The impact of smart completions on optimal well trajectories

When new wells are planned, typically the same trajectory is used for assessing the effectiveness of conventional wells and wells with smart completions. This study demonstrates that the economically optimized trajectory for smart and conventional wells can be very different. Two new well trajectory optimization algorithms were developed...

Identifiability of location and magnitude of flow barriers in slightly compressible flow

Classic identifiability analysis of flow barriers in incompressible single-phase flow reveals that it is not possible to identify the location and permeability of low-permeability barriers from production data (wellbore pressures and rates), and that only averaged reservoir properties in between wells can be identified. We extend the classic...

Hidden information in ill-posed inverse problems

It is well known that parameter updating of large-scale numerical reservoir flow models (a.k.a. ‘computer assisted history matching’) is an ill-posed inverse problem. Typically the number of uncertain parameters in a reservoir flow model is very large whereas the available information for estimating these parameters is limited. The classic...