Evaluating Missed Pay Factor of Matured Fields

Abstract

Production optimization efforts have been largely driven by techniques focused on achieving maximum recovery of known hydrocarbon reserves. These techniques focused mainly on delivering Reservoir management objectives for curbing pressure decline, decreasing Water Cut alongside elimination of elements contributing to increased friction and flow inhibition. While these optimized production techniques has largely enabled operators increase recovery of known hydrocarbon reserves. Historical study into reservoir characterization methods deployed for most Brown fields reveals the challenging formation evaluation realities now considered suboptimal following equivalent new technology. This consideration presents a puzzle of technology evolution and subsurface geology; which has remained largely unchanged at least in the last century. The dynamics are however driven by rapid advancement of technology alongside new evaluation techniques enabled by software. It is therefore a reasonable assumption that significant hydrocarbon reserves are unevaluated and therefore potentially hidden in matured fields. This assumption is corroborated by discovery of commercial pockets of hydrocarbon accumulation by marginal field operators. In this paper, we focus on novel techniques for unravelling and computing the "Missed Pay Factor (MPF)" potential of matured fields alongside practical integration approach to Well Intervention and potential drilling programs that will ultimately drive incremental hydrocarbon volumes.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90332 © 2018 AAPG International Conference and Exhibition, Cape Town, South Africa, November 4-11, 2018