Lake Manassas is a man-made impoundment in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. The lake currently supplies drinking water at an average rate of 10.5 million gallons per day to the City of Manassas, Virginia. The lake discharges, via the Broad Run, a tributary of the Occoquan Reservoir. The Occoquan Reservoir supplies potable water to over 750,000 people in the Northern Virginia area. This thesis presents the results of a limnological analysis of Lake Manassas. The techniques used are established limnological techniques to arrive at a profile which can be compared to accepted scales of ranking. One conclusion from the analysis is that Lake Manassas is eutrophic, which means that the production of biomass in the lake is at a higher than desired rate. The result of this eutrophic condition is that the water quality of the lake will decline rather rapidly. Another conclusion is that Broad Run is the major supplier of nutrients into Lake Manassas, but that conditions are also affected by a point source discharge from a sewage treatment plant. These conclusions are consistent with previous studies done on Lake Manassas. In summary, Lake Manassas is an important water resource in the Northern Virginia area, and it is important to continue to closely monitor and manage runoff practices in the watershed to ensure the lake does not degrade to unacceptable conditions. / Master of Science

No / The current work’s main aims are to discuss and introduce the main aspects of geothermal wells and reservoirs, including well systems, heating, drilling, and completion. There are several systems and methods for extracting heat energy from underground formations, such as open/closed-looped, vertical/horizontal, pond, and slinky mechanisms, which require different distribution and efficient energy transfer systems. The geothermal well completion method and cementing process are similar to hydrocarbon wells. However, the materials and cement used in geothermal wells must be compatible with hot water and high-pressure-high-temperature (HPHT) steam. Therefore, careful planning for compatible drilling-completion operations with geothermal reservoirs is essential.

Fracture patterns control flow and transport properties in a tight gas reservoir and therefore play a great role in siting the production wells. Hence, it is very important that the exact location and orientation of fractures or fracture swarms is known. Numerical models show that the fractures may be manifested on seismograms as discrete events.A number of data processing workflows were designed and examined to enhance these fracture signals and to suppress the reflections in seismic data. The workflows were first tested on a 2D synthetic data set, and then applied to 3D field data from the San Juan Basin in New Mexico. All these workflows combine conventional processing tools which makes them easily applicable. Use of conventional P-wave data may also make this approach to locate fractures more economical than other currently available technology which often requires S-wave survey or computationally intensive inversion of data. Diode filtering and dip-filtering in the common-offset domain yield good results and work very well in the presence of flat reflectors. NMO-Dip filter depends on the NMO velocity of the subsurface, but removes both flat and slightly dipping reflectors without affecting the fracture signals. Prior application of dip-moveout correction (DMO) did not make any difference on reflections, but included some incoherent noise to the data. The Eigenvector filter performed very well on flat or near-flat reflectors and left the fracture signals almost intact, but introduced some incoherent noise in the presence of steeply dipping reflectors. Harlan's scheme and Radon filtering are very sensitive with regard to parameters selection, but perform exceptionally well on flat or near-flat reflectors. Dip-filter, Eigenvector filter, and Radon filter were also tested on 3D land data. Dip-filter and Eigenvector filter suppressed strong reflections with slight perturbations to the fracture signals. Radon filter did not produce satisfactory result due to small residual moveout difference between reflectors and fracture signals. / Master of Science

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1964 M649

This thesis is aimed to calculate the effective permeability tensor and to simulate the fluid flow in naturally fractured reservoirs. This requires an understanding of the mechanisms of fluid flow in naturally fractured reservoirs and the detailed properties of individual fractures and matrix porous media. This study has been carried out to address the issues and difficulties faced by previous methods; to establish possible answers to minimise the difficulties; and hence, to improve the efficiency of reservoir simulation through the use of properties of individual fractures. The methodology used in this study combines several mathematical and numerical techniques like the boundary element method, periodic boundary conditions, and the control volume mixed finite element method. This study has contributed to knowledge in the calculation of the effective permeability and simulation of fluid flow in naturally fractured reservoirs through the development of two algorithms. The first algorithm calculates the effective permeability tensor by use of properties of arbitrary oriented fractures (location, size and orientation). It includes all multi-scaled fractures and considers the appropriate method of analysis for each type of fracture (short, medium and long). In this study a characterisation module which provides the detail information for individual fractures is incorporated. The effective permeability algorithm accounts for fluid flows in the matrix, between the matrix and the fracture and disconnected fractures on effective permeability. It also accounts for the properties of individual fractures in calculation of the effective permeability tensor. The second algorithm simulates flow of single-phase fluid in naturally fractured reservoirs by use of the effective permeability tensor. This algorithm takes full advantage of the control volume discretisation technique and the mixed finite element method in calculation of pressure and fluid flow velocity in each grid block. It accounts for the continuity of flux between the neighbouring blocks and has the advantage of calculation of fluid velocity and pressure, directly from a system of first order equations (Darcy???s law and conservation of mass???s law). The application of the effective permeability tensor in the second algorithm allows us the simulation of fluid flow in naturally fractured reservoirs with large number of multi-scale fractures. The fluid pressure and velocity distributions obtained from this study are important and can considered for further studies in hydraulic fracturing and production optimization of NFRs.

The application of carbon-dioxide injection for enhanced oil recovery and/or sequestration purposes has gained impetus in the last decade. It is known that well test analysis plays a crucial role on getting information about reservoir properties, boundary conditions, etc. Although there are some studies related to the well test analysis in the fractured reservoirs, most of them are not focused on the carbon dioxide injection into the reservoir. Naturally fractured reservoirs (NFR) represent an important percentage of the worldwide hydrocarbon reserves and current production. Reservoir simulation is a fundamental technique in characterizing this type of reservoirs. Fracture properties are often not clear due to difficulty to characterize the fracture systems. On the other hand, well test analysis is a well known and widely applied reservoir characterization technique. Well testing in NFR provides two significant characteristic parameters, storativity ratio (&omega / ) and interporosity flow coefficient (&lambda / ). The storativity ratio is related to fracture porosity. The interporosity flow coefficient can be linked to the shape factor which is a function of fracture spacing. In this study, the effects of fracture and fluid flow factors (geometry, orientation and flow properties) on pressure and pressure derivative behavior are studied by applying a reservoir simulation model. Model is utilized mainly for the observation of multiphase flow effects in CO2 flooded fractured reservoirs. Several runs are conducted for various ranges of the aforementioned properties in the CO2 flooded reservoir. Results of well test analysis are compared to the input data of simulation models on a parameter basis.

Naturally fractured reservoirs (NFRs) hold a significant amount of the world's hydrocarbon reserves. Compared to conventional reservoirs, NFRs exhibit a higher degree of heterogeneity and complexity created by fractures. The importance of fractures in production of oil and gas is not limited to naturally fractured reservoirs. The economic exploitation of unconventional reservoirs, which is increasingly a major source of short- and long-term energy in the United States, hinges in part on effective stimulation of low-permeability rock through multi-stage hydraulic fracturing of horizontal wells. Accurate modeling and simulation of fractured media is still challenging owing to permeability anisotropies and contrasts. Non-physical abstractions inherent in conventional dual porosity and dual permeability models make these methods inadequate for solving different fluid-flow problems in fractured reservoirs. Also, recent approaches for discrete fracture modeling may require large computational times and hence the oil industry has not widely used such approaches, even though they give more accurate representations of fractured reservoirs than dual continuum models. We developed an embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) for an in-house fully-implicit compositional reservoir simulator. EDFM borrows the dual-medium concept from conventional dual continuum models and also incorporates the effect of each fracture explicitly. In contrast to dual continuum models, fractures have arbitrary orientations and can be oblique or vertical, honoring the complexity and heterogeneity of a typical fractured reservoir. EDFM employs a structured grid to remediate challenges associated with unstructured gridding required for other discrete fracture models. Also, the EDFM approach can be easily incorporated in existing finite difference reservoir simulators. The accuracy of the EDFM approach was confirmed by comparing the results with analytical solutions and fine-grid, explicit-fracture simulations. Comparison of our results using the EDFM approach with fine-grid simulations showed that accurate results can be achieved using moderate grid refinements. This was further verified in a mesh sensitivity study that the EDFM approach with moderate grid refinement can obtain a converged solution. Hence, EDFM offers a computationally-efficient approach for simulating fluid flow in NFRs. Furthermore, several case studies presented in this study demonstrate the applicability, robustness, and efficiency of the EDFM approach for modeling fluid flow in fractured porous media. Another advantage of EDFM is its extensibility for various applications by incorporating different physics in the model. In order to examine the effect of pressure-dependent fracture properties on production, we incorporated the dynamic behavior of fractures into EDFM by employing empirical fracture deformation models. Our simulations showed that fracture deformation, caused by effective stress changes, substantially affects pressure depletion and hydrocarbon recovery. Based on the examples presented in this study, implementation of fracture geomechanical effects in EDFM did not degrade the computational performance of EDFM. Many unconventional reservoirs comprise well-developed natural fracture networks with multiple orientations and complex hydraulic fracture patterns suggested by microseismic data. We developed a coupled dual continuum and discrete fracture model to efficiently simulate production from these reservoirs. Large-scale hydraulic fractures were modeled explicitly using the EDFM approach and numerous small-scale natural fractures were modeled using a dual continuum approach. The transport parameters for dual continuum modeling of numerous natural fractures were derived by upscaling the EDFM equations. Comparison of the results using the coupled model with that of using the EDFM approach to represent all natural and hydraulic fractures explicitly showed that reasonably accurate results can be obtained at much lower computational cost by using the coupled approach with moderate grid refinements. / text

Highly fractured carbonate reservoirs are a class of reservoirs characterized by high conductivity fractures surrounding low permeability matrix blocks. In these reservoirs, wettability alteration is a key method for recovering oil. Water imbibes into the matrix blocks upon water flooding if the reservoir rock is water-wet. However, many carbonate reservoirs are oil-wet. Surfactant solution was used to enhance spontaneous imbibition between the fractures and the matrix by both wettability alteration and ultra-low interfacial tensions. The first part of this study was devoted to determining the wettability of reservoir rocks using Amott-Harvey Index method, and also evaluating the performance of surfactants on wettability alteration, based on the contact angle measurement and spontaneous imbibition rate and ultimate oil recovery on oil-wet reservoir cores. The reservoir rocks have been found to be slightly oil-wet. One cationic surfactant BTC8358, one anionic surfactant and one ultra-low IFT surfactant formulation AKL-207 are all found to alter the wettability towards more water-wet and promote oil recovery through spontaneous imbibition. The second part of the study focused on the parameters that affect wettability alteration by surfactants. Some factors such as core dimension, permeability and heterogeneity of porous medium are evaluated in the spontaneous imbibition tests. Higher permeability leads to higher imbibition rate and higher ultimate oil recovery. Heterogeneity of core samples slows down the imbibition process if other properties are similar. Core dimension is critical in upscaling from laboratory conditions to field matrix blocks. The imbibition rate is slower in larger dimension of core. Further, we investigated the effects of EDTA in surfactant-mediated spontaneous imbibition. Since high concentration of cationic divalent ions in the aqueous solution markedly suppresses the surfactant-mediated wettability alteration, EDTA improved the performance of surfactant in the spontaneous imbibition tests. It is proposed in the thesis that surfactant/EDTA-enhanced imbibition may involve the dissolution mechanism. More experiments should be conducted to verify this mechanism. The benefits of using EDTA in the surfactant solution include but not limited to: altering the surface charge of carbonate to negative, producing the in-situ soap, reducing the brine hardness, decreasing the surfactant adsorption, and creating the water-wet area by dissolving the dolomite mineral. / text

No description available.

Reservoir characterization is one of the most important problems in petroleum engineering. It involves forward reservoir modeling that predicts the fluid behavior in the reservoir and inverse problem that calibrates created reservoir models with given data. In this dissertation, we focus on two problems in the field of reservoir characterization: depth of investigation in heterogeneous reservoirs, and history matching and uncertainty quantification of channelized reservoirs. The concept of depth of investigation is fundamental to well test analysis. Much of the current well test analysis relies on analytical solutions based on homogeneous or layered reservoirs. However, such analytic solutions are severely limited for heterogeneous and fractured reservoirs, particularly for unconventional reservoirs with multistage hydraulic fractures. We first generalize the concept to heterogeneous reservoirs and provide an efficient tool to calculate drainage volume using fast marching methods and estimate pressure depletion based on geometric pressure approximation. The applicability of proposed method is illustrated using two applications in unconventional reservoirs including flow regime visualization and stimulated reservoir volume estimation. Due to high permeability contrast and non-Gaussianity of channelized permeability field, it is difficult to history match and quantify uncertainty of channelized reservoirs using traditional approaches. We treat facies boundaries as level set functions and solve the moving boundary problem (history matching) with the level set equation. In addition to level set methods, we also exploit the problem using pixel based approach. The reversible jump Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach is utilized to search the parameter space with flexible dimensions. Both proposed approaches are demonstrated with two and three dimensional examples.