• Instructors:  Mark Bentley, Tim Wynn
• Location: Virtual
• Date:  9th - 13th May 2022
• Start Time: 08:00 BST

Business Impact: We will never cease to be interested in fluid flow in the subsurface. The same reservoir and simulation technologies that have been developed in the pursuit of producing oil and gas resources will continue to be required in the future, not only for a declining production of hydrocarbons, but for disposal of CO2 and the storage of energy itself. Although sharing common areas, the models we build for storage will nevertheless differ in a number of ways compared to those we use for production. 

Modelling the ‘storage complex’ requires us to build models that encompass not just the target reservoir for drilling, but also the surrounding rock volumes, including the lateral volumes where the injected fluid plume is expected to migrate to. This draws on a need to capture the geomechanics of these rock volumes, and also to model on a scale that can support seismic monitoring of the moving plume – a larger scale than we would normally model for production alone. However, the supercritical fluids involved are particularly sensitive to reservoir heterogeneity. Rather than hindering our objective, as in the case of production, heterogeneity can be an advantage for storage either through the creation of compartments or through direct capillary trapping – a smaller scale than we might normally model for production. 

This course will summarise the unique issues when modelling for storage. Participants will learn to consider fluid properties, heterogeneity, geomechanics, seismic monitoring, and scale when carrying out reservoir modelling for storage.

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