Optimizing the Preservation of Deepwater Intra-Channel Architecture and Model Connectivity During Upscaling, Tres Pasos Formation, Magallanes Basin, Chilean Patagonia

Abstract

Accurately capturing flow path connectivity in reservoir models is critical to predicting fluid flow performance. In deep-water slope channel reservoirs, flow path connectivity is controlled by multi-scale stratigraphy including a combination of sub-seismic internal channel architecture and the stacking patterns of channels into channel complexes. Fine-scale architecture (e.g., channel base drapes) has a first order control on connectivity. Upscaling consistently increases connectivity and even small changes in cell geometry impacts architecture and artificially induces connectivity. In order to optimize the upscaling process, a high-resolution geocellular model of stacked, deep-water channels from the Laguna Figueroa section of the Late Cretaceous Tres Pasos Formation in Chile was used. The three-dimensional outcrop model of deep-water slope channels from the Cretaceous Tres Pasos Formation in the Magallanes Basin of Chile captures observed facies geometries at a resolution of 2 m horizontally and 1/4 m vertically (~600M cells). The goal was to find the optimal upscaling workflow while honoring static connectivity metrics. Results show that methods which preferentially preserve facies relationships across channel element boundaries consistently most closely matched static connectivity metrics from the fine-scale grid. These methods were considered most successful as the fine-scale grid is assumed to be the most accurate, and therefore most useful to preserve. Furthermore, flow simulation results showed more consistent pressure communication and sweep efficiency in upscaled models that preserved fine-scale connectivity metrics.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90216 ©2015 AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, Denver, CO., May 31 - June 3, 2015