Abstract
Over 85% of Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) production is water and without action, this may increase to 95% by 2012. In 2004, a Chemical Profile Control (CPC) team was launched to coordinate a 2-year trial deployment of chemical water-shut-off technologies across the company. The aim being to reduce unwanted water or gas ingress for the purpose of improving oil or gas production while securing target recovery.
The deployment of chemical systems is adversely affected by four major challenges, namely; (1) limited know-how, especially of petroleum engineers & well engineers, (2) lack of multidisciplinary approach to candidate & chemical selection, (3) proof of concept before deployment and, (4) definition & measurement of success.
To tackle this problem, CPC team began by grouping PDO's Water Shut-Off challenges into 8 problem statements and presented it to known global providers. A workshop was organized inviting all contractors to propose solutions to the stated problems and acquaint PDO with available solutions. Based on our findings and confirmatory laboratory tests, the CPC team developed a Heatmap, which is a solution matrix that matches problems with solutions. A multidisciplinary assessment team was also created responsible for reviewing every project and proposing realistic solutions.
Since then more than 33 well trials – mainly in carbonate formations – have been completed at over 52% success rate using 3 existing contractors. Encouraged by these results, the company awarded umbrella contract to 3 other contractors to deploy a wider range of systems expected to boost success rate. The company strongly believes that increased success rate can be achieved by exploiting wider choice of effective systems, as inspired by laboratory trials.
This paper, therefore, presents the strategy, team, methodology, and overall results of the trials to date.
