Upscaling Reservoir Transport Parameters for Fractured Porous Media

Hailin Deng
Department of Geological Sciences, Florida State University Tallahassee, Florida 32306, USA
Email: [email protected]

A major challenge for reservoir transport modeling is to obtain reservoir transport parameters at field scale for accurately predicting the influences of physical and chemical heterogeneity on oil/gas/solute transport. This study is to develop a new method for upscaling reservoir transport parameters for fractured porous media with multimodal matrix. First establishes a concept model of reservoir reactive mineral facies with three hierarchical structures including reactive minerals, reactive mineral assemblages and reactive mineral facies; second using mass transfer coefficient in dual porosity model for fractured porous media, the upscaling equations will be derived for hierarchical multimodal matrix in combination of indicator geostatistics and hierarchical transition probability model and stochastic method. Then, Monte Carlo simulations will be conducted to verify the proposed upscaling method. Subsequently, the developed upscaling method will be applied to a fractured reservoir at Rulison site located in the south-central Piceance Basin in west central Colorado, where natural gas (oil) is trapped in fractured sandstone lenses interbedded with shale within Williams Fork Formation of Mesaverde Group in Upper Cretaceous. Nuclear stimulation of the low-permeability reservoir was conducted in 1960s and 1970s. Radionuclide transport and transfer of water and natural gas with tritium in fractured rocks become major concerns because of commercial development of natural gas and environmental protection from radionuclides. Upscaling will bridge the transport parameters gap between the different scales and provide a theoretical and practical link from the laboratory bench to the field scale at which reservoir transport modeling, risk assessment and contaminant remediation are actually conducted.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90094 © 2009 AAPG Foundation Grants in Aid