There is an increasing global trend to develop deep water offshore fields and this is expected to rise in the coming years as technology becomes accessible and reservoir knowledge rapidly evolves due to enhancements in data quality. Deep water developments still remain sensitive to costs and require to be robust, aiming to maximize recovery, minimize well count and maintain flexibility to react to unexpected subsurface variations. It has been learnt through experience that integrated teams must identify critical uncertainties at an early stage and prepare for a plan to pre-acquire information in order to close knowledge gaps before the concept selection phase. This could include an extensive appraisal campaign for de-risking/de-limiting the structure. However at times, subsurface uncertainties are carried forward into project execution phase that need to be dealt with accordingly and subsequent actions must be organized and executed in order to fill the information voids.
Using a real field example, this paper describes the full integration adopted to overcome challenges during its development. The deep water field is characterized by channelized turbiditic sandstones and is separated by major faults into main hydraulic compartments with extensive minor faulting. Uncertainties, especially those related to seismic depth shift and sealing potential of minor faults were overcome via intense collaboration and a step wise ‘on the fly’ optimization approach adopted by the integrated team while development. Rationale for actions adopted and its successful results are presented.
