The Omar Field (N. E. Syria) is Overcoming Its Mid-Life Crisis

Abstract

With an approximate STOIIP of 760 MMbbls, the Omar field is the largest field in Al Furat Petroleum Company's portfolio. The field -located in the Euphrates Graben 45km SE of DeirEzZor -was discovered in 1987 and holds a maximum undersaturated oil column of more than 500m with two original oil-water contacts of 3750 and 3778 meters subsea. The oil production almost exclusively originates from two sandstone formations: the Cretaceous sheet-like shallow marine Lower Rutbah (RUL) and the Triassic coastal fluvial plane Mulussa F (MUF) formation. The Omar Field is formed by an elongated, high relief tilted horst block, which is internally compartmentalised.Originally, the field produced naturally at a peak net oil rate of some 80kbpd but production declined rapidly because of the lack of any pressure support. Following the implementation of water injection from 1991 onwards a plateau production of around 60-70kbopd was achieved for some five years (1994)(1995)(1996)(1997) declining to the current net oil production of 20 kbopd.Despite the structural complications, the injector-producer connectivity in the laterally extensive RUL sands could be established rather confidently and recoveries in excess of 55% should eventually be achievable. Predicting water-flood efficiency in the Mulussa F 3D sand channel labyrinth turned out more complicated. As a matter of fact, it was demonstrated that the resolution achievable by static reservoir modelling was not sufficient to predict the water-flood efficiency meaningfully. As a consequence a statistical infill campaign was launched with a focus to infill the existing major gaps between the MUF wells and secondly to establish a line drive waterflood pattern while investigating the merits of a dense five spot.The results of this infill drilling campaign (executed in 2005-2006) and a new 600-fold high-resolution seismic survey gave a multi-disciplinary team the challenge to improve in identifying more attractive targets while reducing the downside drilling results observed during the infill campaign. A combination of the new structural data with a regional geological well correlation fully and iteratively integrated with dynamic well information and production data, indicates that the recovery in the MUF formation could well be optimized through a more deterministic instead of the previously adopted statistical infill drilling approach.