No abstract

Oil companies are facing several challenges from external and internal environment like volatility of crude oil price, capex reduction, subsurface uncertainty, delay in the surface facilities etc. that impacts the long-term strategic plans. Kuwait Oil Company (KOC)'s annual Asset Action Plan (AAP) operationalizes the long-term strategy of the company assurance of annual AAP is key for having a credible forecast and meeting long term goals. A robust Corporate Assurance process has been developed that consists of workflows that will guarantee company's ability to develop and execute credible field development plans. A review on proper planning, execution and alignment of different business processes is required during assurance of Asset Action Plan. This assurance process provides confidence to the management in approving the AAP. Opportunity based Asset Action Plan (AAP) process is the backbone of KOC's annual business planning and portfolio management system. This allows alternative portfolio choices and management can make the right decision. The opportunity will provide consistency and clarity of the Portfolio constituents and common rational basis for investment decision making and allow for alignment between the KOC major business processes. AAP process is carried out annually and is initiated through high level business guidelines management. During finalization of AAP, an assurance review by corporate technical team for large national companies having multiple assets is considered as best practices that support management in approving the AAP and to steer the company in right direction. AAP Assurance process involves reviewing the forecast with the historical performance of the reservoir, planned activities, expected outcomes from the activities, feasibility and associated cost. A systematic three stage process has been adopted to conduct AAP Assurance for reservoirs which are at different phases of development. This assurance workflow and methodology helps to align changing oil and gas scenarios, different business process, health of the reservoirs and meeting future production targets. This process ensures that proposed AAP plan will be able to deliver production target commitments and identify any gaps and propose mitigation plans. This also confirms that ongoing development plans are in alignment with facility planning. It also validates conformance of the adopted reservoir development and management workflows with global best practices (analogue reservoirs) to maximize recovery and maintaining health of reservoir.

Management of oil and gas resources and reserves has always been complex process as the company’s portfolio consists of resource and reserves volumes with varying degrees of uncertainty and maturity levels of projects. Some of the hydrocarbon volumes are from resources that are highly uncertain and require technology imprevoments or breakthroughs. However, for strategy formulation of the country/company needs consideration of all hydrocarbon volumes that can generate value in the future. The prioritization of development strategies for its reservoirs based on rigorous technical and economic assessments while protecting the national interests is a challenging task. Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has been using multiple systems for both asset and business planning processes that is not optimized for faster turnaround. The proposed integrated and automated reserves management solution provided a structured environment for systematic economic evaluation and portfolio optimization. It facilitates the visualization of key reservoir parameters delivering full understanding of the forecasted reserves, production and economic potential of the entire company. It indentifies gaps between reserves and detailed development plans based on technical and commercial criteria. By Optimizing the project timing and economics results in reduction of budgetary expences, increase in portfolio revenue and greater confidence for the company. Ranking the investment opportunities helps in allocating resources appropriately amongst different projects in a systemic manner to ensure profitability of the company. This approach provides ease to KOC in modeling complex scenarios and quickly evaluate a wide range of different development strategies catering for risk and uncertainty This paper describes current industry challenges in resource and reservoir management, and an integrated approach to reserves, economics and portfolio management envisioned for Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) which will assist in identifying optimal reservoir development options to meet any defined strategic goals. The results and benefits gained after deployment of pilot will also be explained in the paper. This integrated approach for optimization of Asset Action Plans is a unique solution and would prove beneficial for our industry.