Abstract
Chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods have received increased attention in recent years since they have the ability to recover the capillary trapped oil. Successful chemical flooding application requires accurate numerical models and reliable forecast across multiple scales: core scale, pilot scale, and field scale. History matching and optimization are two key steps to achieve this goal.
For history matching chemical floods, we propose a general workflow for multi-stage model calibration using an Evolutionary Algorithm. A comprehensive chemical flooding simulator is used to model important physical mechanisms including phase behavior, cation exchange, chemical and polymer adsorption and capillary desaturation. First, we identify dominant reservoir and process parameters based on a sensitivity analysis. The history matching is then carried out in a stage-wise manner whereby the most dominant parameters are calibrated first and additional parameters are incorporated sequentially until a satisfactory data misfit is achieved. Next, a diverse subset of history matched models is selected for optimization using a Pareto-based multi-objective optimization approach. Based on the concept of dominance, Pareto optimal solutions are generated representing the trade-off between increasing oil recovery while improving the efficiency of chemical usage. These solutions are searched using a Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm (NSGA-II). Finally we implement a History Matching Quality Index (HMQI) with Moving Linear Regression Analysis to evaluate simulation results from history matching process. The HMQI provides normalized values for all objective functions having different magnitude and leads to a more consistent and robust approach to evaluate the updated models through model calibration.