A heavy oil field in Northern part of Kuwait has developed which requires appropriate disposal of produced formation water. Some important questions for water disposal well planning include: Where to inject?Where to inject?What is the maximum operation pressure (MOP)?How far away the disposal wells should be spaced?How much water can be inject in each well? Integrated subsurface evaluation performed to address above questions. Seismic data provide a good overview lof the structuration and imporatant insight where sweet spots for injection may be found. Wireline logs and core information are used to derive petrophysical properties, characterize fracture, and gather geomechanical information. Injectivity tests established the injection rate and confirmed the estimated minimum horizontal stress. Analogue water injection data from nearby fields are used to provide information on the dynamic behavior of the reservoir, to reduce uncertainties owing to the limited injection rate data available. The integrated analysis of the relevant, available subsurface data reveals that the Tayarat formation has significant variations in lithologies, mineralogies, and mechanical properties. Important information such as the receiving zone thickness, fracture orientation, injection rate, and storage capacity have been derived. Based on this information, we have made important recomemndations on disposal well spacing and maximum operational operating pressure (MOP).

As KOC prepares for production ramp up in a North Kuwait Heavy Oil field, one key for cost efficient development is in optimizing information from observation wells. Given multiple objectives for data collection and restrictions due to dense well spacing and surface infrastructure, it is critical to apply an efficient methodology for the selection of observation well locations. This paper describes the interplay between subsurface needs and urban planning in decisions for placement of observation wells to reduce operational costs, enforce effective field development planning and ensure robust production levels. The observation well location selection protocol in a heavy-oil steam development requires initial focus on identifying the key subsurface parameters and risks including cap-rock integrity, role of baffles in steam conformance, gas caps, aquifer influx as well as development decisions like adequate well spacing to apply micro-seismic, e.g. Key parameters were mapped and rated with a "traffic-light" approach to distill the diverse datasets into manageable form. Next, different observation well location strategies (evenly distributed, clustered and blended) were assessed and locations (driven by subsurface objectives) were chosen. Finally these locations were reconciled against the surface restrictions, HSSE and operational constraints to determine the final program. A successful observation well strategy will have: – Good subsurface models capturing heterogeneities in order to predict production performance – Sufficient well number and thorough reservoir architecture characterization underpinning well placement – Robust data collection plan (including production data) – Proper staff resources applied to monitor and QC the data – Up-to-date and accessible data-base, that can be interactively interrogated – Cross-discipline integration, regular data reviews and alignment with urban planning The inherent value in observation wells is optimized by defining key objectives with broad across discipline engagement, aligning data collection objectives and engaging urban planning and field development with sufficient lead time. This collaborative approach reduces costs for KOC by avoiding rework, missed data collection opportunities or missed value adds if options such as conversion of observers to producers are not considered.

This paper describes seismic attributes approaches and rock typing in channelized reservoirs of North Kuwait. Seismic facies with a range of frequencies from 10 - 50 Hz, along with four other attributes: semblance, RMS frequency, instantaneous phase, relative acoustic impedance and RMS amplitude of shallow upper Cretaceous channelized system are calculated and the channel infill and overbank deposits are represented in maps. Five classes are used and found to be sufficient in the unsupervised classification method. The seismic facies classification was matched against the above-mentioned four attributes and found to correspond to them. The major channel components are illustrated with the figure 1. Additionally, the seismic facies classification workflow is summarized in figure 4. Results of seismic facies classification using Neuronal classification and log-based rock typing are illustrated in figures 11, 12, 13 & 21. The lessons learned from the use of different seismic attributes and rock typing in such heavy oil reservoirs are discussed. Steam injections in shallow heavy oil targets come with a risk of breaching the thin cap shale sealing layer and not fully understanding the thickness and continuity of shale barriers within the reservoirs. This paper presents an investigation to mitigate those risks through different seismic attributes and rock typing for shallow Tertiary and Cretaceous reservoirs in North Kuwait which extended to a deeper heavy oil targets in neighboring fields. This work that studies all the key risk elements in such heavy oil reservoirs mitigates the drilling and steam injection risks of heavy oil field development. Those who utilize seismic data to map heterogeneities must realize that the changes we observe in our seismic events can be due to one of the following items: depositional environments, sweet spots, stratigraphic features, lithology, petrophysical properties such as porosity or fluid or clay content, geohazards, etc. From a previous study presented this year at Geo 2018 for Tertiary targets, we concluded that Simultaneous geostatistical inversion (SGI) added much value in terms of delineating the shale barriers and enhancing resolution, in addition to estimating effective porosity for well releases.