An effective reservoir management is fundamental to better operate reservoirs and enhance recovery throughout field life. It involves an overall knowledge of the oil and gas business with a special focus in data acquisition and analysis, development strategies, reservoir and well model simulations.
This paper presents the experience of a successful reservoir management methodology applied to an Eni asset in the North Slope of Alaska. This work has involved a multidisciplinary team consisting of petroleum, reservoir and production engineers in head quarter and on the field.
An in-depth analysis has been performed to identify an efficient strategy for water injection management focused on production optimization.
The methodology is based on an efficient data collection linked to an automated surveillance system. It automatically performs customized analysis on daily basis, leading to new optimization opportunities. A greater attention has been given to the investigation of voidage replacement ratio for each injector/ producer system. This represents a fundamental step for planning an efficient water injection management, highlighting area that need tailored actions. Fine tuning of each action has been performed using a reservoir model updated with all the new available data i.e. new CPI interpretation, PVT analysis, SCAL, tracers and production data. The model is continuously updated by an integrated team that involves the sedimentologist, the petrophysician, the geologist and the reservoir engineer.
Once the production optimization actions have been deployed on the field, a continuous surveillance has been carried on through ongoing performance evaluations to assess the effective incremental oil and the economic gain.
The proposed methodology is an example of a sound and robust reservoir management that was successfully applied to a real field case giving an effective improvement in oil production.
The main objective of reservoir management is to improve the profitability and economical recovery of hydrocarbons [3,4]. A sound and robust reservoir management is based on an in-depth knowledge of the reservoir and on a continuous production monitoring of field and wells parameters. These two components enable a virtuous loop of diagnosis, action and feedback.
