Prolonging Gas Production until the End of Concession by Optimizing Existing Resources: A Case Study from Greater Bongkot South Field Development Strategy

Abstract

The Greater Bongkot South Field (GBS) is located in Gulf of Thailand, supplying 320 MMSCFD of Thailand domestic natural gas consumption. The production started in 2012 and its gas supply was committed until March 2023. With this obligation, as well as highly faulted reservoirs, variable gas CO2 contents and small original gas in place volumes, new wells and platforms are required to be continuously sanctioned throughout the field life. The recent oil price recession in late 2014 and production timing close to the concession end resulted in the changes in GBS development strategy in order to deliver the stable production until the concession ends. This paper presents the new GBS development strategy when cost saving through oil price recession and production period close to end of concession are the major consideration. Initially, the clear objective and policy from asset’s management was communicated to all working team. Part of design thinking process were used to generate ideas to fill up production gap until end of concession. Some of ideas were implemented such as unlocked integrity wells by perforation with management of change procedure (MOC), or intensive review all of existing unperforated reservoirs and set up new perforation strategy. Then, unleash the locked in potentials, accelerating resources beyond concession, and evaluate new resources by step out infill drilling is proposed. By synergy and corporation among geoscientists, reservoir engineering, production technologist, development planning and well engineering team, GBS new development strategy is expected close the production profile gap until end of concession in March 2023 and able to prolong production plateau without new wellhead platforms installation, saving more than 60 million USD to the whole project. A new way of working through a case study in GBS field development strategy can be example for other field development that come close to end of concession or want to squeeze existing resources as much as possible before starting a new major investment.