Regional upscaling: A new method to upscale waterflooding in heterogeneousreservoirs for a range of capillary and gravity effects

This paper presents a new, two-phase upscaling methodology hereafter referr ed to as "regional" upscaling. A fine-grid flow simulation is performed on a representative section of the reservoir. Dimensionless numbers are then c alculated for each fine-grid cell to determine the dominant flow regime in that cell, The coarse grid is selected based upon the spatial locations of the different force regimes observed in the fine-grid simulation model. Two -phase upscaling is then performed from the fine to the coarse grid using t he most appropriate pseudoization technique [Kyte and Berry or vertical equ ilibrium (VE)] for the dominant flow regime in each region. The method is c ompared with different global pseudoization methods and its accuracy examin ed for a range of different heterogeneity models, including one for a reser voir in Lake Maracaibo in western Venezuela.