AI Grid Design for Fast Reservoir Simulation

Reservoir simulators based on physics provide the most accurate method for predicting oil and gas recovery, in particular from waterflood and EOR processes. However, detailed full-field simulation can be computationally demanding. In recent years, there have been attempts in accelerating reservoir simulation by combining simplification of the gridding requirement with data-driven approaches while maintaining the full physics. One such approach is the physics-based data-driven flow network model where 1D or 2D grids connecting the wells are configured and simulated. The parameters of the flow network model are then tuned to match full 3D simulation or field-data. Even though the grid has been simplified, a large number of parameters are needed to reproduce the 3D simulation results. In this paper, an approach similar to the flow network model is presented. The main contribution of this paper is the parameterization of the gridding process between the wells such that a minimal number of parameters are needed. Essentially, the grids between the wells are configured to model accurately the flow behavior. The corner-point grid geometry is kept so that current simulators could be used with the proposed method. In this paper, the grid geometry is determined with AI methods for one waterflood run. The grid could be used subsequently for waterflood with widely different injection/production scenarios and even for chemical flood. The ability of the approach to derive the grid from a single waterflood run is another significant contribution of this paper.