Total Sa

Totalenergies Onetech

Pierre Bergey

Anahita Abadpour

Pierre Thore

Florent Lallier

Clarisse Vergnes

Pui Wa Li

Stephane Vignau

Nicolas Eberle

The present invention relates to a method for determining locations of wells in a field containing a hydrocarbon reservoir, said method comprising: ⋅receiving a first set of geological gridded models; ⋅receiving a set of criteria for positioning wells; ⋅receiving a plurality of reference well patterns associated to the first set of geological gridded models; ⋅estimating a plurality of weights, each weight being associated to a respective criterion among the plurality of criteria, based on the plurality of reference well patterns and the received set of criteria; ⋅receiving a second geological gridded model of the field; and ⋅determining locations of wells in the second geological gridded model based on the received set of criteria and the plurality of estimated weights.

Method for determining locations of wells in a field

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.

Modelling geological faults

Disclosed is a method of characterizing a subsurface volume. The method comprises: extracting a geobody from seismic data arranged within a discretized volume comprising a plurality of cells, the geobody comprising a subset of the plurality of cells, each cell of the subset having one or more properties indicative of a particular fluid phase. The extraction of the geobody comprises: determining a propagation probability value for each cell indicative of the probability that a front will propagate through the cell; beginning from a source within the discretized volume, using the propagation probability value to calculate a traveltime for each cell, the travel time describing the time the front takes to travel from the source point to the cell; and using the traveltimes to extract the geobody from the seismic data.

Method of characterising a subsurface volume

Disclosed is a method of modelling a subsurface volume. The method comprises: discretizing said subsurface volume to define a grid comprising an array of cells (), each cell being defined by cell faces, each cell having attributed thereto one or more high order properties (A,B); dividing each cell into a plurality of sub-cells, said plurality of sub-cells comprising: a plurality of central sub-cells adjacent a center of the cell, and a plurality of peripheral sub-cells, each adjacent a corresponding cell face; for each of said central sub-cells, and for each of said peripheral sub-cells for which the cell adjacent to that peripheral sub-cell has attributed thereto the same one or more high order properties as that of the cell in which said peripheral sub-cell is comprised, attributing one or more low order property values (c, d, e, x, y, z) in accordance with the high order property attributed to the cell in which said peripheral sub-cell is comprised; for each of said peripheral sub-cells for which the cell adjacent to that peripheral sub-cell has attributed thereto a different one or more high order properties than that of the cell in which said peripheral sub-cell is comprised, attributing one or more low order property values (c, d, e, x, y, z) in accordance with the high order property attributed to the adjacent cell; and determining one or more low order property values for each cell based on the one or more low order property values attributed to each cell's component sub-cells.

Method of modelling a subsurface volume

Disclosed is a method of modelling a subsurface volume. History data for one or more parameters over a first period of time is obtained. The first period of time comprises a plurality of schedule periods, each schedule period having associated with it a sampled value of the considered parameter at the corresponding time. A merge error value is attributed to plural pairs of consecutive schedule periods, the merge error value representing a magnitude of the error in a merged value of each parameter over the duration corresponding to a pair of schedule periods being considered, relative to the sampled values for said pair of schedule periods being considered. The pair of schedule periods which have the smallest error value attributed thereto is merged, and the merged schedule period has attributed to it, the corresponding merged value of the corresponding parameter. The error value calculation and merger steps are repeated so as to reduce the total number of schedule periods.

Method of subsurface modelling

Disclosed is a method monitoring changes in saturation of a subsurface volume. The method comprises: obtaining observed data of saturation behavior from the subsurface volume over time; using one or more models, obtaining simulated data of saturation behavior from the subsurface volume over time; and transforming each of the observed data and simulated data. The transformation is done such that in each case the data is described in terms of: a front location parameter, wherein a cell of the subsurface volume is attributed a value according to its location relative to a front of the fluid for which saturation is being monitored, and a sweep intensity parameter, wherein a cell of the subsurface volume is attributed a value according to either the observed saturation variation over a time period, or an estimated saturation variation over the time period, finally, a mismatch between saturation behavior in said transformed observed data and saturation behavior in said transformed simulated data over said time period is calculated.

Disclosed is a method of monitoring the behavior of a subsurface volume. The method comprises transforming a single discrete parameter or an ensemble of discrete parameters describing an attribute of the subsurface volume, each discrete parameter having N possible discrete values with N&#x2265;2, into N indicator parameters each having 2 possible discrete values; for each of the two value classes of each indicator parameter, determining the anisotropic distance to a value transition interface; transforming each of the indicator parameters into a corresponding continuous parameter using the determined anisotropic distance to the value transition interface; and using the continuous parameters in a history matching process.

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Saint Germain-en-Laye, France

Pierre Bergey