Improved Probabilistic Representation of Facies through Developments in Geostatistical Practice

• Author / Creator

  Lajevardi, Saina

• Reservoir management requires high resolution numerical geologic models of facies and petrophysical properties. Facies are arguably the most important reservoir heterogeneity. Many geostatistical facies modeling techniques have been proposed during the years of heavily practiced geostatistics in reservoir assessment. Several aspects in current practices, outside the modeling technique itself, induce potential deficiencies in the representation of facies.

  This thesis develops novel tools, techniques, and understanding that support geostatistical literature and improve reservoir modeling practice. Notable features of this thesis are (1) addressing information loss in facies upscaling process through a proposed measure which captures variability on non-major facies; (2) proposing a novel inverse modeling approach to estimate shale continuity in the form of a probability distribution function; (3) introducing stochastic regridding to correct the conventional approach of nearest neighbor assignment; (4) investigating the construction of high resolution models in MPS aspect; (5) enforcing the connectivity of disparate facies units such as levees by proposing an effective sequence of dilation-erosion approach while preserving the global proportions; and finally (6) proposing multiscale ranking that optimizes the selected realization performance over different recovery settings, and introducing realization clustering as an alternative to ranking when more than one factor is representative of the reservoir performance.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Stochastic shales
  • Multiscale ranking
  • Regridding
  • Clustering realizations
  • Facies mixing
  • High resolution MPS
  • Enforcing connectivity
  • Shale lateral continuity

• Graduation date

  Fall 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3K06X843

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.