American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.
Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.
The process of matching the performance history of a reservoir in performance history of a reservoir in order to determine parameter values for use in it numerical simulation may be described as an iterative effort to bring pressures and flows calculated by the simulator into close concert with those observed in the field. Development of automatic techniques which use concepts from optimization theory as strategy for parameter manipulation has been emphasized in recent years. Many of the studies which have appeared in the literature may be characterized by a preoccupation with algorithm development and relatively little concern for the nature of the performance measure chosen for performance measure chosen for optimization.
This paper focuses attention on the nature of a common performance measuring function. Certain characteristics of this function are analyzed in terms of their effect on the quality of a history match and on the performance of a common optimization algorithm. This analysis provides a basis for redefinition of provides a basis for redefinition of the independent variables of the function which modifies these characteristics an thereby improves algorithm performance.
The uncomplicated history match problem of determining porosity and problem of determining porosity and permeability values for the model of a permeability values for the model of a homogeneous reservoir which contains a single phase, slightly compressible fluid is used as a vehicle in the study.
The development of reservoir engineering technology has been characterized by a steady increase in the sophistication of the mathematical and engineering techniques used.
