Patent Document ID: 20110077922
Application ID: 12960059
Patent Flag: 0

Claim One:
1. A method of performing an oilfield operation of an oilfield having at least one wellsite, each wellsite having a wellbore penetrating a subterranean formation for extracting fluid from an underground reservoir therein, the method comprising: determining a time-step for simulating the reservoir using a reservoir model, the reservoir being represented as a plurality of gridded cells and being modeled as a multi-phase system using a plurality of partial differential equations; calculating a plurality of Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) conditions of the reservoir model corresponding to the time-step, the plurality of CFL conditions being calculated for each of the plurality of gridded cells and comprising a temperature CFL condition, a composition CFL condition, and a saturation CFL condition calculated concurrently; simulating a first cell of the plurality of gridded cells using the reservoir model with an Implicit Pressure, Explicit Saturations (IMPES) system to obtain a first simulation result, the first cell having no CFL condition of the plurality of CFL conditions with a value greater than one; simulating a second cell of the plurality of gridded cells using the reservoir model with a Fully Implicit Method (FIM) system to obtain a second simulation result, the second cell having at least one CFL condition of the plurality of CFL conditions with a value greater than one; and performing the oilfield operation based on the first and second simulation results.