New Software Release

The release of Intersect™ reservoir simulator 2025.4 delivers many key features in performance, field management, and more.

Key release highlights

Model salt precipitation workflows for fast, accurate CO2 storage simulation

Evaluate the risk of injectivity impairment and well blockage from salt precipitation using the fast CO2STORE method. This is an implementation based on the Eclipse™ reservoir simulator, that enables engineers to evaluate the precipitation of NaCl into Halite with a single command for activation.

Solid formation in near wellbore cells causing blockage and closure of injector well

New rock mechanics model for cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) processes

Capture the physics of cyclic injection-production processes such as cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) with the introduction of the Beattie-Boberg rock compaction model. This method enables users to set the pressure and compressibility values to precisely control pore volume changes in both reversible and irreversible regimes of compaction and dilation, delivering more realistic simulation of reservoir behaviour.

Cyclic steam stimulation requires special rock compaction physics

Enhanced geothermal modeling with heat flux boundary conditions

A new heat loss model is now available with flexible control of heat boundary conditions. This enables modeling of phenomena such as volcanic intrusions in geothermal workflows.

Heat flux boundary conditions can help model volcanic intrusions in geothermal cases

Learn more about the Intersect reservoir simulator

Key enhancements

Performance

• To improve the performance of thermal CCS models, a new method for computing scale factors when the primary variables hit their upper and lower bounds has been added. Global scale factors are no longer affected by limiting the primary variable within their range, enabling the simulation to converge faster.
   
• A set of recommended numerical settings for isothermal and thermal CO2 storage simulations has been added to the technical documentation. Using the latest developments, these aim to provide a good balance between performance and accuracy.
   

Physics and CO2 Storage

• The range of analytical aquifer models has been extended to include constant pressure gas and water aquifers, including brine. These are supported in black oil and compositional simulations and can be used to efficiently model large bodies of gas or water under the assumption of constant pressure (such as a section open to atmospheric conditions).
   
• Relative permeability hysteresis effects following the Killough model are now available in oil-wet rocks. This feature complements the default "water-wet" hysteresis model assumptions, where these different types of wettability can be combined in a single reservoir. The "oil-wet" Killough hysteresis replicates the corresponding algorithm in Eclipse™ industry-reference reservoir simulator, and the migration of the relevant keywords to the Intersect simulator is now possible.
   
• Improved steam tables have been set as the new defaults for thermal models with component solubility in water (CSIW) and isothermal models with CSIW that use the Ezrokhi model. Properties such as density and viscosity of the water phase now consider pure water properties using INTERSECT_TABULAR steam tables.
   

Usability

• Intersect 2024.3 can handle simulations that exceed the year 9999, with the capability to run with simulation time up to approximately 252 million years. This can be utilized in geothermal and CO₂ storage workflows where geological time scale predictions may be necessary.
   
• A new table has been added to the PRT file while parsing RESQML files (.epc) that contains information about the properties found in the file, their associated grid, and attachment kind (cells, edges, and so on).