History Matching of Structurally Complex Reservoirs Using a Distance-based Model Parameterization

This paper proposes a novel history matching method where reservoir structure is inverted from dynamic fluid flow response. The proposed workflow consists of searching for models that match production history from a large set of prior structural model realizations. This prior set represents the reservoir structural uncertainty due to interpretation uncertainty on seismic sections. To make such a search effective, we introduce a parameter space defined with a “similarity distance” for accommodating this large set of model realizations. The inverse solutions are found in this space using a stochastic search method. Realistic reservoir examples are presented to prove the applicability of the proposed method.