The science of modeling oil & gas reservoirs involves a mix of the natural sciences. Wikipedia defines reservoir engineering as:
…a branch of petroleum engineering that applies scientific principles to the drainage problems arising during the development and production of oil and gas reservoirs so as to obtain a high economic recovery. The working tools of the reservoir engineer are subsurface geology, applied mathematics, and the basic laws of physics and chemistry governing the behavior of liquid and vapor phases of crude oil, natural gas, and water in reservoir rock.
Managing uncertainty and accurately predicting how the reservoir will perform improves the economic yield and the decisions supporting the development of the oil and gas wells.
One of the news items during the Emerson Exchange conference was the announcement of enhancements to the Roxar Tempest 7.1 reservoir engineering software suite. The press release summed up the enhancements:
The new software comes with major enhancements to its uncertainty management and reservoir prediction features within the software module Tempest ENABLE, allowing users to create ensemble-based prediction workflows and better quantify uncertainty in production forecasts. Tempest 7.1 also comes with significant advances to its Tempest MORE reservoir simulator and Tempest VIEW, the pre and post-processing interface for all Tempest modules.
The new innovations in Tempest ENABLE are the first commercial results of the three-year Total Uncertainty Management program… They also build on the long-term collaboration with the Department of Mathematical Sciences at the UK’s Durham University on the development of statistical algorithms.
Noted Emerson’s Kjetil Fagervik:
Kjetil Fagervik
Managing Director, Emerson’s Roxar Software SolutionsGenerating accurate future production estimates, quantifying uncertainty, and minimizing financial risk represent three of the industry’s greatest challenges… Our new version of Tempest meets these challenges head-on, providing users with the necessary statistical rigor and capabilities to generate accurate and realistic production scenarios, test multiple realizations, and better quantify uncertainties on volumes and cumulative production. We were always confident that the Total Uncertainty Management program would deliver strong commercial benefits and in Tempest 7.1 we are starting to see the results.
Tempest VIEW is the interface for all Tempest modules, in addition to providing simulation pre & post processing for 3rd party simulators. It is capable of quickly processing results from multiple simulations consisting of millions of cells and thousands of wells.
Tempest ENABLE acts as the front end to the reservoir simulator. By taking into account all engineering data & tolerances concurrently, ENABLE drives the simulator through hundreds of realizations, rather than the few that manual simulation allows. Simulation results are achieved much more quickly and are of better quality, which leads to more robust prediction. ENABLE can be employed at any stage of a field’s life, with or without historical data.
Tempest MORE is a full field, full physics simulator. Optimized for very large models, and providing parallel simulation as standard, engineers benefit from fast simulation. Deck setup is based on graphical event editing and MORE’s Smart Operation, which supports conditioning of all parameters.
The Roxar Tempest software suite consists of five modules: Tempest VIEW, Tempest MORE, Tempest ENABLE, Tempest PVTx, a PVT analysis tool, and Tempest VENTURE, an economic evaluation tool that provides cash flow analysis derived from simulation results. The five modules can be deployed as an integrated unit with a common interface or individually to enhance existing workflows.
This 6:11 YouTube video, Tempest 7 – Reservoir Engineering Suite provides an overview of the enhancements in each module.
You can connect and interact with other oil & gas professionals in the Oil & Gas group in the Emerson Exchange 365 community.
