SPE 62927

Optimal Uplayering for Scaleup of Multimillion-Cell Geologic Models

D. Li and B. Beckner, Mobil Technology Company*
Copyright 2000, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 2000 SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition held in Dallas, Texas, 14 October 2000.
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Abstract
Geophysicists, geologists, and reservoir engineers can now
routinely build reservoir geologic models with ten million
geologic cells and more than one thousand geologic layers.
This explosion in reservoir detail capability presents new
challenges for existing upscaling methods. Uplayering (the
first step of upscaling) is a technique that provides reservoir
engineers with optimal geologic layer-grouping schemes for
simulation model construction. Much uplayering is still done
by hand by reservoir engineers. Even though some advanced
methods can provide automatic tools for uplayering, they are
limited in the applicable model size and are also
computationally expensive. This paper presents a practical and
efficient method for uplayering of multimillion-cell geologic
models. The proposed method defines a displacing front
conductivity, a combination of porosity, permeability, and
facies (in terms of relative permeability, endpoint saturation,
and various facies rules), as the uplayering property. Use of
the new property ensures that the most important geologic
features for fluid flow simulation can be preserved after
uplayering. The new method utilizes a residual optimization
technique to determine the optimal geologic layer-grouping
scenario for a given number of simulation layers. The method
is so efficient that multiple optimal grouping scenarios, from
the one simulation layer model to the model consisting of all
geologic layers, can be generated in a short time, allowing the
inspection of all possible combinations of layer-grouping
scenarios. A residual curve (the difference of the defined
property between the fine-layer and coarse-layer models) is
produced from exhaustive analysis of all possible layering
combinations. Using the residual curve, engineers are able to
determine the number of simulation layers needed based on
their tolerance of possible loss of fine-layer geologic features.
The uplayering method has been successfully employed in
most of recent major reservoir study projects in Mobil and

* Currently with ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company

results from three of these studies will be included in this

paper.
Introduction
Simulating a petroleum reservoir directly using multimillioncell to multibillion-cell geologic models challenges reservoir
modeling resources, on both hardware and software. Due to
parallel computing techniques, the most advanced reservoir
simulators (existing or under development) in the petroleum
industry now can handle up to several million cells by using
more than one hundred CPUs. Theoretically, one can simulate
multimillion to multibillion cells if enough (hundreds to
thousands) CPUs are dedicated to reservoir simulation.
Unfortunately, reservoir engineers may always find
themselves one step behind geologic modeling techniques in
terms of the size of a model. This is due, in part, to the fact
that geologic models are constructed using static, algebraic
systems while reservoir simulation systems are dynamic
solutions of partial differential equations. While reservoir
engineers are trying hard to simulate multimillion cell models,
geologists are building multibillion cell geologic models. The
major challenge for reservoir flow modelers is to simulate a
reservoir efficiently without a significant loss of reservoir
heterogeneities and geologic features. Upscaling provides a
solution for this challenge.
Construction of reservoir simulation layers based on the given
geologic layers, i.e. vertical gridding, is the first step of
upscaling. Traditionally, there are three ways for reservoir
engineers to construct their simulation layers. (1) Use geologic
layers directly when the number of geologic layers (nz) is
equal to the number of simulation layers (Nz). (2) Group
geologic layers when nz is larger than Nz, and (3) split some of
the geologic layers when nz is smaller than Nz. Since
traditional simulation layer construction is a manual process,
reservoir engineers are only comfortable with small geologic
models (less than ~50 layers per model). For a large geologic
model, with several hundred to thousands of geologic layers,
reservoir engineers have no choice but to uniformly group
geologic layers to form simulation layers. As a result, critical
reservoir heterogeneities in the geologic model built by
geologists may be lost. Furthermore, this over-homogenized
model may cause large errors in reservoir history match and
performance prediction and may result in bad business
decisions. Since most geologic models today and in the future
will contain more layers than simulation models, the

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

construction of simulation layers in this paper only refers to

geologic-layer grouping or uplayering. A good uplayering
method should provide reservoir engineers with the best
geologic-layer grouping schemes and the number of
simulation layers needed based on their tolerance for the loss
of the fine-layer geologic features for simulation.
About 35 years ago, Testerman1 published a statistical
reservoir-zonation method for reservoir engineers to identify
reservoir zones from detailed permeability data along well
bores. The reservoir zones identified have a minimum
variation of permeability internally and a maximum variation
between zones. Unfortunately, Testermans idea was ignored
until 1995 when Li et al.2 extended his idea to global
upscaling, i.e. use of three-dimensional unequal spaced grid
cells to capture reservoir heterogeneities residing in geologic
models. The Li et al.2 method provides simulation model
construction with the best geologic-layer-grouping scheme
based on permeability variation for a given number of
simulation layers. The major advantage of this method is that
it is relatively fast, compared to existing methods3-6, because
no numerical simulation is used in the uplayering process.
Stern and Dawson7 recently presented a fast method that is
similar to Li et al.s work with two major improvements: a
faster search algorithm with better defined optimization
properties (breakthrough time and flux) and a way to
determine the number of simulation layers needed. Other nonsimulation-based methods can be found in commercial
software packages8,9. Contrasted to the non-simulation-based
methods is the group of simulation-based methods6-12. Since
simulation-based methods need to solve the single-phase flow
equation to calculate flux distribution, they are limited to
small geologic models (< 2 million cells). Another
disadvantage is that simulation-based methods do not give a
guide as to the number of simulation layers needed for a given
geologic model as they are too computationally extensive to
generate multiple simulation layer model scenarios. In
addition, all existing methods ignore geologic facies (rock
types), the most important factor for geologic modeling and
fluid flow simulation, during uplayering.
In this paper, we present a practical and efficient uplayering
method. The proposed method is facies-based, fast, and sizeindependent (>100 million cells). The new method provides a
measure of the difference between a geologic model and its
offspring simulation models through a residual curve. This
curve is also a guide to reservoir engineers as to the number of
simulation layers needed to maintain fidelity with the geologic
model.
New Method
For ease of presentation, the demonstration of the new method
is arranged in the following four sections: residual
optimization, uplayering property, residual curve, and
extensions.
Residual Optimization
To illustrate the proposed idea, let us look at how engineers
group geologic layers for simulation models. Figure 1

SPE 62927

illustrates layer-averaged permeability (vertical axis) as a

function of depth (horizontal axis) for a 100-layer geologic
model. This is a synthetic model with 100 1-foot layers.
Suppose it is decided that only 25 simulation layers can be
modeled, for reasons such as computer memory limitation.
The engineers may use a traditional approach, i.e. grouping
every four geologic layers into one simulation layer, by which
25 4-foot simulation layers are obtained. After an appropriate
average permeability is assigned to the coarse simulation
layers, their simulation model is complete and ready for
simulation. Unfortunately this simulation model differs
significantly from the original geologic model. Figure 1 shows
that high permeability zones and low permeability barriers
have been drastically homogenized or completely lost during
traditional uplayering from the geologic model to the
simulation model. For example, geologic layer 39-40 (shale,
zero permeability layers) has been replaced by simulation
layer 10 (a 38 md permeable layer). As a result, simulation
layer 10 creates a connection between the upper zones
(geologic layer 1-38) and the bottom zones (geologic layer 41100) that is not seen in the geologic model.
Unlike the above uniform-lumping approach, the proposed
new method focuses on preserving reservoir heterogeneities
and geologic details via a non-uniform layer-grouping
strategy. The strategy determines the optimal layer-grouping
scheme from all possible groupings for a given number of
simulation layers through minimizing the difference, called
residual (shaded area in Fig. 2), between a geologic model and
its offspring simulation model. This residual optimization
method optimally retains high permeability streaks and flow
barriers, and therefore the loss of reservoir heterogeneity is
minimized. Figure 2 illustrates the 25 simulation layers
constructed by the residual optimization method. The
thickness of a simulation layer created by residual
optimization changes from 2 feet to 8 feet, i.e. simulation
layers contain between 2 to 8 geologic layers.
The residual function is defined as:
nz

ny

nx

R =
k =1 j =1 i =1

where R is residual;

c
( p ijk
p ijkf ) 2

nx n y nz

(1)

c
is the coarse-layer property mapped
pijk

(downscaled) at the location (i, j, k) of the fine-layer model;

pijkf is the fine-layer property at the location (i, j, k) of the

fine-layer model; nx and ny are numbers of cells in the x and y
directions of the fine-layer model, respectively; and nz is
number of layers of the fine-layer model. As we will see in the
next section, property p in Eq. 1 does not necessarily mean
permeability. It can be any property that is a good
discriminator to characterize reservoir heterogeneity. We
temporally skip the definition of property p and leave it for the
uplayering property section.
Theoretically, Eq. 1 provides a thorough definition of the
residual, but its use is not computationally efficient, especially
for multimillion-cell models. For instance, consider a geologic

SPE 62927

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

model with 200 layers and 107 cells in total. If we want to

construct an optimal 20-layer simulation model, we need to
run about 1.61026 searching cases (see Appendix A for
details) of all possible 20-layer simulation models.
Considering that each case needs 5107 subtracting,
multiplying, and dividing operations, the total operations for
searching an optimal layer scheme will be 91033. It is not
practical for current computers to do this large number of
operations.
In order to make the layer optimization feasible two
simplifications are needed. We first simplify Eq. 1 from a cellbased calculation to a layer-based calculation. This
simplification will reduce the number of operations by a factor
of the number of cells per layer (e.g. 50000 for the above
example). The second simplification is to change from the
thorough combination search to a sequential search (see
following descriptions). The sequential search cuts down
drastically the number of searching cases (from 1.61026 to
19900 for the above example).
The layer-based calculation uses several statistical parameters
to represent a heterogeneous physical quantity for a layer.
There are three orders of heterogeneity that can be used to
statistically represent reservoir heterogeneity for a given
quantity in the layer. The first order heterogeneity, the most
important one, is the mean of the quantity for that layer. The
variance or standard deviation of the quantity for the layer
constitutes the second order heterogeneity. The third order
heterogeneity consists of the spatial correlation of the quantity
(e.g. correlation lengths, orientation, and aspect ratios). The
first order heterogeneity captures heterogeneity on mean
between layers, the second order heterogeneity describes
heterogeneity within a layer, and the third order heterogeneity
characterizes the trend and distribution of a quantity within a
layer. Since extensive geostatistic work is needed for
estimating the third order heterogeneity, we exclude this
heterogeneity in this uplayering optimization.
Considering the above simplification, Eq. 1 can be rewritten as
follows:

(p p )
( )
(2)
+ w
nz
nz
k =1
k =1
where p and are the mean and standard deviation of a
nz

R=

c
k

f
k

nz

c
k

f
k

quantity for a layer, respectively; w is a weight that varies

from 0 to 1. The layer-based residual (Eq. 2) significantly
reduces computation effort from the cell-based residual (Eq. 1)
and makes the uplayering optimization more attractive for
practical applications. Like Eq. 1, the coarse-layer properties
( p and ) have to be downscaled to the fine-layer system for
residual calculation in Eq. 2. For a correct use of Eq. 2, p and
should be transformed to normal distributions by using a p
normal transformation13 or a normal score transformation14.
As we have seen previously, it is not practical to visit all
possible layer-grouping cases for a given number of

simulation layers, so an efficient procedure is needed for

optimal case selection. A sequential search is a very efficient
method that can meet those needs. There are three major steps
for the sequential search: initialization, first search, and
iteration. Initialization is a process that defines a starting point
for searching the optimal case for a given number of
simulation layers. The major concern in the initialization is to
honor the layer boundaries that are known to be important and
that must be preserved in uplayering. For example, if geologic
event (or sequence) boundaries in a geologic model built by
using geologic modeling packages, such as SGM and IRAP,
are known, then those boundaries should be used to initialize
the search process. In addition to geologic events or
sequences, some other layer boundaries that are known to be
important to fluid flow simulation and should also be added
into the initialization. If there is no layer boundary with
concern, the initialized layer scheme will contain only one
simulation layer. The initial simulation-layer scheme is
constructed by using these selected boundaries. The
initialization is finished after the residual defined by Eq. 2 for
the initial scheme has been calculated.
Starting from the initial simulation-layer scheme, the next step
is to search to the next boundary for the new simulation-layer
scheme. A thorough search is carried out to visit all geologiclayer boundaries except those having been selected. Residuals
for each boundary visit are calculated and compared to each
other. After the search is done, the layer boundary that results
in the smallest residual is determined and then the new
simulation-layer scheme is constructed using the new selected
boundary. The new scheme that contains one more simulation
layer than the previous scheme forms the first search result.
The minimum residual for the new scheme is then kept for
future use.
The iteration procedure basically repeats the first search
process until the number of simulation layers needed is
reached. If we assume that the needed simulation layers are Nz
and the initial simulation layers selected are Ni, the total
number of searching cases is equal to

Nz
j = Ni

j , significantly

lower than the thorough searching case. The proposed

sequential search is so efficient that the desired simulation
layers grouping from a very large geologic model, to say
around 1000 layers, can be determined in less than one CPU
hour using an ordinary computer (NT or UNIX).
Uplayering Property
The uplayering property is a property used to estimate the
residual or the accuracy of reservoir uplayering. An uplayering
property should be an attribute that best characterizes fluid
flow in a petroleum reservoir. There is no unique way to
define an uplayering property. Traditionally geoscientists are
more interested in facies and porosity while engineers are
more interested in permeability. That is to say, reservoir
engineers first consider permeability whereas geologists first
look at facies and porosity when they group layers. Figure 3

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

shows a typical relationship among (horizontal) permeability,

porosity, and facies. It is clear that permeability, porosity, and
facies are individually not adequate enough to be an
uplayering property. Suppose some engineers use (horizontal)
permeability as an uplayering property, no matter how hard
they try for the case shown in Fig. 3, they will always put
apples and oranges together, i.e. different facies and porosity
together. Different facies have different relative permeability
curves, different ratios of vertical and horizontal
permeabilities, and different capillary pressure curves.
Therefore it may not be a good idea to put them together.
Similarly, if geologists use porosity or facies as an uplayering
property, they may put high permeability streaks and flow
barriers together, and changing reservoir model flow
characteristics. If we can find a way to combine all of the three
parameters into one unified parameter as an uplayering
property, we may capture the whole picture of a geologic
model for uplayering.
Based upon fluid flow through a layered porous media, a
displacing front conductivity (DFC) can be defined as follows
(see Appendix B for details):

DFC =
where

kh
f ( S f )

(3)

k h is horizontal permeability; is porosity; f ( S f )

is displacing front velocity at Sf (displacing front saturation).

DFC effectively combines permeability, porosity, and facies,
making it a good uplayering candidate. f ( S f ) is defined as
a water displacing front velocity for water injection but it can
be extended to a gas displacing front velocity for gas injection.
There is another way to define an uplayering property that is
independent of injection fluid types. This uplayering property
is named as facies rules (FR) as follows:

FR = a

kh
+r

(4)

where a is a scaling factor; and r is a rule that discriminates

facies. The parameter r is defined as a series of numerical
numbers by which the difference between two facies in terms
of geology can be quantitative. The absolute value of r is
arbitrary and not meaningful, but the relative values
(differences) between different r values are meaningful. In
order to define facies that can or cannot be grouped, two
degrees of the differences between r values need to be
specified. The first-degree difference defines the facies that
cannot be grouped while the second-degree difference
determines those facies that can be grouped. The first-degree
difference should be much larger than the second-degree
difference depending on objectives and requirements. For
example, if we define three poor sands as 1, 2, and 3, and four
good sands as 101, 102, 103, and 104 then the first-degree
difference is 100 and the second-degree difference is 1. That is
to say, poor sand can only be grouped with poor sand rather
than good sand, and vice versa.

SPE 62927

The relative importance of

k h / in FR is controlled by the

scaling factor a. To emphasize the importance of facies, a can

be defined as follows:

a=

b
r
(k h / ) max

(5)

where b is a scaling number between 0 and 1; r is the

average of the first-degree differences of r; (k h / ) max is the
maximum of k h / in the fine-layer geologic model. Use of
Eq. 5 ensures that the first part in the right side of Eq. 4 is
smaller than the average of the first-degree changes of r (the
second part).
Residual Curve
After a proper uplayering property has been chosen, a residual
curve as a function of the number of simulation layers from a
given initial number of layers to the number of geologic layers
can be generated. This curve shows all possible uplayering
scenarios for a given geologic model. Generating the entire
residual curve is equivalent to the search of the number of
simulation layers that equals to the number of geologic layers,
i.e. Nz = nz. This unique advantage makes the proposed
method very efficient and capable of handling very large
geologic models that may contain more than a billion cells
and/or more than 10,000 layers using the current computing
resources.
Figure 4 shows a typical residual curve plot in which the
horizontal axis represents number of simulation layers and the
vertical axis the residual measure.
Residual normally
decreases as number of simulation layers increases. The
residual curve is bounded by its maximum at the minimum
number of simulation layers (e.g. number of geologic
sequences) and by its minimum at the maximum number of
simulation layers (i.e. number of geologic layers). The
maximum residual depends on the uplayering property chosen
and the minimum residual is always equal to zero. A residual
curve is characterized by three different regions denoted as A,
B, C in Fig. 4. Region A describes the fastest drop of residual,
region B delineates a relative slow drop of residual, and region
C shows zero residual. The boundary between regions A and
B shows the minimum number of simulation layers needed to
capture the most important geologic heterogeneity in the
geologic model. And the boundary between regions B and C
gives the minimum number of simulation layers needed to
make the simulation model identical to the geologic model.
The residual curve can provide reservoir engineers with
quantitative knowledge on the amount of the loss of reservoir
heterogeneity regarding a selected uplayering scenario and can
help them make critical decisions for their simulation model
construction. Once they have decided the number of
simulation layers needed, they can easily achieve the desired
scenario from the database that contains all scenarios for the
given geologic model. After they have obtained the selected
scenario, they can edit the layering scheme if they want to. For

SPE 62927

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

example, they can split very thick layers and group very thin
layers in the selected scenario table before upscaling is carried
out. In addition, reservoir engineers are able to extract several
scenarios for their sensitivity study at any time they need.
Extensions
The proposed method can be easily extended to more general
vertical gridding for simulation model construction. The first
extension is to use a different number of simulation layers in
different areas. For example, when some specific areas are
more important and more heterogeneous than others, more
simulation layers can be used in those areas. This can be done
by using more layers in the important areas with local grid
refinement (LGR) and less layers in the unimportant areas
with coarse areal grids. The second extension is to tune the
simulation layers selected to match geologic heterogeneity
boundaries for those cases that heterogeneity boundaries do
not align with layer boundaries. This process involves layer
tuning in each column (nxny columns in total). Layer tuning
reduces the residual and as a result decreases the loss of
reservoir heterogeneity caused by uplayering.
Field Applications
The proposed method has been applied to most of Mobil's
recent major reservoir studies worldwide. We will only
outline three applications (reservoirs A, B, and C) in this
paper.
Reservoir A is a sandstone, heavy oil reservoir in California,
USA. The reservoir A geologic model was built using a SGM
framework and (RC)2 geostatistic package for properties. The
geologic model was described with 4197 geologic cells per
layer and 379 geologic layers. The model framework was
constructed based on 5 geologic sequences that were split into
geologic layers proportionally. Each sequence contained a
range of 61 to 98 geologic layers. Figure 5 shows the residual
curve of reservoir A model uplayering. The uplayering
property used in this work is porosity since porosity is the
most reliable attribute for this model. According to this
residual curve, the fastest residual-drop region ends
approximately at 29 simulation layers and the residual drops to
zero when number of simulation layers reaches 320. Use of
320 simulation layers should be adequate enough to capture all
of geologic details residing in the 397-layer geologic model,
i.e. reducing 57 layers should not cause any loss of reservoir
detail. Figure 5 also suggests that use of 29 simulation layers
should preserve the most important heterogeneity of the
geologic model. Figures 6 and 7 demonstrate comparison
between the original 379-layer geologic model and the
uplayered 29-layer simulation model. The former compares
the layer-averaged porosity of the simulation model to that of
the geologic model, while the latter shows a 3D distributions
between the two model.
Reservoir B is a deepwater sandstone reservoir in Nigeria.
Reservoir B geologic model was built using Landmark SGM.
The SGM model contains 8 sloped fault blocks and 19

geologic sequences. Each sequence was split into 1 to 165

fault-block-based layers by using proportional, onlap, offlap,
and fault truncations. Since SGM layers were arranged fault
block by fault block, a total of 4315 fault-block-based layers
were generated. In order to feed a simulator, the fault-blockbased layers have to be converted into model-based layers (or
geologic layers). The converting process is called layer
equivalence. Layer equivalence between fault blocks resulted
in 1202 geologic layers with 202148 geologic cells per layer
(35,934,992 cells for the entire model). There are ten facies in
the geologic model (Table 1). A facies-rule-based uplayering
property was developed using Eqs. 4 and 5 with the firstdegree difference 2~3, the second-degree difference 0.01, and
b=0.8 (see column 2 in Table 1).
Figure 8 shows the residual curve of reservoir B uplayering.
The first thing to see from the curve is that use of 525
simulation layers is good enough to retain all reservoir
heterogeneities defined by the facies rules in the 1202-layer
geologic model. In other words, reducing 677 layers through
layer optimization will not change reservoir model
heterogeneity. The residual curve also suggests that use of
about 50 simulation layers may capture the most important
reservoir heterogeneities of the original geologic model. The
actual simulation model (40 layers) used in simulation history
match and prediction was constructed by coarsening some
layers without perforations in the upper intervals of the 50layer model. The 40-layer simulation model resulted in
excellent 15-year history match with little model tuning.
The value of using the proposed method over the traditional
way (uniform lumping) is significant for reservoir B
simulation. Figure 8 demonstrates that zero residual cannot be
reached by using the traditional way unless all 1202 geologic
layers are used. The traditional way also uses more layers
than the proposed method to gain the same residual. Figure 9
shows a comparison of the new method and the traditional
method on average facies rules per layer by using 24
simulation layers. The new method clearly shows a better
match of the original geologic model. Even though we use
fewer layers for the new method (comparing 500 layers for the
traditional way to 350 layers for the new method), the new
method still results in a better match of the fine-layer geologic
model (Fig. 10).
Figures 11 and 12 show comparisons of the porosity and
permeability distributions on a cross section between the
1202-layer geologic model and the 350-layer simulation
model created using the new method. Both porosity and
permeability between the two models are similar and no
significant loss of reservoir heterogeneity is observed from the
uplayered model. Figure 13 shows uplayering in different
regions for the reservoir B model. The LGR region (230
layers) shows much more details than the coarse grid region
(40 layers).
Reservoir C is a carbonate reservoir in the Rocky Mountain
region, USA. The geologic model for reservoir C was built by

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

using SGM for framework and (RC)2 geostatistic package for

properties. The geologic model consisted of 13 million
geologic cells with a 240-column by 290-row by 190-layer
grid without any faults. There were a total of 16 geologic
sequences, each one being split into 1 to 61 geologic layers by
using the onlap, proportional, and truncation options in SGM.
Since the facies rules and facies-based relative permeability
curves are not available in the course of this study, k h / was
chosen as the uplayering property. Figure 14 shows the
residual curves generated by using the new method and the
traditional approach. Improvement on the residual of the new
method over the traditional way is very significant. For
example, 125 layers are needed for the traditional way to gain
the same residual of the new method using 25 layers. For the
new method, 25 simulation layers are capable to capture the
most important reservoir heterogeneity in the 190-layer
geologic model and 58 simulation layers are good enough to
preserve most of geologic details. Figure 15 shows
comparison of permeability distributions on a cross section for
the 190-layer geologic model and the 58-layer simulation
model. Very little difference can be observed from the two
permeability distributions. Figure 16 shows the 58-layer
simulation model in 3D with permeability displayed in colors.
Conclusions
1. The residual curve for uplayering is an important tool for
simulation model construction. From the curve, reservoir
engineers can determine the minimum numbers of
simulation layers needed to capture the most important
reservoir heterogeneity and the entire geologic model
heterogeneity, respectively. Use of the curve also helps
engineers to make their best decisions for simulation
model construction.
2. The proposed method is very efficient such that all
possible uplayering scenarios for a given very large
geologic model containing more than tens of million cells
can be generated in tens of minutes using the current
ordinary computer resources. Engineers are able to easily
extract single or multiple uplayering scenarios for their
simulation studies.
3. The uplayering property defined in the proposed method
is very flexible. Engineers can use DFC, facies rules, and
even simple properties (e.g. porosity, permeability, or
water saturation) as an uplayering property. Engineers are
also allowed to define their own uplayering property for
their needs.
4. The proposed method provides engineers not only with
automatic tools but also with some powerful practical
tools. These practical tools include coarsening too thin
layers, splitting too thick layers, using different layers in
different regions, and tuning simulation layer boundaries
to align with nature geologic heterogeneity boundaries.
Nomenclature
Scaling factor
a
=
Scaling number
b
=

SPE 62927

=
=
=

k
n
p
r
w
DFC

=
=
=
=
=

FR
N
R

=
=
=

=
=
=

Displacing front velocity

Permeability, L2
Number of fine-grid blocks in a specific
direction
Uplayering property
Mean of uplayering property for a layer
Facies rule number
Weight (0 w 1)
Displacing front conductivity for a two-phase
flow system, L2
Facies rules
Number of coarse layers
Residual between a fine-layer geologic model
and its coarse-layer simulation model for
a given uplayering property
Saturation
Porosity
Standard deviation of uplayering property for
a layer

Subscripts
i
= Index in x direction or initial simulation-layer
scheme
j
= Index in y direction
h = Horizontal direction
k = Index in z direction
v = Vertical direction
wi = Irreducible water
x = x direction
y = y direction
z = z direction
Superscripts
c = Coarse layer
f = Fine layer
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank S. Verma, M. Song, D. Stern,
and K. Guenther for their review and discussion of this paper.
Special thanks go to the Special Projects group, especially K.
Wolcott, S. Leininger, and J. Adame. Their discussions and
suggestions of upscaling on the Edop Project lead to
improvement of the proposed uplayering method.
References
1.
2.

3.

Testerman, J.D., A Statistical Reservoir-Zonation

Technique, JPT (August 1962), 889-893.
Li, D., Cullick, A.S., and Lake, L.W., Global Scale-Up
of Reservoir Model Permeability with Local Grid
Refinement, J. of Petroleum Science and Engineering
(1995)14, 1-13.
Farmer, C.L., Heath, D.E., and Moody, R.O., A Global
Optimization Approach to Grid Generation, paper SPE
21236 presented at the 11th SPE Symposium on Reservoir
Simulation, Anaheim, CA., February 17-20, 1991.

SPE 62927

4.

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

Garcia, M.H., Journel, A.G., and Aziz, K., Automatic

Grid
Generation
for
Modeling
Reservoir
Heterogeneities, SPE Reservoir Engineering (May
1992), 278-284.
5. Durlofsky, L.J., Jones, R.C., and Milliken, W.J., A New
Method for the Scale Up of Displacement Processes in
Heterogeneous Reservoirs, 4th European Conference on
the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, Rros, Norway, 7-10
June, 1994.
6. Saad, N., Kalkomey, C.T., and Quenes, A., Optimal
Gridding of Stochastic Models for Scale-up, 4th
European Conference on the Mathematics of Oil
Recovery, Rros, Norway, 7-10 June, 1994.
7. Stern, D. and Dawson, A. G., A Technique for
Generating Reservoir Simulation Grids to Preserve
Geologic Heterogeneity, paper SPE 51942 presented at
the 1999 SPE Reservoir Simulation Symposium held in
Houston, Texas, 14-17 February, 1999.
8. Schlumberger GeoQuest, FloGrid 97A, Technical
Description, 1997.
9. Landmark, A Halliburton Company, GeoLink Users
Guide Version 4.0, 1997.
10. Tran, T. and Journel, A., Scaling Up Detailed Geological
Descriptions with Corner-Point Geometry and SinglePhase Calculations, Report, Stanford Center for
Reservoir Forecasting, Stanford, CA, May 1996.
11. Verma, S. and Aziz, K., Two- and Three-Dimensional
Flexible Grids for Reservoir Simulation, 5th European
Conference on the Mathematics of Oil Recovery, Mining
University Leoben, Austria, 3-6 Sept., 1994.
12. Reservoir Characterization Research & Consulting, Inc,
(RC)2 ResScale Manual, 1997.
13. Li, D. and Lake, L. W., A Type Curve Approach to
Estimating p-Normal Transformation, Mathematical
Geology (May 1995)27, No.3, 359-371.
14. Deutsch, C. V. and Journel, A. G., GSLIB Geostatistical
Software Library and Users Guide, Oxford University
Press, New York Oxford, 1992.
15. Lake, L. W., Enhanced Oil Recovery, Prentice-Hall, Inc.,
Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1989.
Appendix A Number of ways to group geologic layers
Assume that a geologic model contains nz layers and a Nzlayer simulation model will be constructed by grouping these
geologic layers. There are two rules that have to be followed
in layer grouping: (1) one simulation layer must contain at
least one geologic layer, and (2) geologic layers being grouped
into the same simulation layer must follow their original order
and connections. Based on the two assumptions, the total
number of ways to group nz geologic layers into Nz simulation
layers can be calculated using the following procedure:
1. m= nz - Nz +1
2 if (Nz 3)
{
for (j = 1; jnz-Nz; j = j + 1) number[j] = j
for (i=Nz-2; i 1; i=i-1)
{
for (k=1; k nz-Nz; k=k+1)

m = m + number[k]
number[k] = number[k] + number[k-1] }}
3. Total number of ways = m
For example, there will be 1.613591026 ways to group 200
geologic layers into 20 simulation layers.
Appendix B Displacing front conductivity
For the isothermal flow of oil and water in two immiscible,
incompressible phases in a one-dimensional permeable
medium, the displacing (shock) front velocity can be estimated
using the following equation15:

dx D

dt D

= f ( S f )
Sf

(B1)

where

x
= Dimensionless distance
L
t
q
tD =
dt = Dimensionless time
AL
0
xD =

q=

k h Ap
= Total flow rate
L

(B2)

(B3)

(B4)

L = Total length of the permeable medium in the x

direction
A = Cross section area
Sf = Displacing front water saturation
Substituting Eqs. (B2)-(B4) into Eq. (B1) gives:

k
p
dx
= h f ( S f )
dt S f
L

(B5)

Therefore, we can define the combination of parameters in the

parentheses on the left side of Eq. (B5) as displacing front
conductivity (DFC).
Table 1 Facies parameters and rules of reservoir B
Facies
ID

Facies
Rules

DFC
(md)

(kh/)1/2
(md)1/2

kv/kh

Swi

0.01

0.0

0.0

0.0

100.0

0.02

0.0

2.5

0.0

95.0

3c

3.01

375

11.4

0.001

55.0

3b

3.02

4057

34.7

0.01

20.5

3a

3.03

9092

70.2

0.1

8.9

5.01

13890

96.1

0.9

6.5

1b

5.02

15403

91.1

1.0

8.4

1a

5.03

12943

83.5

1.0

11.2

4a

7.01

288

10.0

0.8

45.0

4b

7.02

26

3.0

0.5

80.0

(%)

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

100

F in e lay er

80

P erm eab ili ty (m d)

SPE 62927

C o arse lay er

60

40

20

0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Z (f t)

Figure 1. Uplayering by using a traditional way (uniform lumping)

Fine layer

100

Residual
Coarse layer
Permeability (md)

80

60

40

20

0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Z (ft)

Figure 2. Uplayering by using the proposed method (residual optimization)

10000

1b

1a

3a

1000

k (md)

3b

4a

100

3c

10
4b
1

0.1
0.01
0

10

20

30

40

(%)

Figure 3. Correlation between permeability and porosity for different facies

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

Residual

SPE 62927

Number of
geologic layers

0
Number of
geologic sequences

Number of simulation layers

Figure 4. A typical residual curve for uplayering

Figure 5. The residual curve of the reservoir A model uplayering (379 geologic layers)

Geologic layer

Simulation layer

Figure 6. Uplayering from 379 geologic layers to 29 simulation layers (reservoir A)

10

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

(a)

SPE 62927

(b)

Figure 7. Comparison between the 379-layer geologic model (a) and the 29-layer simulation model (b)
(the reservoir A model, porosity increases as the color scale goes from blue to red)

Traditional way

New method

Figure 8. Comparison of the residual curves of the reservoir B model uplayering by using the traditional
way and the new proposed approach

SPE 62927

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

Geologic layer

Simulation layer

a) Uplayering from 1202 layers to 24 layers (traditional way)

Geologic layer

Simulation layer

b) Uplayering from 1202 layers to 24 layers (new method)

Figure 9. Uplayering comparison of the traditional way and the new method (reservoir B)

11

12

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

SPE 62927

Geologic layer

Simulation layer

(a) Uplayering from 1202 layers to 500 layers (traditional way)

Simulation layer
Geologic layer

(b) Uplayering from 1202 layers to 350 layers (new method)

Figure 10. Uplayering comparison of the traditional way and the new method (reservoir B)

SPE 62927

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

13

(a)

(b)

Figure 11. Comparison of the 1202-layer geologic model cross-section (a) and its offspring 350-layer
simulation model cross-section (b) (the reservoir B model, porosity increases as the color scale
goes from blue to red)

14

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

SPE 62927

(a)

(b)

Figure 12. Comparison of the 1202-layer geologic model cross-section (a) and its offspring 350-layer
simulation model cross-section (b) (the reservoir B model, permeability increases as the color
scale goes from blue to red)

SPE 62927

OPTIMAL UPLAYERING FOR SCALE-UP OF MULTIMILLION-CELL GEOLOGIC MODELS

Figure 13. Uplayering in different regions (the reservoir B model, 230 layers in the LGR region and 40
layers in the coarse grid region. Porosity increases as the color scale goes from blue to red)

Traditional way

New method

Figure 14. Comparison of the residual curves of the reservoir C model uplayering by using the traditional
way and the new proposed approach

15

16

D. LI AND B. BECKNER

(a)

SPE 62927

(b)

Figure 15. Comparison of the 190-layer geologic model cross-section (a) and its offspring 58-layer
simulation model cross-section (b) (the reservoir C model, permeability increases as the color
scale goes from blue to red)

Figure 16. Uplayering from 190 layers to 58 layers (the reservoir C model, permeability increases as the
color scale goes from blue to red)