STORM: Integrated 3D Stochastic Reservoir Modeling Tool for Geologists and Reservoir Engineers

Abstract

Summary The petroleum industry is focusing on improved reservoir characterization. Decisions concerning development and depletion of hydrocarbon reservoirs must be made while giving consideration to the uncertainties of the formation involved. This requires combining geological and engineering data to develop a detailed reservoir model. Geostatistics and stochastic modeling techniques have emerged as promising approaches for integrating all relevant information and describing heterogeneous reservoirs. By use of stochastic techniques to generate a range of equiprobable reservoir descriptions, the uncertainty in the important reservoir parameters can be quantified. This quantification, together with the enhanced understanding of the reservoir characteristics given by stochastic reservoir modeling and visualization, provides an essential basis for making informed field-development decisions. This paper presents an integrated approach for stochastic reservoir evaluation. The presented approach has been implemented in the software system STORM.