Recent years have seen a growing trend towards applying new and advanced technology in the Russian oil and gas business to maximize productivity and enhance assets value. This has led to improved efficiency and greater technical challenges. In large measure, Sibneft owes its predominant position as one of the rapidly growing oil producers in the Russian energy business to its willingness to embrace new technology in order to enhance the value and maximize the productivity of its assets. This paradigm shift has been critical to the company, not only to maintain its leadership among the majors in Russia, but also to be consistent with the country's aggressive strategy to enhance production rapidly to meet local and international energy demand. This paper focuses on how Sibneft management has been keeping abreast of new technology in order to meet these technical challenges. Romanovskoe oilfield, which is located in the Western Siberian region, is one such field that has been subjected to this proactive philosophy. Due to the heterogeneous characteristics of the reservoir, inefficient thin beds and relative low permeability, specific applications or "right sizing" of technology are crucial to ensure effective exploitation of the field potential. All the wells in the field are either producing via horizontal wells or have been fracture-stimulated since the beginning of their production history. The critical success factors that emerged from the applications are accurate well placement within the thin oil column (landing the well in the right place and at the right angle), avoiding poor quality reservoir and undulating wellbore for the horizontal wells, and fracture-stimulating the wells in the low productivity regions. The adoption of the strategy has seen substantial increase in the field total production, which is otherwise difficult to achieve without appropriate applications of specific technology. The successes on overall enhance the long-term value of the asset. Introduction For the past several years, there has been a growing trend towards applying new and advanced technology in the Russian oil and gas industry. The main reason for this growing trend has been the increasing awareness of the Russian energy business about the critical need to improve production efficiency and maximize reservoir productivity. This is further catalyzed by the country's aggressive strategy to enhance production to meet the local and international energy demand. Among the major operators in the country, Sibneft has been the frontrunner in embracing this paradigm shift, and has been instrumental in proactively putting the idea into action. The purpose of this paper is not to discuss the philosophy and vision adopted by Sibneft concerning the application of new and advanced technology in detail, but rather to focus on how the company has been adopting and applying certain technologies, namely hydraulic fracturing and horizontal wells, and judiciously utilizing them in order to develop its assets. The underlying philosophy is fundamentally simple, but practical; selecting "fit-for-purpose" solutions, and then "right-sizing" them according to the needs, depending on the nature and characteristics of the reservoirs. The Romanovskoe field, which is located in the Western Siberian region, has been selected as a case example to show the company's experience in leveraging these technologies. The field is one good example to reflect the characteristics of many assets in the Western Siberian region, inefficient thin beds with relatively low permeability, and widespread structural and geological heterogeneities with underlying water bearing zone in close proximity. Due to these heterogeneous characteristics, efficient development of the field to enhance productivity and maximize recovery is a challenge that requires careful selection and application of technology. The paper begins with a fundamental review of the Romanovskoe oilfield structure and geology. This provides understanding of the reservoir and formation heterogeneity, and some critical insights of the technical challenges associated with the development of the field. The key technology applications focus on hydraulic fracturing (for the vertical wells) and horizontal wells. Several well case histories are provided to demonstrate the applicability of the technology employed, including the analysis of the wells and the field production performance to evaluate the overall success of the endeavors in enhancing the value of the asset.
The introduction of Western horizontal drilling techniques into Siberia has achieved outstanding results for Sibneft, a Russian independent operator. Before 2000, vertical or directional S-shape wells were being drilled to develop the Sibneft-NoyabrskNeftegaz oil fields using local techniques provided by Siberian drilling contractors. An alliance with a major Western service provider made possible a Western-Russian design group familiar with all available options. The group created an ideal marriage of Western and Russian fit-for-purpose equipment, procedures, and techniques for a cost-efficient horizontal well design. The methodology applied in this project is a fusion of classic Russian drilling techniques, i.e., compact rigs skidding on a rail system with aluminum drillpipe with Russian turbines to drill tophole sections, coupled with modern horizontal technology such as steerable motors and mud pulse telemetry measurement-while-drilling (MWD) and logging-while-drilling (LWD) systems. To date, 90 wells have been drilled with a progressive learning curve enabling wells to be drilled to around 4000 m (with more than 1000 m of horizontal section) in less than 48 days that at the start of the campaign were taking more than 100 days. The successful integration of these cost-effective solutions has been pivotal in helping Sibneft approach its production targets. Today the 90 wells drilled in the last 3 years (out of 4,500 total wells) account for approximately 175,000 BOPD, or one quarter of total Sibneft production. The cooperation of reservoir and drilling engineering teams from the service provider and the operator was critical to project accomplishments. Introduction Sibneft Oil, an independent operator in Russia with crude reserves of 8 billion bbl, holds major interests in Western Siberia. The oil fields found in this region account for almost 90% of total company crude reserves. Horizontal well technology was introduced in 1999 as a means of improving recovery rates, which had seen significant decline by as much as 50% in the early 1990s. Based on initial studies, a pilot project was initiated in January 2000 with four horizontal wells being drilled in that year. The wells averaged 3500 m in measured depth (MD) with 500- to 600-m horizontal drain lengths. Production results in three wells exceeded expectations on average by 45% to 60 % (Table 1). Time and cost to complete the wells were much higher than planned, mainly because the local crews had very little experience in drilling horizontal wells. Nonproductive time (NPT) averaged around 48% with well costs in the region of U.S. $1.6 million to U.S. $1.8 million. While the results in the pilot phase were encouraging, it was quickly realized that a strategy to capitalize on existing resources and develop new cost-effective technologies was required to make the project economically viable.
Operators and service companies are considering alternative methods to remedy shortage of qualified and experienced staff to manage increasing activity and complexity. TNK-BP's approach has been creation of Drilling Support Center (DSC) as part of upstream peer review and technology center in Tyumen. The Company has eleven subsidiaries spread across Russia, and operations are managed by 6 regional drilling teams. DSC is centrally located to ensure geographical coverage of both eastern and western regions, with a mission to improve drilling performance, as well as support new technology implementation. Main drivers for creating DSC were: –Increasing complexity of wells and wide geographical spread,–Limited drilling personnel with experience and expertise,–Commencing international operations requiring central support, The center currently provides support in three main directions; firstly, monitoring complex and critical operations using realtime link from rigs by experienced staff with relevant expertise, including regular contact with operations teams to provide proactive feedback. Second direction is engineering support to well planning and new technology implementation by experienced specialists in directional drilling, cementing, drilling fluids, completions and drillbits. Third direction is Geosteering support of horizontal wells including real-time update of sector models. The center is active over a year now and subsidiaries regularly contact DSC for critical operations review.
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