Reservoir simulation
The newest recipient of the title SPE Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing talks about his career, the evolution of fracture stimulation, the development of increasingly useful simulators, and the future of the oil and gas industry. The honor was given at the 2026 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition.
The authors propose a deep-learning-based approach enabling near-real-time CO2-plume visualization and rapid data assimilation incorporating multiple geological realizations for predicting future CO2 plume evolution and area-of-review determination.
In this study, forward simulation is executed by a commercial reservoir simulator while external code is developed for backward calculations.
-
Fit-for-purpose tactics likely will be of ever-increasing focus going forward. If it is not adding value, it should not be done. But “fit for purpose” encompasses a wide range of possibilities—leveraging new approaches as well as learning from old approaches and improving current approaches.
-
In the complete paper, a novel hybrid approach is presented in which a physics-based nonlocal modeling framework is coupled with data-driven clustering techniques to provide a fast and accurate multiscale modeling of compartmentalized reservoirs.
-
In the complete paper, the authors revisit fundamental concepts of reservoir simulation in unconventional reservoirs and summarize several examples that form part of an archive of lessons learned.
-
In the complete paper, the authors reduce nonuniqueness and ensure physically feasible results in multiwell deconvolution by incorporating constraints and knowledge to methodology already established in the literature.
-
In the complete paper, the authors derive a novel analytical solution to model the temperature signal associated with the shut-in during flowback and production periods.
-
The complete paper demonstrates the benefits of honoring data measurements from a multitude of potential sources to help engineers do a better job of including more diagnostics into routine operations to provide additional insight and result in improved models and completion designs.
-
Most history-matching studies have fixed resources—that is, the team of engineers and geoscientists is predetermined. Moreover, the deadlines are always very strict. This constrained scenario often leads to an unfortunate result: The quality of the study suffers.
-
Proper lateral and vertical well spacing is critical for efficient development of unconventional reservoirs. Much research has focused on lateral well spacing but little on vertical spacing, which is challenging for stacked-bench plays such as the Permian Basin.
-
The complete paper explores the use of multilevel derivative-free optimization for history matching, with model properties described using principal component analysis (PCA) -based parameterization techniques.
-
The Russian company has built a computing cluster in St. Petersburg designed to generate digital twins of oil fields. The new distributed-computing system is capable of processing more than 100 gigabits per second, speeding up the digital-modeling process five-fold.