Fast Assisted History Matching of Fractured Vertical Well in Coalbed Methane Reservoirs Using the Bayesian Adaptive Direct Searching Algorithm

The proper understanding of reservoir properties is an important step prior to forecasting fluid productions and deploying development strategies of a coalbed methane (CBM) reservoir. The assisted history matching (AHM) technique is a powerful technique that can derive reservoir properties based on production data, which however is usually rather time-consuming because hundreds or even thousands of numerical simulation runs are required before reasonable results can be obtained. This paper proposed the use of a newly developed algorithm, namely the Bayesian adaptive direct searching (BADS) algorithm, for assisting history matching of fractured vertical CBM wells to derive reservoir property values. The proposed method was applied on representative fractured vertical wells in the low-permeable CBM reservoirs in the Qinshui Basin, China. Results showed that the proposed method is capable of deriving reasonable estimates of key reservoir properties within a number of 50 numerical simulation runs, which is far more efficient than existing methods. The superiority of the BADS algorithm in terms of matching accuracy and robustness was highlighted by comparing with two commonly used algorithms, namely particle swarm optimization (PSO) and CMA-ES. The proposed method is a perspective in laboring manual efforts and accelerating the matching process while ensuring reasonable interpretation results.