Waterflood recovery and fluid flow upscaling in a shallow marine and fluvial sandstone sequence

Detailed reservoir characterisation and modelling has been an active area of petroleum technology development for several years now, but incorporating and scaling up these geologic models into fluid flow and production simulations is a major challenge. The objective of this study is to properly incorporate all relevant levels geological heterogeneity identified in a detailed outcrop reservoir description into a flow simulation of an hypothetical reservoir. We apply the 'geopseudo' upscaling methodology to the geological description of a shallow marine sequence exposed in the Book Cliffs. The study identifies which features are important for field-scale fluid flow and recovery for a waterflood. A cross section waterflood flow simulation, using the geopseudo upscaling technique, was carried out on an interpreted cross-sectional panel through a portion of the Book Cliffs outcrop in Utah. The section consists of the following lithofacies: Undifferentiated Upper Shoreface deposits, Hummocky Cross Stratified sands, the Swaley Cross Stratified sands, Fluvio-Tidal Channel Sandstones and two units of Heterolithics. A grid block size of 10 metres by 1 metre was used, with two stages of upscaling to account for the effects of small-scale heterogeneities. The thin beds of shales were accounted for using vertical and horizontal transmissibility multipliers between grid blocks. Sensitivity runs were carried out to assess the relative contribution of different geological parameters to the waterflood performance.