Abstract
Maximizing production and sustaining it as much and as long as could is the aspiration to all oil and gas key players. Current producing reservoirs may not giving good yield till the end of expected production life due to depletion and watered-out issue. Presence of prolific reservoirs with thick pay zones and excellent quality are also becoming scarcer. Hence, prior to the onset of production decline, efforts to arrest it need to be addressed strategically both in short-term and long-term basis. This paper will present several case studies on monetizing behind casing opportunities (BCO) to assist in production enhancement as well as adding value to the reserves portfolio.
Identifying BCO opportunities starts by screening the potential from several sources including idle wells, wells with declining rate less than 200 bopd and high water-cut and also wells with new unperforated reserves to be put on stream. Comparison of nearby wells performance and generating stick plots to detect fluid contact movement will be part of the screening stage. Application of in-house reservoir enhanced modeling (REM) to reveal those new promising reserves which are masked by thin lamination, low resistivity and high silt content proves to have an astounding impact in production gain which are further ranked for execution priorities. To support industrial collaboration, all high risk, high cost and complexity well candidates could be clustered under special contract arrangement where the solutions, technology and execution methods will be proposed by the service providers.
Results indicated minimum of 1489 bopd of instantaneous gain is recorded with significant new reserves addition which further open-up new opportunities for appraisal and development drilling campaign. String management has improved by 20% due to idle wells reactivation, 14.8% reduction in water-cut and even 2 years extension of well economic life. Through strategic collaboration with service companies, several new technologies are successfully unlocked to deliver the barrels at minimum 15% cost optimization with the ‘know-how’ technology being replicated to similar facet of production business across the company.
In a nutshell, BCO and strategic collaboration are two major pipelines for expanding resource base and generating the cash. The efforts must continue with more success being replicated and bringing more technology to initiate chain impact to production growth.
