Urban Planning in Northern Kuwait: Collaborating Through Synergy Across Assets to Optimize Development

Abstract

Northern part of Kuwait is a highly active development area for deeper gas, intermediate-depth conventional oil and shallow heavy oil. All these developments have overlapping footprints in an already congested area, requiring different development concepts- viz. gas, water flood, steam respectively. Additionally, different Assets manage them. Urban Planning therefore becomes a vital requirement for realizing all concurrent future developments regarding land use, and necessitating close collaboration to leverage synergy among the Assets, utilizing both organizational and new technology-based solutions, in order to maximize value for Kuwait Oil Company (KOC). Urban Planning is a joint effort between KOC and Shell, with initial focus on establishing an agreement for work methods, effective communications, and protocols with all stakeholders. Next all “as-built” infrastructure and current plans were combined and reviewed. This formed the basis to identify and resolve conflicts, recognize opportunities for reduced land requirements and optimize the development synergies. The approach is underpinned with new technologies, tools, best practices, and concepts like multi-well pad developments, area discounting, exclusion zones, and shared flow line and access corridors, based on global analogue developments. Three fields requiring significant urban planning focus to avoid conflicts and enable synergies were identified. In field “A”, the shallow heavy-oil development requires large number of wells in a dense well-spacing versus wells targeting the deeper gas development, which requires large “safety zones” around well sites. In fields “B” and “C”, the intermediate-depth conventional oil reservoirs require significant infill drilling, along with water injection versus the deeper gas development, again needing large “safety zones” around the well sites. In both cases, common infrastructure like roads, electrical installation, flow line and trunk line corridors also need to be considered jointly. Urban Planning collaboration between assets with distinct development challenges can help creating safe co-development opportunities, thus maximizing value for KOC. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge the colleagues of the NKHO organization, both Shell and KOC for the joint effort towards building an effective development organization.

AAPG Datapages/Search and Discovery Article #90328 © 2018 AAPG Middle East Region GTW, Maximizing Asset Value: Integrating Geoscience with Reservoir Management & Facilities Optimization, Muscat, Oman, April 30 – May 1, 2018