Reservoir Engineering Aspect of Well Construction for Cost Effective Field Development: Advances in Drainage Point Selection

Abstract

It shall never be over-emphasized that the balance of cost and value is very crucial in determining the commercial feasibility of a field development or redevelopment project. The values are generated by wells that could fetch higher productivity and could effectively drain out larger reservoir hydrocarbon fluid volume. Well drilling and completion costs and their surface production supporting facilities costs have been steadily increasing in recent years. Subsurface engineering studies shall therefore also focus on optimizing the well placement and orientation, the well type and completion selection, the life-cycle control of well inflow and outflow, with the minimum well count to yield higher values. This paper entails various methodologies of selecting drainage and injection points by combining the remaining mobile oil, current productivity, and current pressure depletion maps constructed from history matched reservoir simulation models. Base on predominant drive mechanisms in the reservoirs studied, governing parameters were coupled in 3 property groups and normalized individually. A known heuristic approach was also adapted to construct a Simulated Opportunity Index (SOI) map. A correlation between the SOI and recoverable reserve (EUR) was established by simulation prediction runs for each drainage or injection point selected, sand by sand in the studied reservoirs. The studied reservoir cases including a vast thin oil-rim reservoir, a huge multiple stacked reservoir, a complex compartmentalized reservoir, and a prolific deep-water reservoir. Clustering the selected drainage and injection points in several sands to further maximize the well productivity, optimization of the inflow control for the selected commingled sands, and the design of cost effective completions, shall be addressed later sequentially in separate papers. Introduction The technical challenge is getting difficult as fields are reaching maturity. The complexity and uncertainty of the field require a detail understanding of both reservoir characteristics and facilities performance in order to identify and optimally exploit the field potential. In multi layered reservoirs, substantial reserves is located in minor reservoirs that demand innovative solution for cost effective redevelopment. The wells drilled in later part of the brown field especially require maximizing reservoir contact, higher well productivity for higher recovery to justify the well cost. Various well architecture options with elaborated smart bottom-hole devices is being deployed to control drawdown and sand production. To achieve maximum recovery with suitable well architecture, meticulous selection of optimum drainage and injection point is critical to boosting recovery from a brown field. Drainage point can be selected once confidence over complex remaining oil evaluation is established. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies ranging from surveillance and performance evaluation to 3D models are used to establish drainage and injection points in matured or brown reservoirs.

The Art of Balancing the Cost and Value for Field Development

“…1 In most offshore field development cases, the major portion of the total project cost is for equipment and installation of the required surface support facilities and transportation system. This entails the determination of the optimum reservoir drainage and injection points (Ref.…”