METHODOLOGY FOR GENERATING QUALITY MAPS WITH APPLICATION IN THE SELECTION AND OPTIMIZATION OF DRAINAGE STRATEGIES OF OIL RESERVOIRS

Abstract. Quality maps are important decision making tools capable of representing various reservoir properties which influence field production; therefore, such maps are important for the definition and optimization process of drainage strategies. These maps integrate geological and fluid inherent variables, allowing for the identification of regions with greater or lower production potential, whether one is analyzing reservoirs in the development phase or mature fields. The most commonly used method to generate a quality map uses several reservoir numerical simulations considering a unique production well, operating for enough time to extract as much oil as possible. The well position is changed in each simulation run in order to cover all the reservoir grid area; as a consequence, this method is time-consuming and requires high computational effort, which could render the process unfeasible depending on the problem features. This work presents two reservoir models, one with homogeneous characteristics and the other with heterogeneous features. In order to reduce the time and computational effort requirements of the map generation by numerical simulation, various quality map generation schemes have been tested: using a single well, a group of four wells covering the reservoir grid in different ways and the simultaneous operation start of many wells distributed around the reservoir grid area; injector wells were also used. The kriging interpolation method was used for the missing points in all cases. Each method generated different maps, therefore a methodology was developed to compar