Integrated Production Forecasting for Improved Business Planning and Hydrocarbon Asset Management: A Niger Delta Brown Asset Experience

Abstract

There is a continuous need to improve hydrocarbon recovery efficiency especially from a brown asset, with a view to extending the life of the asset with reasonable operating cost in order to deliver sustained profit to the business. This is made even more imperative due to the dwindling crude oil prices and an operating environment with ever increasing challenges especially in the area of security, asset integrity, frequent deferment due to export line vandalism and crude theft, and community disturbances. All these factors result in most companies operating within the Niger Delta environment and by extension the country at large not being able to create robust production forecasts to support their annual business plans. In the end, actual annual average crude production ends up much lower in most cases than the projected plan. The big question however is: How do we build robust forecasting models that can better predict our business outcomes in the Niger Delta? This paper seeks to demonstrate the possibilities available within the Nigerian space, all driven and developed with indigenous capabilities, of how this problem was successfully solved for a major asset, operated by a leading indigenous Exploration and Production company through active collaboration with another leading indigenous Petroleum Engineering software solutions provider.