Field Management: Using Reservoir and Well Performance Data Effectively

Olivier S.E. Van Belle and Hamish A.M. Wilson
Paras Ltd, UK
*[email protected]

Increasing production in large complex reservoirs requires current and historical performance of the reservoir and facilities, to drive the field-depletion plan and investment strategy. In most companies, the field-development strategy is included in the annual budgeting round and becomes a financial exercise in allocating capital based on the number of production wells to be drilled. Yet this is insufficient to optimise the rates and recovery. More complex reserves distribution requires an interaction between the reservoir management, production and financial disciplines. There are three issues to consider here. (1) Consideration of the annual budgeting and capital allocation process: many leading companies now separate the annual review of the field development strategy from the annual budgeting round. (2) The availability and transparency of well performance data; both production rates and costs. Often production and financial data are stored in separate systems, making it difficult to determine the cost per unit production on a well-by-well basis. (3) Intra-year monitoring against budget is difficult – a simple question such as: How are you getting on against your budget, is difficult to answer. We consider that the solution to these issues involves making well production and cost data transparent and easily available to decision-makers. Web-enabled, performance-management systems are now available in the market that integrate data from disparate sources to present a more complete picture. The technology is available to link well performance data to capital allocation. Does the industry want to use it?

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90077©2008 GEO 2008 Middle East Conference and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain