A multi-scale approach to improve reservoir characterization and forecasting: the Albacora Field (deep-water offshore Brazil) study

The Upper Albian Namorado Sandstone is one of the reservoirs of the Albacora Field, located in the Campos Basin, deep-water offshore Brazil. It is a sand-rich turbidite system where the most important controls on permeability are calcite cementation, thin beds of non-reservoir lithologies and some north–south trending faults. A major multidisciplinary reservoir characterization project was conducted to improve the reservoir description using all available data. In this paper, we focus on how the effect of rock heterogeneities were represented in the fluid flow model and on the performance obtained from this model. The basic idea was to define a hierarchical model of facies established on the basis of three main work scales: porous systems (thin sections and core sample scale); composite facies (whole core and log scale); and seismic facies (interwell to field scale). An up-scaling technique, based on the geopseudo concept, was used to generate the effective petrophysical properties for the fluid-flow simulation model. A Markov–Bayes geostatistical simulation method was applied in facies stochastic modelling. The sophisticated model that was built allowed very fast history matching.