FORCE Workshop 21st Nov.

2006

Introduction to CMG
CMGs STARS simulator
The SAGD Process
GEOMECH and its features
Discussion on iterative coupling
CMGs porosity function
Examples
Future Work
Long History in Simulation

Based in Calgary Canada

28 years of simulator development
Mainly in IOR and thermal methods
Over 70 staff
Became a public company
CMG:TSX

Established as research foundation

Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal Fiscal

1978 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2005
CMGs Offices

Moscow, Russia
London,
Calgary, Alberta
England

Houston, Texas Beijing, China

Caracas, Venezuela

Over 270 Customers

Head Office
Calgary, Canada in 44 Countries
STARS Simulator

Market Leader in Advanced Process Simulation

STARS simulator
Thermal (CS, SAGD, ES-SAGD, and Air Injection)
Electrical
Chemical (ASP, Foams, Gels, Microbial)
Compositional (CO2, N2, VAPEX, Gas Injection)
Geomechanical (Finite Element)
Over 1,400 licenses in use worldwide mainly for
thermal and IOR process modelling work
Particularly steam processes e.g. SAGD
SAGD Process

Game changer for the BlackRock Ventures Hilda Lake $260,000,000

Canadian oil industry CNRL Horizon Ph I $8,000,000,000
$80 billion investment over the ConocoPhillips/TFE/Devon Surmont $1,000,000,000
next 10 years Deer Creek/Enerplus Joslyn Creek Phase 2 $500,000,000

Shallow 150-400m; poorly Devon Jackfish $400,000,000

consolidated; immovable liquid Devon Dover Pilot $30,000,000

EnCana Foster Creek $290,000,000
Husky Tucker Lake $350,000,000
Imperial Current Cold Lake ~ $7,000,000,000
Imperial Mahkeses $650,000,000
Imperial Nabiye, Mahihkan $1,000,000,000
Japan Canada Hangingstone main $250,000,000
Nexen/OPTI Long Lake $2,500,000,000
Suncor Firebag Phase 1 $600,000,000

Investment Total $22,830,000,000

SAGD Process

Geomechanics plays an important part from both a reservoir and

surface expression perspective!
Surface heave of up to 20cm has been reported (Wang and Kry,
1997) for cyclic steaming in the Canadian formations
At Peace River, Shell uses surface tilt meters to monitor the
process
Large stress changes associated with the process
Isotropic Unloading pore pressure increase under high
pressure steam injection
Shear Failure thermal stresses at steam chamber boundary
caused by the large thermal gradient normal to the front surface
Typically 250C over a few metres!
SAGD Example (T and uvert)
SAGD Process

Isotropic unloading will increase and k

Although if temperature dominates these terms can actually
decrease!
However, the thermally induced shearing process can significantly
increase permeability
Up to 6 times vertically and 2.5 times horizontally (Li and
Chalaturnyk, 2004)
Dependent on stress path, but shallow SAGD operations benefit
most from having low confining stress
Major contributor to injectivity and overall enhancement of
production rates
Stress state cannot be modelled by simple flow simulator table
look up approaches (pore pressure vs poro or perm multiplier)
So it is important to be able to model the stress alterations and get
the geomechanical effect right, in order to understand fully the
injection and production response of your SAGD system
SAGD Summary

Huge investment in the SAGD process

Geomechanical effects can have a strong effect on
the production and injection response of the system
Surface expression also significant
Simple poro/perm tables do not capture the full
geomechanical effect
Stress path is important to quantify the effect and
magnitude of the reservoir alterations
So how does CMG deal with this situation?
Geomechanics Module (GEOMECH)
Calculation Speed

In the SAGD situation we know that geomechanics plays

an important role, but can we afford to model it?
It is the calculation time that has typically determined
whether it is worthwhile modelling geomechanics, and to
what extent.
Fluid flow typically requires the solution of 4 eqns per block
Full 3D Geomechanics can require up to 24 eqns per block!
So, GEOMECH solution can take up to 85% of the cpu time!
The memory requirement also increases similarly
150,000 cell; inverted nine spot steam flood; 529 wells
No geomech - 450Mb
2D geomech 820Mb
3D geomech 3760Mb
Calculation Speed - Example

Surmont, SAGD, 9 well pair (half pad)

1,722,780 Grid cells
6.5 year forecast
Serial runtime on IBM 1.65GHz P5
32 days!
Add 3D geomechanics
200+ days expected with 40-50GB RAM!
Reservoir and Geomechanics Grids

Reservoir Flow
Corner-point grids
Geomechanics
Quadrilateral 8-node finite elements that match initial
corner-point grids
8 nodes initially co-incident with grid corners
2D Plain strain or full 3D Elements
Finite elements model deformations whereas corner-
point grids remain the same during the simulation
The finite element deformation is converted into a
change in porosity in corner-point grids
As reservoir flow grid bulk volume is invariant
Coupling

Fully Coupled
Primary unknowns (P, T and u) Pressure; Temperature and
Displacement solved simultaneously
The ultimate solution, but very computationally expensive
Explicit Coupled
Flow information sent to GEOMECH module but results not fed
back to the flow module ie Flow is unaffected by GEOMECH
Iterative Coupled
P and T solved first and then u i.e. the GEOMECH calculations
are calculated one step behind the flow calculations
Information is passed between flow and GEOMECH modules
Flexible, as the 2 modules can be coded independently, and
quick
This coupling uses a modified porosity * for feedback to the
flow simulator
Basic Flow Equations

Conservation of fluid in a deformable porous medium

k


f 1 v f p f g Q f 0
t

Current pore volume Vp

True porosity
Current bulk volume Vb
Current pore volume Vp
* Reservoir porosity 0
Initial bulk volume Vb

* 1 v

* k
t
f f p f g Q f 0

Basic Geomechanics Equations

= ' + p

p : pore pressure
' : effective stress
: total stress
: Biots number

Coupling Deformation-Pressure-Temperature Equation (1D):

d du d
E p ET r g
dz dz dz
Basic Equation Summary

Equation for Fluid Flow

k
*
f
f p f g Qf 0
t
Equation for Heat flow
*
t
k

f U f (1 * ) rU r f p f g H f


(T ) Qh 0

Equation for Deformable Medium
1
T

C : u u p T I r g
2

Described in Tran, Nghiem, and Buchanan (SPE 97879)

Equation Communication

From Reservoir Flow to GEOMECH

P and T appears in GEOMECH calculation
Feedback from GEOMECH to Reservoir Flow
Porosity Function
* = f (P,T,v) or f (P,T,m)
Porosity Function *

Tran, Settari and Nghiem (2004)

n*1 n* Cn0 pn 1 pn Cn1 Tn 1 Tn
C 0n c 0 c 2 a 1 n C n c1 c 2 a 2 n
1

E: Young's modulus
cb : Bulk compressibility
cr : Solid rock compressibility
: Thermal expansion coefficient
: Poisson's ratio
: Biot number
m: Mean total stress
n: Time level n
n+1: Time level n+1
Iterative Two-way Coupling
Porosity Function

Crux of the iterative coupling method

Approximation of actual geomechanics behavior
Converts geomechanics behavior to a form that could be used
by a reservoir simulator
Compressibility and Thermal Expansion Coefficients
Discrepancies can exist between simulator porosity and
geomechanics porosity but a threshold forms part of the final
coupling iteration convergence check
For difficult problems (e.g. plastic deformation and shear failure),
large differences may exist between the 2 porosities and many
coupling iterations may be necessary
E.g. Deans problem # 3 requires 5 iterations (SPE 79709)
CMGs porosity function formulation aims to reduce the total
number of coupling iterations to as low a value as possible
E.g. Deans problem # 1,2, and 4 required 1 iteration
Porosity Function Improvements

Tran, Settari and Nghiem (SPE 88989, 2004)

*n 1 *n C 0n p n 1 p n C1n Tn 1 Tn
Tran, Nghiem and Buchanan (SPE 93244, 2005)
*n 1 *n B0n 1 p n 1 p n B1n 1 Tn 1 Tn
Further improvements
Provide good match between GEOMECH and
reservoir simulator porosity
Porosity Comparison

VPOROSGEO 14,1,1 SAGD3_GEOM_COUPLING_MOHR.irf

0.3028

Porosity - Geo-Corrected: VPOROSGEO 14,1,1

Porosity - Geo-Corrected: VPOROSGEO 15,1,19
Porosity - Geo-Corrected: VPOROSGEO Average
Void Porosity: VPOROS 14,1,1
Void Porosity: VPOROS 15,1,19
Void Porosity: VPOROS Average

0.3018

0.3008
Porosity - Geo-Corrected: VPOROSGEO 14,1,1

0.2998
2000-4 2000-7 2000-10 2001-1 2001-4 2001-7 2001-10 2002-1
Time (Date)
Permeability

What about permeability?

Most flow simulators use a simple vs k look up table
Permeability Function
k = k (*) basic look up provided
Additionally
ln(k/ko) = C v (Li and Chalaturnyk, 2004)
C is a matching parameter from lab measurements
Table lookup (allows for anisotropy)
Ki/Koi (i=x,y,z) versus
Mean effective stress
Mean total stress
Volumetric strain
Fractured Model Permeability
GEOMECH Highlights - Features

Current
Iterative two-way coupling and one-way coupling
Geomechanics for Dual Porosity/Permeability
Stress-dependent permeability
Temperature-dependent geomechanics properties
Future (near current!)
Improved constitutive models for SAGD operations
Generalised Plasticity
Drucker Prager and Matsouka-Nakai augmented by
Plastic Potential function; Friction Hardening; Cohesion
softening; and dilation angle based on Rowes dilatancy theory
GEOMECH Highlights - Speed

Current
Improved porosity function
Advantages of a fully coupled system without the associated cost
Geomechanics grid larger, or smaller, than reservoir grid
Control of the frequency for calling GEOMECH
AIM and PARASOL
Future
Generalised grid mapping
GEOMECH and flow grids can be dissimilar
Less GEOMECH cells
Allow CMGs Dynagrid functionality
Further flow grid speed enhancement
Apply PARASOL to the GEOMECH calculations
Calculation Speed - Example

Surmont, SAGD, 9 well pair (half pad)

Serial runtime on IBM 1.65GHz P5
32 days!
Add 3D geomechanics
200+ days expected with 40-50GB RAM!
Parallel (8cpu) + Dynagrid
Currently: 32 days < 2 days
Future: Add full 3D geomechanics
200+ days ????
~4 days expected!
Leading the Way in
Reservoir Simulation