The chapter starts by explaining how petroleum reservoirs are formed and gives a brief introduction to various concepts from geology to non-geologists. Next, we discuss the continuum hypothesis and how flow through subsurface porous media is modeled on different spatial scales. An essential part is to develop a description of petrophysical properties like porosity and permeability. We explain how this is achieved in MRST, and outline a few examples of models that give realistic representations of reservoir rocks. This includes the popular SPE10 benchmark and a model of a shallow-marine formation.