Modeling Vietnam’s fractured basement oilfields has proved problematical as conventional ‘pillar grid’ based tools fail to capture the complex details of inclined crosscutting faults. An unnamed Vietnamese joint venture used Paradigm’s Skua modeling software to build a structural framework that accurately captured the interesting faults. Skua’s stratigraphic functionality was leveraged to model the top basement and onlapping sediments in a single operation, while preserving the complex fault network.
A tetrahedral mesh was built by Austrian consultants NFR Studies using ‘another software package.’ This was used to compute geo-mechanical properties and support flow simulation. Simulations on the unstructured grid were performed using the Complex systems platform, CSMP++, an object-oriented finite-element toolbox for complex, multi-physics process simulation. CSMP++ was developed by a consortium of Universities, led by the Montan University of Leoben and now marketed by ETH Zurich. The next step is to perform detailed flow characterizations of key fractured zones in the basement. Following further tests carried out by NFR Studies, the company’s plans include use of the SKUA tetrahedral mesh constructor to generate the corresponding unstructured mesh. More from Skua, NFR and CSM++.
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