Future Challenges of Reservoir Discipline

Reservoir engineers will face in future the challenge of performing their professions for a global society with a significantly increased demand for hydrocarbons. This will require the reservoir engineers to embrace new technologies and engineering methods. In this webinar, experts will explain the technical current challenges and recent progress in four key areas in reservoir engineering discipline.

1. Core Analysis, Subsurface Technologies, PTA / RTA:
Core Analysis, Subsurface Technologies, and PTA / RTA help with formation evaluation (FE) and characterization of oil and gas reservoirs, both conventional, and tight and ultra-tight unconventional reservoirs.

The presentation highlights that, in general, we are in good shape at present for characterization of conventional oil and gas reservoirs thought (FE) using core data, well logs, subsurface technologies and PTA / RTA. There are important challenges in all the above FE areas, particularly at the molecular scale but probably they will become manageable in the not-too-distant future.

FE will help to increase production / recoveries of oil and gas, while keeping a close eye on economics and externalities (EE), for meeting the future world demand that will increase over the next few decades. FE will help in the development of technology for addressing CCUS and geothermal energy needs.

2. Molecular and Pore Scale Modeling:
Is the Representative-Elementary-Volume approach for reservoir modeling working well, where are the limits? What are the challenges in modeling reservoir fluids, estimating their properties and performing flash calculation? How well do we understand nano-confined hydrocarbons? What equation-of-state should be used for predicting nano-confined fluid behavior? What are the sources of uncertainties in transport, and how molecular-level or pore-scale modeling can help us? Considering multi-scale pore structure of reservoirs, has the upscaling issue been resolved? Can multi-scale reservoir models help us avoid upscaling for the benefit of preserving pore-scale and molecular phenomena?

3. Enhanced Oil Recovery:
Various EOR processes have been actively applied for over 50 years. This webinar will summaries the evolution of popular EOR processes and their current status. In addition, factors that have influenced the maturation of various EOR technologies will be discussed. Also, recent EOR advancements for potential application in unconventional and offshore reservoirs, and status of combination processes will be shared. We will also share a few thoughts for future EOR practitioners.

4. Reservoir Management:
Reservoir management and the effort to optimize hydrocarbon recovery with respect to capital investments and operating expenses is constantly evolving. The tradeoffs are complex, and the changing nature of business needs, financial and socioeconomic conditions, and human behavior dictates that this practice will remain dynamic and continue to present challenges in the future. This section will discuss the historical, current, and expected future challenges of data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning, reserves, and project economics.

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