Geometric-Based Simulation of Multi-Component, Multi-Phase Migration

Dan Carruthers and Christopher Neufeld
The Permedia Research Group Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

A variety of techniques are currently used by basin modelers to simulate petroleum migration on basin scales, including Darcy-flow, ray tracing and invasion percolation. The latter is a technique that The Permedia Research Group brought to the basin modeling community in the late 1990's as a solution to the slow performance of Darcy-based solvers and the lack of volume and rigorous fluid flow considerations of ray tracing.

Invasion percolation techniques have proven to be a fast, robust and verifiable means of modeling the flow of petroleum over geological timescales. They have been successfully applied to both basin-scale migration and reservoir filling studies. However, limitations of the geometric algorithms made them inappropriate for use on certain input mesh types. In addition, the lack of compositional reaction handling made invasion percolation (as implemented) inappropriate for simulating fluid alteration processes such as biodegradation and secondary cracking.

We will present an improved invasion percolation solver that provides a means of simulating migration on a variety of input grids and incorporates the concept of reactants and reactions. The solver will be demonstrated running on industry-standard corner-point meshes, modeling the same geological domain as layer-based models, which are generally simulated through an evolving geometry to predict pressure, temperature and rock properties. Examples of both reservoir filling and basin migration will be given.

 

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90066©2007 AAPG Hedberg Conference, The Hague, The Netherlands

 

AAPG Search and Discover Article #90066©2007 AAPG Hedberg Conference, The Hague, The Netherlands