Regional Upscaling: A New Method To Upscale Waterflooding in Heterogeneous Reservoirs for a Range of Capillary and Gravity Effects

Abstract

Summary This paper presents a new, two-phase upscaling methodology hereafter referred to as "regional" upscaling. A fine-grid flow simulation is performed on a representative section of the reservoir. Dimensionless numbers are then calculated for each fine-grid cell to determine the dominant flow regime in that cell. The coarse grid is selected based upon the spatial locations of the different force regimes observed in the fine-grid simulation model. Two-phase upscaling is then performed from the fine to the coarse grid using the most appropriate pseudoization technique [Kyte and Berry or vertical equilibrium (VE)] for the dominant flow regime in each region. The method is compared with different global pseudoiza-tion methods and its accuracy examined for a range of different heterogeneity models, including one for a reservoir in Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela.