Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling and Application in Reservoir Simulation

The development of naturally fractured reservoirs, especially shale gas and tight oil reservoirs, exploded in recent years due to advanced drilling and fracturing techniques. However, complex fracture geometries such as irregular fracture networks and non-planar fractures are often generated, especially in the presence of natural fractures. Accurate modelling of production from reservoirs with such geometries is challenging. Therefore, Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling and Application in Reservoir Simulation demonstrates how production from reservoirs with complex fracture geometries can be modelled efficiently and effectively.

This volume presents a conventional numerical model to handle simple and complex fractures using local grid refinement (LGR) and unstructured gridding. Moreover, it introduces an Embedded Discrete Fracture Model (EDFM) to efficiently deal with complex fractures by dividing the fractures into segments using matrix cell boundaries and creating non-neighboring connections (NNCs). A basic EDFM approach using Cartesian grids and advanced EDFM approach using Corner point and unstructured grids will be covered.

Embedded Discrete Fracture Modeling and Application in Reservoir Simulation is an essential reference for anyone interested in performing reservoir simulation of conventional and unconventional fractured reservoirs.

• Highlights the current state-of-the-art in reservoir simulation of unconventional reservoirs
• Offers understanding of the impacts of key reservoir properties and complex fractures on well performance
• Provides case studies to show how to use the EDFM method for different needs

Sepehrnoori is a professor in the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at The Uni-versity of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Texaco Centennial Chair in Petroleum En¬gineering. His research interest and teaching include computational methods, reservoir simulation, simulation of unconventional reservoirs, enhanced oil recovery modeling, flow assurance modeling, naturally fractured reservoirs, high-performance computing, and CO2 sequestration. He has been teaching at The University of Texas for over 30 years and has graduated more than 200 MS and PhD students under his supervision working mainly in the areas of reservoir simulation and enhanced oil recovery modeling. For the last several years, he has been supervising a research group in simulation of unconventional reservoirs (shale gas and tight oil reservoirs). Sepehrnoori's research team along with his colleagues have been in charge of development of several compositional reservoir simulators (i.e., UTCOMPRS, UTCHEMRS, and UTGEL). Also, more recently, he supervised the development of a soft-ware package for embedded discrete fracture modeling for application in naturally and hydraulically fractured reservoirs. He has published over 600 articles in journals, and conference proceedings in his research areas. He has also coauthored two books, which have been published by Elsevier. Sepehrnoori is the director of the Reservoir Simulation Joint Industry Project in the Center of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering. He holds a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from The University of Texas at Austin.