Multiscale analysis and large-scale parallelization of heterogeneous reservoir models

艾伯塔省的很大一部分石油是从稠油和超稠油油藏中生产的。在这种情况下，提取过程以新技术为基础，要求(1)能源效率高；(2)环境安全。数值模拟极大地促进了这些目标的实现，为工程师提供了对油井各种参数的准确估计，并允许有效地优化生产过程。这样的模拟也大大降低了环境风险，因为它们允许将昂贵和危险的现场试验的需求降至最低。拉里奇纳能源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，专门用于非等温稠油油藏的模拟。它包括最先进的数学模型和数值求解技术。本项目旨在进一步开发这些解决方案技术和代码，其中将包括：(I)开发适当的预条件，考虑到所使用的模型的具体情况，并允许在超大规模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，以便能够非常快速且相对准确地模拟非常大型的稠油油藏。这些发展的好处是，一方面，所开发的预处理技术和软件将极大地提高数值求解器的效率，从而允许更准确的计算。另一方面，降阶模型将允许非常快速的模拟，在对其中几个进行全面和非常精确的计算之前，可以使用这些模拟来运行给定生产地点的许多不同场景，并大大降低计算成本。这些技术将使Laricina Energy Ltd.继续处于稠油和超稠油油藏开采技术开发的前沿。开发的开放获取软件也将被其他用户访问，因此将有利于北艾伯塔省稠油油田的整个开发。

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.