The whole industry seeks to extend the economic life of existing brown fields, due to the difficulty of discovering new giant assets. The efficiency of mature waterfloods may be drastically improved by means of new technologies in order to recover a significant amount of unswept oil. IOR and EOR processes were investigated to increase oil production in a giant brown field in North Africa, developed by means of peripheral sea water injection. Current water injection scheme shows not optimal sweep efficiency and moderate recovery factor due to geological heterogeneity and unfavorable mobility ratio. This work describes the efforts to maximize water injection efficiency by means of the combination of different IOR and EOR techniques with focus on low salinity water. A dedicated plan to enhance water injection was implemented considering the following pilots: a) water conformance by Thermally Activated Particles (TAP) tested in 2009 and extension planned 2015; b) polymer flooding started in the second half of 2015; c) Low Salinity (LS) water flood planned for 2016. In addition, the combination of the above technologies is under study and will be further evaluated based on the results of pilots. LS water benefits were investigated within a comprehensive EOR study. First, tertiary corefloods on porous media were performed, showing an evident EOR effect compared with sea water, in increasing the oil recovery up to 7%. Modeling and uncertainty quantification studies showed that LS water may have a significant potential and can be synergically combined with polymer injection to maximize production. A sequence of Single Well Chemical Tracer Tests (SWCTTs) was performed in the second half of 2014 to quickly evaluate LS performance at the well scale resolution. Cycles of injection, shut-in and production periods were performed on a selected well to measure the residual oil saturation (Sor) after sea water and LS water. Promising results were achieved for LS, showing a considerable reduction in residual oil, of about 5-11 saturation units (s.u.) compared to sea water. The SWCTTs were used as a powerful tool to achieve a quick EOR response and confirmed low salinity potential. The next phase foresees an interwell pilot to test the technology at a larger scale, whose design is currently ongoing. Moreover, the opportunity to optimize the existing polymer injection in a Low Salinity Polymer (LSP) treatment is under study to increase production and reduce project costs.

Horizontal and highly deviated wells are increasingly being used in oilfield developments worldwide. Large-bore horizontal wells can deliver significantly higher oil production rates than conventional completions, reducing field development costs by allowing reserves to be targeted with fewer wells Rudies formation in Belayim Land field is a bottom water-drive reservoir with a strong supporting aquifer. it is characterized by its great isotropy and heterogeneity where based on the analysis of SCAL data, it was found that the vertical permeability is nearly equal to horizontal permeability raising the problem of water coning(cresting), earlier water breakthrough situation and masking the oil production by water due to the great difference in mobility Based on calculation of the critical coning production rates and water control plots it was concluded that the horizontal wells drilled in Rudies formation which are produced with high production rates suffered from extreme water coning problems that raised the necessity for water shutoff procedure to be considered Field cases presented on this paper explain applications of internal casing packer and blank tubing as a tail pipe in accompanied with downgrading the production rates from horizontal wells for the purpose of zonal water control in the uppermost section of open hole and slotted liner completed horizontal wells in Petrobel Included in this paper are two different field cases for uncemented water shutoff in horizontal wells that succeeded in decreasing the water cut in the wells from the range of (90-95 %) to the range of (10-30%) implementing a huge increase in the gained net oil towards achieving the maximum recovery. Technical data including well configuration, production performance and casing string are included in the paper. Field operations and lesson learned from each application are also presentedinthispaper

The development of low quality reservoirs such as; low permeability, marginal assets, and unconventional resources has a several cost challenges pushing the industry toward maximizing the potentiality and optimizing the strategies of such high risk plays. Petrobel has a discovered one of such challenged asset and successfully conducted a comprehensive study to set the best development strategy to unleash this potential. SIDRI Area is a relatively new settlement with a reasonable hydrocarbon potential according to petrophysical analysis. The target formation of SIDRI wells is a sedimentary rock with granitic facies that consist of a series of tight conglomerates over an oil/water column of more than 900m. The pore system of this rigid and stiff formation consists of a micro natural fractures network with secondary cemented porosity. The production is mainly governed these tiny natural fractures that have a permeability as low as 0.1-0.5 md. Despite this tightness these series are separated by nonporous sections that occasionally exhibit as barrier and may introduce layering or subdivision of pay, however in sometimes permit a vertical communication between productive sections. Performed Cuttings analysis such as XRD, thin-sections showed a variety of minerals composition representing different lithology which in turn complicates the characterization of such reservoir. On top of the unique mineralogy, the executions of fracturing treatment of SIDRI wells include multiple other challenges. The higher reservoir temperature and the formation depth cause a great constraint in terms of pumping rate and pressure. Besides, the non-availability of pumping equipment of high Horsepower restricts the pump rates and also limits the utilization of slick water frac. Even the nature and the quality of crude oil is quite challenged since it is a heavy black oil type and its composition contains high number of asphaltenic compounds accordingly the opportunity of creating sludge with treatment fluids is highly likely. The oil water viscosity ratio at reservoir condition represents a weighted obstacle for oil recovery that should be overcome. The basic concept of applying hydraulic fracturing for these kinds of reservoirs is very simple, however the execution to get much more production improvement is quite difficult. Particularly the main idea here is to conduct a cost effective fracturing treatment with economical wisdom principle that can lead to achieve a greater oil recovery with best profitable model. This paper presents the details of formation characterization and reservoir quality assessment, as well as a detailed discussion about wettability alteration and how adversely complicates the process of determining initial saturation. The implemented application including designing, experimental works, and execution of the channel fracture treatment job will be reviewed. The work sequence of this project that led to commercialize such asset will be addressed too.

A very interesting case in mature field in Egypt, has embarked on a project of replacing Oil Production wells, originally constructed with API 5L carbon steel pipe, with fiberglass lined API 5CT Threaded and coupled tubing. Previously, all wells had a conventional EUE carbon steel string producing with different ranges of production within 600 - 3000 bbls/day of oil without water production in early stage of the field. Later on, water injection commenced in 2004 in order to arrest reservoir pressure decline and increase the oil offtake. Accordingly, the water production progressively rose since in 2011 the measured water cut was up to 90% of with much salt content as high as 330,000 ppm, and fully saturated with dissolved oxygen. As a result, the field has been facing severe corrosion related failures in Carbon steel strings in producer wells. Furthermore, the problem has been escalated and the average pull out of hole workover jobs of each well reached two times per year due to tubular failure resulting from corrosion. The tubing leakage failure increased the OPEX of the field by which impacted negatively on the value of the asset. Many actions had been taken attempting to sole or at least reduce the severity of the problem such as; using 13% Chrome steel tubing, and placing down hole injection of corrosion inhibitor chemicals. But each solution has a drawback and the improvement in the runlife of wells were below expectations. Upon all the above repeated workovers were done to replace the frequently leaked tubing, affecting on the field performance. GRE lining technology proved as the best erosion and corrosion resistance method that save ell integrity with the lowest cost in the field of discussion where the water salinity is 330,000 ppm, high dissolved oxygen, high temperature, and high co2 up to 6%. Three wells were chosen as trial to be completed using Glass Reinforced Epoxy (GRE) lined tubing for internal corrosion protection. However, one of these wells has lasted for over nine years of continuous production without the even ESP fails. Such positive results of achieving Outstanding Performance in attaining longer tubing life with less workover operation with very cheaper technology. Afterwards, the company decided to try 3%Chrome tubing for the oil production wells with a premium thread connection. In this paper, we will demonstrate the pros and cons of utilizing such a material and connection failure. Guided by the successful trail, a shift in the inventory was done toward such application that turned up the economic value of the field. Special components were engineered to provide a transition between GRE lined tubulars and plain end unlined fittings and flanges. This paper chronicles the history of the Oil Production, the nature, reasons and consequences of the multiple corrosion failures and the failed corrosion mitigation strategies. It will highlight the reasons why this specific well lasted for 9 continuous years and the root cause leading to the ESP consistent performance during this period, unlike the other bare steel wells. Furthermore, the paper will shed light on the techno-commercial analysis and engineering that forms the basis for this mammoth effort.

The Abu Rudies field in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula produces mainly from the South Gharib formation that is characterized as a complex, heterogeneous, thick and laminated, but permeable, slightly oil wet rock and depleted sandstones consisting of sands with an average permeability in the range of 150-550 mD and Young's Modulus in the order of 1.0 - 2.5 million psi. Conventional hydraulic fracturing and Frac & Pack techniques have been traditionally deployed to produce hydrocarbons and for sand control. The added complication is the reduction in the effective permeability to oil due to the rock being oil wet. Conventional fracturing techniques have had limited success especially in the highly permeable compartments of the field due to premature screenouts that were encountered extensively, residual polymer in the intergranular porous rock and the flowback of formation sand and proppant. This paper describes the application and production enhancement efforts for the first time with a novel channel-fracturing technique combined with rod-shaped proppant in selected production targets in the Abu Rudies field in Egypt. The channel fracturing technique introduces channels within the proppant pack that significantly increase conductivity and effective fracture half-length leading to increased productivity. Rod-shaped proppant when used as tail-in in fracturing treatments increases near- wellbore fracture conductivity and completely prevents proppant/formation sands flowback as demonstrated by zero flowback due to its particular geometry. This paper describes actual case studies of fracturing a high-permeability layered reservoir using the channel fracturing technique, the problems encountered due to high leak off, low closure pressures, reservoir heterogeneity and the complexity due to adjacent water bearing layers. Finally, we demonstrate the well performance with the channel fracturing technique compared with alternate techniques.