Challenges and Technologies in Reservoir Modeling

Reservoir modeling is playing an increasingly important role in developing and producing hydrocarbon reserves. In this paper, we provide a brief overview of some main challenges in reservoir modeling, i.e., accurate and efficient modeling of complex reservoir geometry and heterogeneous reservoir properties. We then present modeling techniques we recently developed in addressing these challenges, including a method for generating constrained Voronoi grids and a generic global scale-up method. We focus on the Voronoi gridding method, which is based on a new constrained Delaunay triangulation algorithm and a rigorous method of adapting Voronoi grids to piecewise linear constraints. The global scale-up method based on generic flows is briefly described. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the techniques and the advantage of combining them in constructing accurate and efficient reservoir models. AMS subject classifications: 37M05, 76S05, 86A60, 65M50, 65N50