New Software Release

Release highlights

The 2018.1 release of INTERSECT delivers key features around four main pillars of Fidelity, Physics, Performance and Field Management.

INTERSECT 2018.1 delivers key functionalities to enhance the modeling fidelity – in honoring geology, reservoir and operation complexity.

INTERSECT simulator supports a wide range of physical models, allowing the user to capture a large scope of reservoirs and recovery methods. INTERSECT simulator allows users to model low salinity water, polymer and steam injections at the high resolution such methods require and, in this release, new features are delivered to extend its fast-growing enhanced oil recovery capacities.

With high fidelity, advanced physics, and increasing complexity in models, performance is vital to improve the speed and quality in decision-making. INTERSECT simulator is committed to high performance computing (HPC), from both software and hardware aspects, while leveraging new digital and cloud technologies. Speed increases are obtained from multipronged approaches, ranging from hybrid parallel that improves scalability and reduces memory use, continuous improvement in linear and nonlinear solvers, to code modernization and optimization to benefit from latest hardware technologies. Performance improvement is delivered year-on-year.

During field development lifecycle, there are wide-ranging complexities from planning to operation. Accurate modelling of such complexities and the reliable prediction of future scenarios are critical to support big investment decisions while minimizing the risks. With distinctive reservoirs and various development options, customers require tools with flexibility and versatility to solve unique challenges while following the existing corporate processes. We have focused efforts in this release to improve usability, enhance integration, provide openness and extensibility, which will help our customers to explore the spectrum of possible scenarios that they could never explore before.

Key developments

Fidelity

• Depogrid: Step changing in gridding technology fully supported in the INTERSECT simulator
  Petrel 2018.1 delivers a new grid called Depogrid. The grid is ready for INTERSECT simulation with no need to upscale cells or convert faults into stair-step mode. Depogrid, together with pillar grid and stair-step grid, contributes to the comprehensive reservoir modelling framework in the Petrel platform that enables high-fidelity static and dynamic modeling of the most diverse structural and stratigraphic challenges. This unprecedented integration in reservoir modeling significantly boosts productivity in field development planning and production.

• Mature field: report cumulative water flux as cell properties
  INTERSECT 2018 adds a new family of grid cell properties to report cumulative water flux (CWF) flowed through cells. The reporting of these properties opens new opportunities for using CWF quantities in history-matching and in managing mature waterflood fields.

Physics

• Miscible flooding: model residual oil saturation (SOR) in compositional simulation
  INTERSECT 2018.1 delivers a key feature to model residual oil saturation (SOR) in compositional simulation. During miscible flooding, some oil will be bypassed and this feature allows users to capture this physics and accurately estimate displacement efficiency.

• Thermal simulation: boundary segment well and temperature-dependent anisotropic thermal conductivity
  The well model has been extended in INTERSECT simulator to support boundary segments which can be used to control injection/production in the well at multiple points besides the usual nodal point of bottom-hole or tubing-head. This feature enables advanced well modeling in thermal processes such as steam recirculation within the well, or steam injection in multiple tubing strings.
   INTERSECT 2018.1 supports fluid and anisotropic rock thermal conductivities tabulated as a function of temperature. The accounting of thermal conductivity anisotropy and its dependency on temperature improves the modeling and characterization of steam chamber growth.

• Oil vaporization control in black oil simulations
  INTERSECT 2018.1 allows the control on Rs (solution gas-oil ratio) and Rv (vapor oil-gas ratio) by a maximum value (as an alternative to the maximum increase rate that was already available) in black oil simulations. This maximum value can be scaled based on the ratio of the current and historic maximum values of the oil saturation in a cell. This can be used to model the effect where, as oil saturation decreases due to vaporization, further vaporization becomes more inhibited.

Performance

• Hybrid parallel: for improved scalability and reduces memory usage
  Hybrid parallel in INTERSECT simulator was initially released in 2016.1. It delivers key value in improving scalability and reducing memory consumption.
  INTERSECT 2018.1 delivers further performance improvement when running with multiple threads, by enhancing computations such as a number of grid calculations, reporting calculations, and the calculation of fluid flow between cells. Thread pinning is now handled. INTERSECT simulator will probe the hardware it runs on and pin threads to unique, physical cores to enable the best performance.

• Continuous performance improvement
  INTERSECT 2018 delivers continuous improvement in performance by better memory management and optimization in the linear solver.

Field Management and Usability

• Python Scripting for Powerful Field Management
  INTERSECT 2018.1 provides the ability for users to write Python scripts in the deck to customize their simulation. This functionality is supported in Petrel User Edits. By so doing INTERSECT simulator delivers openness and allows the extension of simulation functionalities for flexible and powerful field management. Some application examples include customized actions on wells, well injectivity damage due to fines, and customized reporting, etc.

• Automatic switching of injection and production VFP tables
  INTERSECT 2018.1 now allows the user to assign an injection vertical flow performance (VFP) table to a well, together with a production VFP table. Field management logic will handle the automatic switching between the specified production and injection tables depending on the current well type.

Other products development associated to the INTERSECT simulator:

Geomechanics

• VISAGE simulator efficiency improvements
  • The memory footprint reduced by 20-25% when running simulation on 8+ threads
• Power-law creep material model
  • Norton-Bailey creep
  • Choice of primary and/or secondary creep
  • Option of time or strain hardening behavior
• Sector modeling ◦
  • Using Petrel Geomechanics, sector models can now be created from field scale models
• New fault spacing calculation methods