Multiscale analysis and large-scale parallelization of heterogeneous reservoir models

阿尔伯塔省的大部分石油来自稠油和超稠油油藏。在这种情况下，提取过程是基于新技术，要求：(1)节能；（ii）环境安全。数值模拟极大地促进了这些目标的实现，为工程师提供了对井的各种参数的准确估计，并允许对生产过程进行有效的优化。这种模拟也大大降低了环境风险，因为它们可以最大限度地减少对昂贵和危险的现场实验的需求。Laricina能源有限公司是阿萨巴斯卡油田开发的主要参与者之一，该公司开发了自己的开放式油藏模拟器，专门用于模拟非等温稠油油藏。它包括最先进的数学模型和数值解决技术。本项目旨在进一步发展这些解决方案技术和代码，其中包括：(i)开发适当的预调节器，考虑到所使用模型的具体情况，并允许在非常大规模的并行分布式计算机集群上进行有效的模拟；（ii）开发简化的数学模型，以便对超大型稠油油藏进行快速而相对准确的模拟。这些发展的好处是，一方面，发达的预处理技术和软件将大大提高数值求解的效率，这将允许更准确的计算。另一方面，减少订单模型将允许非常快速的模拟，可用于运行给定生产现场的许多不同场景，大大降低了计算成本，然后运行其中几个场景的全面和非常精确的计算。这些技术将使Laricina能源有限公司继续处于稠油和超稠油油藏开采技术发展的前沿。开发的开放获取软件也将对其他用户开放，因此将有利于北阿尔伯塔省重油油田的整个开发。

A large portion of the oil in Alberta is produced from heavy and superheavy oil reservoirs. The extraction process in such cases is based on new technologies that are required to be (i) energy efficient; (ii) environmentally safe. The achievement of these goals is greatly facilitated by numerical simulations that provide the engineers with accurate estimates for various parameters of the wells and allow for an efficient optimization of the production process. Such simulations also greatly reduce the environmental risks since they allow to minimize the needs of expensive and hazardous field experiments. Laricina Energy Ltd., being one of the major players in the development of the Athabasca oil field, has developed its own open access reservoir simulator which is specialized in the simulation of non-isothermal heavy oil reservoirs. It comprises state-of-the-art mathematical models and numerical solution techniques. The present project is aimed at the further development of these solution techniques and the code which will include: (i) development of proper preconditioners that take into account the specifics of the models used and allow for efficient simulations on very large scale parallel distributed computer clusters; (ii) development of reduced mathematical models that allow for very fast and yet relatively accurate simulations of very large heavy oil reservoirs. The benefits of these developments are that on one hand the developed preconditioning techniques and software will greatly increase the efficiency of the numerical solvers which will allow for more accurate computations. On the other hand, the reduced order models will allow for very fast simulations that can be used to run many different scenarios for a given production site with much reduced computational costs, before running a full-scale and very precise computations of just several of them. These techniques will enable Laricina Energy Ltd. to continue to be at the cutting edge of the technological development for production from heavy and superheavy oil reservoirs. The developed open access software will be also accessible to other users and therefore will benefit the entire development of the heavy oil fields in Northern Alberta.