Coupled simulation of near-wellbore and reservoir models

It is well known that some near-wellbore physics such as formation damage, acid stimulation or near-well reservoir heterogeneity can have a big impact on well productivity. To evaluate this impact. near-wellbore numerical models have been developed to simulate near-wellbore physics using very fine gridblocks. However, near-well models are usually developed standalone and are decoupled from reservoir models. Using a standalone near-well model, which does not take into account production scenarios, does not allow us to correctly predict well injectivity or productivity. In this paper, we present a technique for the coupled simulation of a near-well flow model and a reservoir model in a simple and consistent way. This approach is applied to multiphase flow in 3D heterogeneous media. In this approach, data between these two models are updated through boundary conditions for the near-well model and numerical productivity indices (PI) for the reservoir model. Examples, including an example of two-phase flow in heterogeneous media, simulation of drilling induced formation damage in multi-layered reservoir and water shut-off treatment for a horizontal well, show that this coupled modelling gives quite satisfactory results. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.