Work

Unit-Scale Dynamic Reserve Updating in Fracture–Vuggy Carbonates Using Water-Body- and Heterogeneity-Corrected Dynamic Methods

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Fracture–vuggy carbonate reservoirs contain discrete caves, fractures, conduits, and vugs, which makes recoverable-reserve evaluation strongly dependent on connected volume rather than on total pore volume alone. This study develops a unit-scale dynamic reserve-updating method for the S48 unit, Tahe Oilfield, by coupling a water-body-corrected material-balance equation, a heterogeneity-corrected waterflood characteristic curve, and iterative geological-model calibration. The main methodological contribution is to convert static fracture–vug architecture into dynamically constrained connected subsystems: the parameter Rwo quantifies connected/injected water volume at the fracture–vug unit scale, whereas the coefficient M corrects the apparent slope of waterflood curves for non-uniform sweep and preferential pathways. The revised workflow was calibrated against pressure, production, injection-response, and history-matched simulation data. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the estimated reserve-utilization degree increased from 48.77% +/− 4.8 percentage points during natural depletion to 74.1% +/− 6.7 percentage points after gas injection, reflecting staged reserve mobilization within the tested uncertainty range. The method is intended for field-scale reserve updating in reservoirs with sufficient pressure-production data; its transferability remains limited by static-model quality, channeling intensity, and the single-unit validation scope of this study.

Source: Energies

DOI: 10.3390/en19112499