Chen, ZhangxinElmabrouk, Saber KhTamer, Mohamed Rajab2018-12-142018-12-142018-12-11Tamer, M. R. (2018). Geological Realization Rankings for Steam-Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) Reservoir Dynamic Modeling (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.http://hdl.handle.net/1880/109351Geological realizations are generated using geological and petrophysical properties to capture the range of possible geologic variability presented in the reservoir under development. Reservoir dynamic modelling or reservoir simulation is typically conducted to identify the range of uncertainties in the geological realizations through fluid rates, volumes and recovery factors. Conducting dynamic SAGD reservoir simulation for all stochastic geological realizations for ranking is not viable in practice due to excessive amounts of computer time required especially when modelling a thermal process like SAGD. This thesis presents a novel approach that uses the geological realization characteristics including permeability, porosity, initial water saturation and block volumes to rank equal probable SAGD geological realizations in order to classify high, medium, and low performing SAGD realizations prior to SAGD simulation. This research work introduces five statistical averaging techniques, and then examines the coefficient of determination between the five statistical averaging ranking measures and the SAGD reservoir performance forecast of the SAGD geological realizations. These techniques encompass Permeability Mean (PM), Permeability Harmonic Mean (PHM), Block-Volume Permeability Harmonic Mean (BVPHM), Pore-Volume Permeability Harmonic Mean (PVPHM), and Bitumen-In Place Volume Permeability Harmonic Mean (BIPVPHM). To validate the five statistical ranking measures, nine generic SAGD realizations involving a shale slab of two different model grid dimensions and a number of seventy SAGD geostatistical realizations are examined. This research work also investigates ranking the SAGD geological realizations throughout the life of SAGD operations by comparing the coefficient of the determination between the ranking results and performance of SAGD geological realizations over 10 years of SAGD operations. The results indicate that the PM ranking technique can be used to explain the forecast of the SAGD performance of the generic geological realizations at early SAGD time up to 81% at most, whereas the PVPHM ranking technique can be used to explain the SAGD performance of the tested SAGD geostatistical geological realizations up to 74% at most. The introduced techniques can be included in a commercial dynamic reservoir package to re-process SAGD geostatistical geological realizations prior to conducting SAGD reservoir simulation studies on a selected group of the SAGD geological realizations for further reservoir simulation rankings.enUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.Engineeringdoctoral thesishttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/34973