The paper describes the challenging task of identifying additional production opportunities from a matured oil reservoir with significant production history, commingled production,zones with varying rock properties, and drive mechanisms. The reservoir is having more than 40 years of production history and is currently in a stage of decliningoil production with water breakthroughs in many areas of the reservoir. A new, improved workflow comprisinga classical approach and sector model review wasapplied to understand the recovery efficiency and identify any additional potentials on top of the base profile. The study resultsprovidedan interesting insight into the recovery mechanism and possible additional opportunities in the reservoir. Several recovery ideas like identifying undrained areas, improved completion strategy, the intervention of existing sick wells, and application of EOR processes were applied to estimate the improvementof recovery over the existing field development plan. All components of recovery efficiencies like pore-scale displacement (Ep), drainage (Ed), volumetric sweep (Es), and cut-off (Ec) were reviewed, and the scope for improvement was identified using sector models of the reservoir. The next stage was a fully integrated reservoir study to diagnose the ongoing water flood process and examine strategies to improve areal and verticalsweep. Significant reservoir insights were gained from detailed water influx and reservoir pressure maps and identifying bypassed oil by zone. The last stage was constructing a representative sector model incorporating the latest data for IOR and EOR, which were screened based on the economics criteria. The number of recovery options was evaluated and optimized in the reservoir sector model to select potential opportunities and estimate incremental recovery. Four opportunities were identified that show incremental recovery by improvements in Ep, Ed, and Es for each reservoir zones. The target areas with bypassed oil have been identified for improvement in Ed and Es. Changing from commingled to dedicated completions in a specific shallow, relatively less depleted zone show improvement in Es. Implementing a regular 5-spot pattern water flood instead of random spot water injection in a major shallow zone improves Ed and Es. Lastly, Alkaline Surfactant Polymer (ASP) flooding improves Ep. A detailed roadmap was generated for each recovery option. New polymer-based gels such as preformed particle gels (PPGs), microgels, swelling micron-sized polymers (Bright Water), and pH-sensitive polymers were recommended to mitigate excess water production due to wellbore and reservoir-related challenges. This workflow identified a significant improvement in expected ultimate recovery (EUR) in the mature brownfield and will be applied to other reservoirs in the KOC portfolio. The novelty of the work is an innovative approach to characterizing the existing recovery plan into its underlying efficiencies (Ep, Ed, Es, Ee) and a detailed breakdown of the recovery factor, which led to practical guidance on implementing recovery ideas to improve recovery from the mature oil reservoir.

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.

Since the start of the North Kuwait Jurassic Gas (NKJG) Project, Enhanced Technical Service Agreement (ETSA) in 2010 with Shell, Technology implementation has been a priority. The key challenge, following the successes of technology deployment at pilot level, is to deliver sustainable solutions, with business impact on the NKJG project, vis-à-vis production maximization, well cost reduction and ultimate recovery maximization. Moreover, NKJG technology focus, in line with business priorities, has recently changed to assurance of near- and medium-term gas supply. An integrated technology mapping workshop, led by Shell Technology Deployment experts from the Netherlands, was held during 18-20th January 2016, using a refined technology mapping and prioritisation process applied in Shell assets globally, to ensure that KOC technology efforts are prioritised and aligned across the organisation at large and deliver maximum value to NKJG in particular. The workshop participants were drawn from six discipline teams (Drilling and Completions, Production Operations, Well Intervention and Management, Subsurface, Project Management and HSE). From the technology mapping workshop, Downhole fibre optics; Well Reservoir Facility Management (WRFM); Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD); Underbalanced drilling and Annular Isolation technology emerged as the top five technologies to deliver the most value to NKJG project, considering the participants focus on the business challenges, related to well quality improvement, reservoir performance understanding and optimisation of field development. Furthermore, the workshop also identified ‘solution gaps’ in addressing many of the subsurface related challenges (Optimise integrated field development, improving predictability of reservoir performance) and additional technology solutions will be required to address these gaps. The value of technology ‘at risk’ of not realising full value from implementation is assessed to range from 30 to 70% of the full value of the technology. These are due to both technical and non-technical risks in implementation. Key non-technical risks identified such as organisational misalignment, contracting delays need to be addressed in order to realise full value from technology implementation. The workshop participants proposed the following improvements to support technology implementation; Robust, detailed and realistic multiple year implementation plans taking account of standard KOC contracting and procurement processes. Annual work plans driven by technology implementation priorities rather than the opposite. Progress of the top-ranking technologies tracked at senior management level. Preferably monthly or quarterly as part of a decision review board (DRB) governance structure. Individual technology implementation targets to be included as shared KPIs of concerned Shell / KOC managers and Team Leads. This paper documents the outcome of the workshop in terms of the ranking of the business challenges/opportunities within NKJG, the ranking of technologies that need to be implemented to address these challenges, the technology mapping and prioritisation process followed, the key technology implementation challenges identified and their suggested mitigations.

Production forecasting always play an important role in decision-making for the corporate management and architecting company's strategy. In an oil or gas upstream company, the yearly projection of future hydrocarbon production is a routine practice for preparing annual business plan. As sub surface uncertainties pose a huge threat for upstream company, achieving the forecasted crude oil and gas production is challenging in most cases. For national oil companies, having multiple Assets and thousands of wells where reservoirs underpinning different projects at different stages of field development, there arises a need of unified production forecast process that ensures forecast quality. In view of this, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) initiated a process for improving forecast process adopting best reservoir management practices. In order to make reliable predictions, the engineer must be knoweledgable in variety of techniques to cover the wide range of conditions that are encountered in forecasting process. At the same time, engineer should have enough experience of reservoir behavior to alert the ways in which a given procedure might be changed to yield the most reasonable outcome. In case of using multiple methodology during preparation of forecast, the results obtained by each method and its underlying factor of judgment must be accounted.

Maintaining and sustaining reservoir performance and health is a priority that requires ongoing assurance activities that will maximize recovery up to industry best practices. An automated and integrated reservoir performance tool has been developed to provide high-level assurances at both the reservoir and asset level. The Reservoir Management Performance Index (RMPI) is a set of indices that can identify key performance issues involving several aspects of the reservoir'sdevelopment and operational plans. This tool identifies mitigating measures that require action, assures production sustainability, promotes a reservoir-focused organization, and standardizes the reservoir performance evaluation in an organization. RMPIprovides a high-level overview and a platform for all management and operation levels, where observing the same set of results can initiate collective decisions that improve reservoir management. Such a system was developed for a company to monitor and measure the performance against expected standards and forecasts for the large number of reservoirs in its portfolio. This tool measures multiple aspects of reservoir management grouped into four major categories: Energy Management, Forcasting Relaibility, Reserves Management and Operations. The tool is tailored to account for various aspects such as: stage of maturity of the reservoir, primary or secondary depletion stage, etc. Each category consists of multiple individual metrics that combine actual field data with targets/forecasts and use an algorithm to calculate a score. These scores are weighted and aggregated for an overall score in each category and an overall score for the asset/reservoir itself. Several aspects accounted for in the metrics include (but not limited to): pressure management, voidage replacement, water and gas management, production and injection performance, reserves promotion and replacement, current RF, EURF, drilling and workover efficiency, Well-Up time, etc.