THE CERTAINTY IN UNCERTAINTY: Quantifying coreflood data errors

Multiphase flow in porous media systems is a critical element of many processes in the energy industry. The characteristics of the simultaneous flow of the immiscible phases can be quantified using relative permeability relations. In geoscience applications, these relations are determined in coreflooding studies that often comprise coreflood tests of oil–water mixtures performed on centimetre-scale rock samples. The outcomes of these are subject to uncertainty, which ultimately influences how accurately the parameters from small-scale tests translate to the upscaled estimations. To assess this uncertainty, Shell researchers have developed an inverse modelling workflow for the uncertainty analysis of relative permeability functions derived from coreflood tests. The results suggest that, even at a small scale, the uncertainty can be significant.