Patent ID: 9390555
Filing Date: 2016-07-12
CPC Classification: E21B,G01V,G06F,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A computer-implemented method to assess the impact of existing fractures and faults for reservoir management, comprising: generating a geological and reservoir model employing information from seismic data, well log, and well production data; defining one or more locations of one or more pre-existing geological faults or fractures or combination thereof; creating a numerical mesh that represents the generated geological model comprising delimitation associated with regions and layering of geology without constraining the numerical mesh to explicitly represent a fault or fracture; locating mesh elements from the numerical mesh that intersect the defined one or more locations; discretizing mesh elements of the numerical mesh that do not intersect the defined one or more locations of one or more pre-existing geological faults or fractures or combination thereof, according to a first numerical method; discretizing said located mesh elements that intersect the defined one or more locations of one or more pre-existing geological faults or fractures or combination thereof, according to a second numerical method; populating the numerical mesh elements with mechanical and flow properties, said populated numerical mesh forming a geomechanical model employed for assessing the impact of existing fractures and faults; and generating a fluid-flow model employing the numerical mesh, wherein a multiphase fluid-flow solution is solved first to estimate pore-pressure in the geological and reservoir model, the pore-pressure is passed to the geomechanical model that solves a stress-strain problem to calculate a stress and deformation in a rock solid framework associated with the geological and reservoir model, and petrophysical properties of the geological and reservoir model from the geomechanical model is updated for the fluid-flow model, the computer-implemented method determining changes in physical properties of a reservoir in hydrocarbon production, wherein the fluid-flow model and the geomechanical model comprise a computer-implemented model that predict future performance of the reservoir.