In partial fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Science

will defend her thesis

Oil companies use numerical reservoir simulators for long term production planning and day-to-day decision making. Commercial reservoir simulators are very complex and expensive; however, large oil companies can afford to use these expensive tools. The first part of this thesis investigates the numerical underpinnings of the simplest of these simulators, the black oil model.

The 3D black oil model solved by finite differences consists of thousands to a million grid cells. Reservoir engineers have to deal with the massive amount of data resulting from such simulations. They recognized that conventional data tables, 2D area maps and cross-sections have shortcomings. To overcome these shortcomings, the second part of this thesis develops a 3D reservoir visualization tool, named 3DResVis, using OpenGL. This tool allows reservoir engineers faster and more complete interpretation of reservoir simulation results.

Date: Tuesday, May 1, 2001

Time: 11:00 AM

Place: 550-PGH

Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Olin G. Johnson