locally high velocities are completely circumvented. This
allows for the solution of large problems efficiently while
minimizing grid orientation effects and numerical dispersion.
Freeing the choice of the 3D time step from grid stability
considerations allows to significantly reduce the number of
overall time steps required and makes streamline-based
simulators so much more efficient. However, for nonlinear
displacements there still exists an upper limit to the time step
size in order to obtain physically meaningful solutions
(converged solutions) by capturing changing streamline paths,
gravity segregation, and for compressible problems the change
in pressure of the overall field. An example of such
convergence behavior is illustrated in Figure 18. Choosing
uniform half-year time steps does not allow to capture the
early non-linear behavior of the problem.
Tests cases
We present three test cases. Case A is a full field model taken
from an industrial reservoir study; Case B looks at well pattern
implementations; and in Case C we look at the 10th SPE
comparative solution project.
Case A : Validation of the upscaling process
This case deals with a turbidic field with channel deposits.
Initially, a coarse full field model was built to evaluate
different development schemes.
However, geological
heterogeneity and field development schemes motivated a
detailed construction of a 8,5 million cell model with 2,7
millions active cells. Figure 1 depicts the permeability map
PERMX (XY view) at a given layer.
The fine-scale geological model was constructed from 3DHR
seismic, well logs (2 appraisal wells) and geostatistical input.
Consistent facies and porosity fields were generated.
Permeability fields were generated as functions of porosity,
resulting in values differing by several orders of magnitude
throughout the field.
The resulting 200x544x80grid
geological model was consistent with known geological
horizons.
At 200x544x80 the model was simply too big to simulate even
a single production scenario in an acceptable amount of time
using a conventional black-oil simulator. Test runs on a

SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

permeabilities effects are ignored by setting water and oil


relative permeabilities to be straight lines. Each injector was
assigned a fictitious rate of 2500 m3/day (reservoir conditions)
with a maximum BHP pressure of 350 bars. All producers
were set to a constant BHP pressure of 180 bars. We
compared total field oil rates and water-cuts for the 5 different
upscaling methods (Fig. 3).

waterflood simulation showed that 27 hours were required to


simulate only 40 days of production using a single processor
on a 16 Cpu Origin 2000 (250MHz MIPS). The large CPU
requirement is only in part due to the size of the model. The
small size of the elementary grid cells (about 37m x 37m x
1.25m), a lot of barriers, and zero permeabilities all contribute
to forcing time steps in the range from 11 hours to 2 days even
for a fully implicit numerical scheme.

Field oil rate versus time

Upscaling: Upscaling was performed using a uniform


aggregation rate of 4x4x4 resulting into a 50x136x20 coarse
grid. Several methods were used to upscale the permeabilities:

2.
3.
4.
5.

Confined boundary conditions (TotalFinaElf internal


FEM upscaler based on a 27 point scheme),
Unconfined BC (TotalFinaElf internal FEM upscaler),
Diagonal tensor with sealed conditions (commercial
upscaler based on 7 point scheme),
Diagonal tensor with open conditions (commercial
upscaler based on 7 point scheme),
Square root of harmonic-arithmetic and arithmeticharmonic average (analytical method)

fine grid
Commercial open BC
Commercial sealed BC
FEM unconfined
Analytical
FEM confined

30000

25000
Oil rate

1.

35000

20000

15000

10000
0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

1800

2000

Time (days)
0,3

Tracer simulation / incompressible waterflood simulation


Given the elongated shape of the reservoir in the Y-direction
(channel deposit), 13 injectors and 15 producers were
disseminated along the reservoir pattern (Fig. 2).
The reservoir was filled with oil and water was injected at the
injector wells. All fluids were assumed incompressible.
Since the aim of these first runs was to check only the
upscaling process of the absolute permeabilities, the relative

0,25

0,2

Wcut

The first four methods are based on a pressure solution for


incompressible flow. They differ by the numerical scheme (6
or 26 neighbours for a given grid-block) and by the boundary
conditions used: confined stands for no-flow boundary
conditions on the opposite faces of the averaging domain,
while unconfined considers a linear pressure gradient
between opposite faces.
The fine-scale model contained five different sets of relative
permeability and capillary pressure curves. The rock type
associated with each coarse grid-block was determined by
considering the dominant rock type in the 4x4x4 subgrid
through an arithmetic discrete mean weighted by the pore
volume. The averaged rocktype number was then used to
determine the shape of the KR/PC curve. The end-points were
re-calculated for each block of the dynamic model. Saturation
endpoints were obtained by pore volume weighted arithmetic
means, while relative permeability endpoints were computed
by a TotalFinaElf internal FEM upscaler. Upscaling of well
productivity indexes was done by assigning to each perforated
coarse grid-block a KH value equal to the sum of the finescale KH values.
The streamline simulator 5 was then used to compare the
dynamic behavior of the fine-scale and coarse-scale grids
under different flow conditions.

0,15

fine grid
Commercial -open BC
Commercial sealed
FEM unconfined
Cardwell&Parsons
FEM confined

0,1

0,05

0
0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

Time (days)

Fig. 3 - Field oil rate and watercut


incompressible tracer simulations.

comparisons

for

The single phase flow-based method (FEM) with confined


boundary conditions gave the best fit in terms of global
production, although local well-by-well comparison were not
necessarily as good. Well GA is such an example (Figure 4).
As we want to use this model for optimizing the well pattern,
the well positions have not been yet defined. The aim of the
uspcaling process is to get a representative flow model on the
entire grid.

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

SPE 66362

Figure 5

Oil rate for well GA


2350
fine grid
2150

Commercial -open BC
Commercial sealed
FEM unconfined

1950

Cardwell&Parsons
FEM confined

Oil rate

1750

1550

1350

1150

950

750
0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

Time (days)

Fig. 4 - Oil rate comparisons at well GA

We therefore also compared the pressure and oil saturations


maps between the fine grid and the coarse grid model. To
quantify the difference, we computed an error norm:

depicts streamlines colored by the TOF for the coarse


grid using two different permeability fields: one upscaled by
the confined FEM method and the second using the
Commercial sealed BC method. Figure 6 shows the drainage
volumes of the producers between the fine grid (1 streamline
represented over 200), the coarse grid upscaled by confined
FEM method (bottom left) and the grid upscaled by an
analytical method (top right). These types of graphical
representations which are specific to a streamline simulator
allow a quick qualitative comparison between coarse and fine
grid by indicating zones where the upscaling is not
satisfactory. Streamlines are best viewed in color and will
loose much of their visual usefulness if viewed in black-andwhite. Both Figure 5 and Figure 6 are good examples of how
streamlines can be used to help an engineer crosscheck
upscaling methodologies as well as sensitivity to other data
manipulation.
Other streamline-specific data is shown in Figure 7, which
quantifies the relative flow percentage of injectors
contributing to producer well P3C as well the relative flow
percentage of producers receiving water from injector well
ID1.
Injector well ID1

p =

p averagefin e (i ) p upscaled (i )


n _ coarse

2
P2S
P3S
P2C
P1S

i =1, ncoarse

Producer well P3C

ID2

Where Paveragefine(i) is the pore volume weighted arithmetic


average of the 4x4x4 fine grid pressures corresponding to the
coarse cell i and Pupscaled(i) is the computed pressure value on
the coarse grid-block i. A small error norm indicates a good
match in terms of global pressure and saturations maps
between the fine and coarse grid. The pressure norm and the
oil saturation norm at 5 years using the 5 different upscaling
methods are given in Table 1:

Oil
sat.
norm
Pressure
norm

Confined
FEM

unconfd
FEM

Commer.
Open BC

Commer.
sealed BC

Analytic.

0.078

0.079

0.0837

0.0832

0.0941

30.56

33.97

35.19

32.78

155.85

Table 1 - Error differences in pressure and oil saturations with the


fine grid

Again, the confined method gave the smallest norms (pressure


and oil saturation). The sealed boundary conditions for the
pressure solver based methods are better then the open
boundary conditions, while the analytical method is
significantly higher than the others. The pressure differences
seem to be a better indicator of the quality of the fit and
separate more easily the various methods. Since the error norm
comparison is an indication of global spatial results, we prefer
this type of criteria in ranking the upscaling results.

I1C
I1
IS

ID1

P2S
84%

P3S
11%

P2C
4%

P1S
0.7%

P3C

ID2
72%

I1C
21%

I1
26%

IS
0.2%

Fig. 7- Allocations factors for injector well ID1 and producer well
P3C

The relative influence of injectors and producers illustrated by


streamlines is similar to the results obtained using a tracer
option in a conventional finite volume simulator by injecting a
tracer of different color in each injector well. But it is much
easier to produce this type of data using streamlines rather
than a FV/FD simulator. In addition, the runtimes for the 8
million fine cells grid are considerably lower as shown
hereafter.
We conducted single-phase tracer simulations using a finite
volume simulator (Eclipse 100). The fine grid required 20
hours for simulating 60 days of production, with 33 time steps
ranging from 12h to 4 days. The simulation was conducted on
a single processor of a 16 CPUs Origin 2000 (250MHz MIPS)
with 13 GB of memory. We estimated the CPU time

SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

necessary to run the full 5 year simulation with Eclipse to be


approximately 240hrs (about 430 time steps).
The reason for the large amount of time steps in single-phase
run is that Eclipse is a general purpose simulator that does not
perform incompressible runs. Pressures are recomputed at
each time step, compressible fluids and rock are mandatory,
and the CFL condition will in general force small time steps in
areas of high-flow/small pore volume. The same 5 years
simulation was run in 5h42mn with 3DSL (1 main timestep
(pressure solution) and 7 checking residual and output steps).
Even in the case of an industrial study, the CPU times required
by a general purpose FV simulator in single phase mode
remain outside the useful limits needed for checking upscaling
studies of the type considered here. The usual procedure
would be to either use a specific single phase tracer simulator
and/or to split the fine grid in 5 sector models containing 1.4
millions of grid-blocks (about 400000 actives cells).
Significant file manipulations would be necessary to split the
fine grid in parts, and some sort of automation is usually
necessary to avoid errors while translating the wells positions
from the full field model to the sector models. In practice, the
validation is generally performed only on one sector model
due to time constraints.
As a result of the excessive CPU time for the fine grid, we
could compare 3DSL and Eclipse only on the coarse grid
model. Although the exact type of results are different
(Eclipse outputs a tracer concentration inside a water flow
while 3DSL outputs oil and water flow rates and water-cut),
we can relate the normalized tracer concentration from Eclipse
with the 3DSL water-cut.
To summarize, streamline-based simulation is a powerful tool
to validate the upscaling process of absolute permeabilities
and to determine rapidly the best upscaling method. Results in
terms of production curves but also saturations and pressure
maps can be compared between the geological grid (several
millions of cells) and the simulation grid. Two major
advantages emerged: (1) simulation on the fine-scale
geological model can actually be performed in a reasonable
CPU time allowing to generate a reference solution; and (2)
quick and useful graphical comparisons using time-of-flight,
drainage time or well pore volumes can be used to quality
check the upscaling process. General purpose fine volume
simulators are not suitable to run large geological models even
in single phase flow since they are not optimized for this type
of problem and lead to unrealistic of CPU times.
CPU time and visualization aspects
Table 2 indicates the CPU time and total memory consumption
for the various 3DSL and Eclipse runs. The memory data
were obtained using the Unix command pmem, indicating
the sum of the physical and the virtual memory used by the
process.

Full grid
Coarse grid
200 x 544 x 80
136 x 50 x 20
CPU time Memory
CPU time Memory
Eclipse
~ 240h
4,7 GB
6 mn
210 MB
3DSL
5h42
1 GB
4mn16
90 MB
CPU time per timestep CPU time per TS
Eclipse
36 mn
20s
3DSL
42 mn
24s
Table 2 - CPU time and memory for incompressible runs
The streamline simulator uses 3 to 4 time less memory than
Eclipse, and is estimated to be 20 times faster than Eclipse for
the full grid model (2,7 million active cells) but only 1,5 times
for the coarse grid (80 000 active cells). The CPU time for the
coarse grid (6 mn versus 4mn) is not significant because it
comprises much more I/O time than calculation time.
It is important to underline that the numbers mentioned here
are meant as a practical indication for the reservoir engineer to
estimate the time necessary to perform validation simulations
in an upscaling study, and are not meant as general
comparison of the efficiency of the finite volume scheme
versus streamline-based simulation. The streamline simulator
we used has a specific option for incompressible runs, while
the FV simulator is not suited for this type of simulations.
Moreover, all the runs were not performed on a dedicated
machine and some CPU times may have been overestimated
while the simulations were running in an overloaded
environment. The processors on our SGI Origin 2000 are 250
MHz old-fashioned MIPS processors. For example, the 5h40
streamline CPU time can be reduced to less than 1h using a
more recent 866 MHz Pentium III dedicated PC.
Production curves were viewed using Eclipses postprocessor GRAF (load user option), while visualization of
TOF, pressures, and saturations maps was done using Gocad
user interface files. While post-processing of grid properties
such as pressure and saturations maps is becoming easier for
large grids, post-processing of streamlines results (time of
flight TOF, drainage zones for producers PW or injectors IW)
is not considered standard output and therefore lacks an
efficient output standard. For now, 3DSL interfaces with
Gocads p-line ASCII format. Storing the streamlines plus
properties such as TOF and well pore volumes produces large
ASCII files (1,4 GB per output step for the fine grid) causing
difficulties with our Gocad version limited to 1,5 GB of
memory. It is important to note that in many cases attempting
to view all streamlines is actually beyond the resolution of the
screen. The solution is to reduce strongly the number of
outputted streamlines (for example 1 every 200). For now, this
reduction needs to be performed inside the output section of
the streamline simulator and not inside the 3D modeler tool.
3D modelers must account for post-processing streamlines
simulations results coming from large models. Indeed, treating
simulation results in 3 dimensions with a very high resolution
grid can lead to the following problems encountered in most
commercial 3D modelers and post-processing softwares:

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

size of the disk files (ascii interface format is not


adequate),
long time to load the data,
refreshing views can take a long time.

Compressible waterflood simulation


In the next set of runs we added compressibility to the oil and
water phase. A water-oil contact was set, and the fine grid
model used 5 different relative permeability curves (5
rocktypes) with no capillary pressure (a limitation of 3DSL).
For the coarse model we used the dominant facies for each
gridblock with the appropriate relative permeability curves.
Six producer wells were set in the central upper part of the
reservoirs, and seven injectors were set on the flanks to
maintain pressure and ensure a good sweep. Figure 8 compares
the field oil and water rates between the coarse grid and the
fine grid. Results are not satisfactory. Oil flow rates are
significantly different and breakthrough times are much earlier
on the coarse grid than on the fine grid.
Fig. 8 - Field oil and water rates
30000
oil - Fine grid
oil - coarse
w - fine grid

20000

water - coarse

10000

0
0

1000

Time in days

2000

Other pseudoisation techniques as steady-state viscous


dominant pseudos and pore volume weighted dynamic pseudo
were also compared for the water-oil system. The dynamic
pseudos could be computed using pressures and saturations
maps computed on the fine grid by the streamline simulator.
Use of pseudos instead of dominant facies significantly
improved the fit. Details on all these pseudoisation techniques
can be found elsewhere 19,20 and are beyond the scope of this
paper.
In the same way, comparisons as the error norms in
pressure and saturations maps as indicated in the previous
section were also carried out to select the best pseudoisation
techniques.
The waterflood simulation was tried with Eclipse on the
fine grid using on a single processor on the SGI. A 100 days
simulation (52 timesteps) ran in 50h. Time steps ranged from
5 hours to 2,7 days. We extrapolated the CPU time required
for a 5 year simulation to be roughly 25 days.

Eclipse
3DSL

Eclipse
3DSL

SPE 66362

Fine grid
200 x 544 x 80
CPU time Total
Memory
~ 650h
10 GB

Upscaled grid
50 x 136 x 20
CPU time Total
Memory
24mn
- 280 MB
46 TS
12h28
1 GB
25mn
90 MB
11 TS
CPU Time per timestep CPU time per TS
55 mn
26s
93 mn
70s

Table 3 - CPU time and memory for dead-oil simulations

As in the previous case, 3DSL uses significantly less memory


(3 to 10 time less) than Eclipse (Table 3). Introducing a
limited amount of compressibility in rocks and fluids (dead-oil
problem) doubles the streamline CPU time and increases by a
factor of 2.5 the estimated FV simulation time. By allowing
for compressibility, exact voidage replacement is no longer
necessary and the field average pressure is allowed to change
over time. This means that 3DSL is now solving for pressure
at every timestep.
The CPU time obtained with 3DSL on the fine grid model
(12h on a single processor overloaded machine) is high but
still acceptable. We could have checked the two phase
upscaling process with an incompressible model, which would
have significantly reduce the CPU time. Running the fine
volume simulator on the other hand would require a large
parallel machine (more than 30 dedicated processors if we
assume a linear speed-up)11. For the coarse grid, the CPU
times (25mn) are similar for both simulators, with 46
timesteps required by Eclipse and 11 for 3DSL. The I/O time
spent for writing results files in Gocad format may be an
improvement issue for 3DSL. The fact that the streamline
simulator needs 4 times less timesteps to perform the run
although the time needed for an individual timestep is higher
then for Eclipse partly explains the significant differences in
CPU times expected for the full grid model.
From a practical point of view, a streamline simulator can now
help the reservoir engineer check relative permeability
pseudos by a direct comparison of the upscaled reservoir
simulation model with the geological (or geostatistical) model.
Black-oil simulation
We also ran the fine and coarse grid using black-oil fluid
properties. As in the deadoil case, the fine grid could only be
simulated with 3DSL which took 72h for a 5 year simulation
(Table 4). On the coarse grid 3DSL used 33mn. For Eclipse
the CPU time doubled on the coarse grid with respect to the
deadoil case to 46mn. Assuming the same doubling on the
fine grid, we estimated the Eclipse run time there would be
approximately 50 days.
The value of 72h is only indicative and could be reduced on
dedicated, more recent PCs; generally, blackoil simulation
CPU times are strongly depend on the fluid properties and on
the frequency of the changes in the well constraints. Since

SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

predictive runs are usually for periods much longer than 5


years (i.e 20 or 30 years), even streamline-based simulation
would produce excessive run times in this case.
Full grid
200 x 544 x 80
CPU time Total
Memory
Eclipse
3DSL
Eclipse
3DSL

72h
2 GB
CPU time per timestep
230 mn

Upscaled grid
50 x 136 x 20
CPU time Memory
46 mn - 400 MB
55Ts
33 mn
90 MB
CPU time per TS
50s
3mn

Table 4 - CPU time and memory for black-oil runs

For a general blackoil simulation, the streamline simulator is


forced to re-compute the pressure field much more frequently
in order to correctly model its variation through time. For the
fine-scale model, each timestep now requires approximately
4h on the SGI.
This last figure is significant and shows that a streamline
simulator faces similar computational problems as a finite
volume simulator for large models when the fluids are highly
compressible or when the number of wells events is important,
although the streamline simulator retains the advantage of not
being forced to take small timesteps due to CFL restrictions
imposed by small grid blocks/high flow regions.
Case B: Implementing a well pattern
Streamlines are particularly useful in visualizing flow and give
information that is unique for balancing well patterns. We
used a coarse grid model (70000 active cells) to optimize the
well pattern. The mobile oil in place map is shown in Figure 9,
and initial well placement was guided by contours showing a
central target area. As a first guess, six horizontal wells were
set in the maximum zones of oil in place, and seven water
injectors were set in the flanks above the oil-water contact in
high permeability zones. We used the dead-oil model for a 5
years simulation. The same model was run with Eclipse and
results were similar.
Optimization of the well patterns with a standard FV simulator
is not simple. Once one obtains a set of wells with a large
production plateau and a late individual water-breakthrough,
sensitivity studies to quantify the influence on the global
production curves in changing the well position or the number
of wells require a large number of simulations, given that both
the well position and the total number of wells must be
considered.
Since the basic principle of a streamline simulator is to trace
streamlines from injectors to producers, three types of results
are generated useful for balancing patterns:
1. The time of flight as shown in Figure 10. The TOF indicates
the time necessary for an injected water particle to reach a
given point in the reservoir, and is an instantaneous image
of the swept area. Red zones are zones that will be swept

while the white zones are not. For the considered test case,
the injectors seem to maintain the pressure on the flanks but
will not sweep much oil to the central area towards the
producer. An injector pattern with some injectors in the
central area is likely to be more satisfactory to increase oil
recovery.
Superimposing the time of flight (Fig. 10) with the mobile
oil zone (Fig. 9) and the positions of producers and injectors
wells also allows to detect potential injectors that would
cause early water breakthrough.
2. Another typical results from a streamline simulator are the
pore volumes associated with each well as indicated in Figure
11, which shows reservoir volumes associated with the
different injection wells. The regions are much larger than the
swept area shown in Figure 10, because the display of the pore
volumes associated with each well is a purely geometrical
construction. It says nothing about how long it would take to
sweep the entire area. This type of figure helps to find the
geometrical influence zone of the injectors.
For the considered test case with 6 injectors, we can notice
that the injectors have little influence on the central area and
that increasing the injected rate or enabling a longer period of
injection will have little effect. For incompressible system,
such detection might more difficult since taken together all
injectors must exactly sweep the entire pore volume, although
it might take a long time. Figure 11 also indicates that one
injector (dark grey color - upper left) only has a very small
pore volume associated with it, suggesting that this injector is
not efficient and should be placed elsewhere. As the previous
one, this second type of results is difficult to obtain using a
conventional FV simulator.
3. A third type of typical result is the geometrical producer
influence volume as indicated in Fig. 12. Each color indicates
the volume of the reservoir tied to a given producer. Figure 12
depicts the reservoir volume associated with each producer for
6 vertical wells while Figure 13 for 6 horizontal wells having
one end at the same XY position. In this case where all the
faults are communicating, the horizontal well scheme has the
potentiality to drain almost all the oil field but it doesn't
indicate the time necessary to reach this objective. The
theoretical drainage zone for horizontal well P4 (white color
Fig. 13) is enormous but since the streamlines are very
elongated, the time indicated by the simulation for the oil in
the northern part of the reservoir to reach the producer is too
long and other economical constraints do intervene. The
volumes associated with the 2 northern wells are smaller using
horizontal wells. This observation is in line with the results of
the simulation which demonstrates that implementing 2
vertical wells instead of 2 horizontal wells in the northern part
of the reservoir was more efficient.
Superimposing Figure 13 with the oil in place map helps to
detect undrained areas, and locate positions for infill wells.
Misplacement of producers is easily detected when the

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

drainage areas are not clearly separated or when the drainage


areas is very small.
Up to this point, we have used considered streamlines only for
analyzing fixed well pattern. An interesting extension is to
examine how the producer influence volumes evolve in time
as new wells (injectors or producers) are opened. Figure 14
depicts such an evolution in time.
Reservoir drainage volume percentage for producers
90

P6

reservoir volume percentage

80

P5
70

P4
P3

60

P2
50

P1

40
30
20
10
0
1

365

730

1095

1460

1865

Time (in days)

SPE 66362

Obtaining this type of result using a conventional simulator


would be much more complex, requiring the addition of
different colored tracers while producing a significantly less
powerful graphical representation of flow.
Case C: 10th SPE Comparative Solution Project
The main purpose for the 10th SPE comparative solution
project8 (SPE10) is to offer a common data set on which to
compare upscaling algorithms. Two problems were presented,
but we only discuss the second one here as it more relevant to
streamline-based simulation. SPE10 is 1.1 million cell model
(60x220x85) describing a part of the Brent sequence originally
generated for use in the PUNQ Project. The top part of the
model (35 layers) is a Tarbert formation, the bottom part (50
layers) represents Upper Ness.
SPE10 offers a good example for demonstrating the nearlinear scalability of CPU time for flow simulations using
streamlines. Fig. 16 shows simulation results for various grid
sizes, with the fine-scale solution taking 280min on an
800MHz PC with 768MB of RAM.

Fig 14 - Reservoir drainage volume (%) for producers vs time

During the first year, well P4 is tied to 23% of the pore


volume of the reservoir. In the second year, following the
start-up of new wells P1 and P3, the pore volume tied to well
P4 decreases to 10%, followed by 7% for the next year. It
decreases again to 10% after start-up of well P2.
Representation of the reservoir pore volume areas tied to wells
can also be visualized as Fig 12. It is convenient for depicting
the geographical evolutions of drainage areas. Unfortunately,
such representation must be done in color. This type of
information is extremely useful for preparing a first estimate
of the well pattern of a development scheme and optimizing
well management and production start-up over time.
Figure 15 shows the same graph for injectors and clearly
indicates that injector I4 (dark area) is inefficient.
Fig 15 - Reservoir volume (%) tied to injectors versus time
Reservoir volume percentage for injectors
90

Linear vs. nonlinear flow. SPE10 is nonlinear example in that


it is a non-unit mobility ratio displacement of water into oil.
Figure 17 shows how the field water cut is a strong function of
the mobility ratio but is not impacted by gravity. Thus,
streamlines must be updated to capture the nonlinearity of the
problem. Gravity, on the other, may be ignored if desired.

I7
I6
I5
I4
I3
I2
I1

80

volume percentage

Fig. 16 - CPU run time (in minutes) demonstrating the near-linear


scaling with the number of active cells.

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1

365

730

1095

Time (days)

1460

1865

Fig. 17 - Field watercuts assuming unit mobility ratio (TRACER),


no gravity and gravity. SPE10 is sensitive to the mobility ratio but
not to gravity.

SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

Optimal Time Stepping: One key advantage of streamlinebased simulation is that large timestep can be taken. What the
optimal number is cannot be know apriori, but simple
numerical experiments can quickly give an indication. Figure
18 shows simulations using constant time step sizes starting
with 6 months and decreasing to 10days. The dots show nonuniform timesteps: 10x25 days followed by 5x50days,
5x100days and finally 5x200days for a total of 25 timesteps.
We use this timestepping for all subsequent runs.

Fig. 18 - Sensitivity runs for determining optimal time step size


(30x110x17 grid).

Results: Detailed results on SPE10 can be found elsewhere8.


We present the field water cut for different grid sizes in Fig.
19.
Upscaling was done using a simple combination of
arithmetic and geometric upscaling. Arithmetic upscaling was
used on Kx and Ky on the original fine grid to go from
60x220x85 to 60x220x17. Kz was upscaled using a geometric
average. All smaller grids were progressively derived using
geometric averaging on all permeabilities starting from the
60x220x17 grid. The 30x110x85 was also obtained by using
geometric averaging on all permeabilities.
Flow-based
upscaling was not used.
On a field scale, Fig. 19 shows that results are very good even
for coarse grids such as 12x44x17, which represents an
upscaling by a factor of 122 (1094418/8976). Results on an
individual well basis show a little bit more difference but with
the same overall trend: only a weak dependence on upscaling.

Fig. 19 - Field water cut response for different gridsizes.

Conclusions
The usage of a streamline simulator for two types of typical
reservoir simulation tasks has been presented: (1) validation of
the upscaling process for absolute permeabilities and for
pseudo relative permeabilities in water-oil system; and (2) aid
in optimizing well pattern design.

In both cases, the streamline simulators key advantage is to


allow runs on the original geological model even with modest
computational hardware. The difference in CPU times
between streamline simulation and finite difference simulation
is due to the ability of 3DSL to take fewer timesteps while
being more memory efficient.
Streamline simulation also brings new graphical features such
as time of flight visualization and producers and injectors
influence zones. This new three types of results can be helpful:
(1) for a quick check of the upscaling process; (2) for a quick
check of the consistency of the geological model with the
dynamic flow assumptions and observations. In particular, for
helping the geo-scientists to visualize flows and to check the
assumptions of communicating or non communicating faults;
(3) for a check of the ability of the geo-statistical model to
permit flow between wells across permeability barriers; (4) for
quickly visualizing well pattern influence of a development
scheme and optimizing well management and production startup over time.
Streamlines simulators are chiefly useful for producing fasttrack reservoirs studies as a complement to the traditional
simulator. It is also a means for integrating dynamic data into
the geology and becomes a complementary tool for the
reservoir geologist. Integration of such a tool inside 3D
modelers arises.
Some limitations do exist: (1) they are less accurate in
materials balance than finite volume simulators; (2) they
ignore capillary pressure and consequently cannot be used in
the rare cases in which this is dominant; (3) computing times
can become similar to conventional simulators whenever
highly compressible fluids or well events impose time steps on
the same order as those used by a conventional simulator; (4)
they do not offer all the possibilities and robustness of
traditional simulators for processing wells and managing
overall production constraints; (5) additional progress is
required to improve the visualization process for large grids.
Other instances where streamlines can complement traditional
reservoir simulators are: (1) aid in construction and
optimization of gridding of the conventional finite volume
model; (2) aid in analysis of the flow process; (3)
quantification of the biases associated with the resolution
mode of conventional simulators such as grid orientations
effects; (4) history matching; (5) ranking models in the
process for identifying and quantifying uncertainties among
several versions of the geological model. The streamline
simulator helps make a rapid selection of versions on dynamic
criteria without requiring prior sampling of the distribution of
any static parameter.
Acknowledgment
The authors thank TotalFinaElf and StreamSim for permission
to publish this work.

10

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

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SPE 66362

15. Milliken, W.J., Emanuel, A.S., and Chakravarty, A.:


Applications of 3D Streamline Simulation to Assist
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SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

Fig. 2 - Wells positions


Fig. 1 - Fine grid XY permeability field : layer 27

Fig. 5 - Time of flight: upscaled grid with upscaling method

(commercial confined (left), FEM confined (right)

11

12

P. SAMIER, L. QUETTIER, M. THIELE

SPE 66362

Fine grid (1 streamline over 200)


Coarse grid upscaled with analytical method

Coarse grid upscaled with confined FEM method


Fig. 6 - Drainage volume for producers: fine grid, upscaled grid
with 2 different methods of upscaling
Fig 9 - Mobile reservoir oil contours

SPE 66362

APPLICATIONS OF STREAMLINE SIMULATIONS TO RESERVOIR STUDIES

Fig. 10: Time of flight image after one year

Fig. 11: Influence area tied to 7 injectors

Fig. 12: influence volume of 6 vertical producer wells

Fig 13: Influence volume of 6 horizontal producer wells

13

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