Numerical simulation has been applied to study the water coning behavior in a well producing from a highly heterogeneous reservoir in an oil field located in the onshore part of the Potiguar Basin, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. In this reservoir, the scale of lateral heterogeneities is too small to be represented by layer average properties.

Small scale heterogeneities in the drainage area of the well were modeled by sequential stochastic simulation of categorical variables representing flow units of the reservoir. Variographic analysis was performed using logging and core data from the reservoir and also data from outcrops in the same depositional enviroment.

The purpose of this work was to evaluate the effect of small lateral heterogeneity on the water coning behavior. This was accomplished by history matching production data and numerical results of flow simulation performed in geostatistic realizations of the reservoir.

Keywords:
outcrop, sandstone, flow simulation, heterogeneous reservoir, geologic modeling, geostatistic technique, production rate, reservoir, reservoir characterization, reservoir simulation
Subjects:
Reservoir Characterization, Reservoir Fluid Dynamics, Reservoir Simulation, Geologic modeling, Flow in porous media
Copyright 1994, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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