Print this pageHow Far Can a Production Geophysicist be Involved in Reservoir Management: Application Examples from Tunisia and the North Sea
GAAYA, A., ETAP, R. EL OUAHCHI, H. JARRAYA and H. GHARIANI, ETAP
In order to optimize hydrocarbon production, the reservoir engineer needs to better understand the reservoir static and dynamic behaviour.
The tremendous development of geophysics and particularly 3D seismic together with other geologic techniques now enables to address these issues by providing: (1) Time and depth maps at the main layers of the reservoir including its top, together with the detailed faults affecting them (seismic picking and attributes); (2) The intemal architecture of the reservoir with a description of the sedimentary bodies, their facies distribution and petrophysical properties (seismic stratigraphy, attributes, modeling and inversion); (3) The fluids contents, their nature and saturation, initially and possibly at a later stage if 3 D repeated images are available (the so called "4 D seismic").
Many of these techniques have been successfully used in the largest Tunisian offshore fields: Ashtart oil and Miskar gas fields and also in the complex Sidi El Kilani oil field, onshore Tunisia. They resulted in a better implementation of the development wells and an increase in the ultimate recoverable reserves and production.
Feasibility studies indicate that 4D seismic will not be applicable to the Ashtart fields wnich is procucing since 19/4 with an increasing amount of warer. In the North Sea however, it was successfully used to monitor the fluid movements in several fields (Frigg, Oseberg etc...).
As existing techniques continue to improve, production geophysicists will certainly be more and more involved in reservoir management for many years to come.