Improving reservoir characterization and simulation with near-wellbore modeling

New reservoir characterization methods are needed to integrate multiscale exploration and development data, particularly at the interface between well and field models. In this paper, we illustrate a novel workflow involving high-resolution near-wellbore modeling (NWM), which allows us to accurately include seismic, wireline data, image logs, and well core logs from highly heterogeneous reservoirs in field-scale reservoir simulations. We demonstrate that an NWM-enhanced geoengineering workflow has the potential to improve reservoir characterization by applying it to a realistic clastic reservoir with high variance at small scale. We have performed a number of sensitivities comparing conventional local grid refinement (LGR) in the near-wellbore region with that involving NWM, and we obtained a significant increase in the accuracy of reservoir characterization and the calibration of dynamic models. Centimeter-scale models, containing several million cells, representing the fine geological details of the nearwellbore region, were constructed with available data from core and openhole well-log suits. The resulting well models were upscaled into regular grids with the highest resolution possible through the NWM software and incorporated into a field-scale simulation model to evaluate the dynamic behavior of the reservoir with a static-model transient test. Our results show that the use of NWM tools for reservoir modeling yields more precise flow calculations and improves our fundamental understanding of the interactions between the reservoir and the wellbore.