Effective Well Management in Sabriyah Intelligent Digital Oilfield

Abstract

Oil production from North Kuwait carbonate reservoirs are challenging because of factors, such as high permeability streaks, poor microscopic sweep efficiency, and low mobility ratios, all of which can dramatically impair production rates and oil recoveries. Despite tremendous efforts related to waterflood research, oil recovery in carbonates typically remains low. New technology and approaches are required to increase and sustain oil production to access and drain immense amounts of remaining oil-in-place.This paper presents the results of collaborative work procedures applied to a selective number of wells to increase production performance in the Sabriyah Mauddud field pilot under the Kuwait Integrated Digital Field (KwIDF) project umbrella. KwIDF is part of a comprehensive strategy undertaken by an operator to enhance overall oil production by the application of digital oilfield (DOF) concepts, which involves (1) well instrumentation to provide enhanced real-time data availability, (2) upgraded power and communications infrastructure to support field instrumentation and control real-time data, (3), creating collaborative decision centers to enhance asset team processes across physically separate locations, and (4) providing a platform to increase effectiveness through automating work processes and to shorten observation-to-action cycle time.The Sabriyah KwIDF pilot involves 44 producer and five injector wells producing about 7% of total Sabriyah field production. The main objective of this effort was to maximize and sustain oil rates and reduce well decline while honoring safe well operating envelope constraints. As a result of this effort, production gains have been certified in 10 wells of the pilot area to date. This success has been achieved by carefully analyzing past performance and adjusting well settings to realtime production conditions using the operator's digital infrastructure.This paper describes how this optimization methodology provides improvements to short-term production rates while honoring safe well operating envelope and presents case histories illustrating the benefits from the automated workflows and collaborative decision approach. The average sustained oil gain was 395 BOPD, or 37%. The total sustained oil gain reached 3,949 BOPD (34%), with a cumulative production gain of 756 thousand barrels for the evaluation period.

On management evaluation of oil-gas industry enteprises in modern economic condition

“…Proper management of oil and gas industry allows attracting foreign investments into the national business. Investors prefer to invest in oil and gas industry rahter than into credit institutions besause of higher returns [9][10][11][12].…”

Best Practices and Lessons Learned After 10 Years of Digital Oilfield (DOF) Implementations

“…These improvements result in significant benefits for bottom line (Jamal et al, 2013). A number of these benefits have been reported and quantified by many operators.…”

“…DOF has proven to increase production rates by as much as 3 to 35% (Jamal et al, 2013) and yield improvements in facility uptime (Abdulaziz et al, 2010; along with OPEX and CAPEX reductions (Dutra et al, 2010), safety and integrity benefits . DOF has proven to increase production rates by as much as 3 to 35% (Jamal et al, 2013) and yield improvements in facility uptime (Abdulaziz et al, 2010; along with OPEX and CAPEX reductions (Dutra et al, 2010), safety and integrity benefits .…”

Operating Model and Implementation Plan for Deployment of a Pilot Integrated Digital Oilfield Project

“…By 2013, cumulative production gains of 756,000 barrels of oil were reported (Singh et al 2013). While the gains were impressive, and management wanted to expand KwIDF, it was recognized that full deployment would pose significant challenges and, without a set of necessary changes, the value of KwIDF would not be realized.…”