Standardizing Reservoir Management Best Practices in KOC

Abstract

Kuwait's oil and gas reservoirs shape one of the largest reservoir portfolios worldwide, meriting savvy and forward-looking reservoir management practices and workflows to maintain the country as a reliable supplier for many decades to come. Reservoir management can be defined as a body of principles, processes, and practices that collectively governs the way a field is managed. It is focused on the subsurface, but not exclusively. Reservoir management is a stewardship process that significantly impacts production performance, bookable reserves, estimated ultimate recovery (EUR), and capital expenditures (CapEx). Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) has set out to optimize and standardize its reservoir management practices at a corporate level (Capello et al. 2016). This journey is still in progress, and has several strategic objectives: a) standardize reservoir management practices across KOC assets; b) ensure the optimization of recovery factors and life of fields strategies for each reservoir enabling the simultaneous production of nearby, connected or stacked producing intervals, with different maturity levels; c) extend production plateaus in time for each KOC asset; and d) ensure the active participation in reservoir management activities of a skilled workforce. The ultimate aim is to apply industry best practices in managing the oil and gas fields in Kuwait. The initiative is called Reservoir Management Best Practices (RMBP), and comprises a two-fold effort: A Steering Committee composed of 10 managers is charged with the implementation of reservoir management best practices policies and guidelines across all KOC assets. It was essential that management endorsed the initiatives and assured buy-in from other managers, team leaders and seniors in all assets and support organizations within KOC. Six Process Implementation Projects (PIP) were tackled with key objectives and elements of RM. It is envisioned that these PIPs will impact and uplift the way all assets work, so technical staff participation and buy-in was paramount for a successful implementation. The approach taken by KOC merges technical emphasis and international best-in-class practices with change management and communication strategies to align efforts. Most importantly, this solidifies and builds commitment and a shared motivation to achieve common goals. This paper summarizes the main accomplishments of KOC's RMBP to date, which span from workflows and governance in data management, to automation of drilling proposals and analog databases for reservoirs. KOC estimates these new processes will reduce operating costs and increase capital efficiency, which in turn will increase profitability by up to 15%.