Abstract
Throughout the upstream petroleum industry, reservoir simulation models have become the standard tool used to make a myriad of decisions regarding the development and operation of oil and gas assets including decisions regarding investments and reserves estimates.
Given the variety of decisions that rely on this technology, petroleum engineers are frequently required to opine on how well an unfamiliar model might fit a particular purpose, and how accurate it might be for that purpose. Generally speaking, engineers must go through some sort of review of the model before any opinion of fit and accuracy can be developed.
The authors have written or contributed to several papers that began to address the process for performing such simulation model reviews for various purposes (see Palke and Rietz 2001, and Rietz and Usmani 2005). This paper attempts to advance this work by presenting a systematic and quantitative methodology for performing these reviews, as well as discussing why such reviews are necessary and some of the potential pitfalls encountered while reviewing simulation models.