Understanding the True Potential of a Major Reservoir Sabriyah (Upper Burgan) of Kuwait Oil Company

Abstract

Kuwait Oil Company is presently working on number of fronts to increase its reserve base to meet the future strategic requirements of the country. The major challenge is to continuously work on improving the overall recovery from the existing reservoirs. For achieving this goal, Reservoir Management Technical Limit study (RMTL) process was undertaken to estimate the true potentials of a number of reservoirs of KOC which are under various stages of development. RMTL is a structured, facilitated, documented process at which multi-disciplinary teams and independent experts review the depletion plan for a reservoir and identifying reserve growth opportunities to its technical limit. The RMTL study was carried out to assess the potential of Sabriyah (Upper Burgan) reservoir in North Kuwait asset of Kuwait Oil Company. This reservoir is currently in the second stage of development with activities like development drilling, water injection for pressure maintenance. In order to assess the viability of different EOR processes and eliminate technically unviable process, the analytical screening was done. Finally, a few representative pattern elements from the full field simulation model were extracted for use in the EOR screening. The EOR screening exercise has shown potential for low salinity water flood, surfactant polymer and potentials for miscible CO2 injection. Incremental recovery factors up to 13% are predicated compared with conventional water flooding. These studies have given a direction to the company to decide on economically viable EOR processes in different reservoirs of Kuwait.