MER: Ultimate Recovery and Production Rate

Abstract

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc. This paper was prepared for the Rocky Mountain Regional Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Billings, Mont., May 15–16, 1974. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made. Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines. Summary Reservoir simulation studies were conducted on selected reservoirs to establish the relationship between ultimate recovery and reservoir withdrawal rate. The rates ranged from far above to far below normal production practice. The simulation results indicate that for each reservoir and each development plan an MER curve, a curve of ultimate recovery versus reservoir withdrawal rate, can be determined given the necessary data. These curves show varying, but often pronounced, increases in ultimate recovery as withdrawal rate decreases. The sensitivity of ultimate recovery to production rate may be affected to varying degrees by well spacing, well completion practices, fluid properties, reservoir heterogeneities, reservoir type and exploitation scheme. Results of studies on some of the parameters are presented. Introduction Conservation in the oil and gas industry dates back to the late eighteen hundreds and historically has dealt with the prevention of "reasonably avoidable waste of oil and gas". Legislators and conservation officials have conceived numerous means of regulating this concept. In a comprehensive review and discussion of conservation efforts by members of the Interstate Oil Compact Commission (IOCC) in 1965, it was found that the concept of MER (Maximum Efficient Rate) was a predominant method of preventing avoidable waste of oil and gas. In 1971 the federal government announced its intention to adopt MER as a means of regulating production on the outer continental shelf and in 1974 format production on the outer continental shelf and in 1974 format regulation by MER will be initiated in the form of OCS Order Number 11 which adopts the following definition of MER: "the maximum sustainable daily oil and gas withdrawal rate from a reservoir which will permit economic development of that reservoir without detriment to ultimate recovery". It is to this definition of MER that this paper addresses itself.