Unlocking Field Potential of Mature Fields Using Hybrid Fuzzy Modelling and Kriging Method

Abstract

Reservoir uncertainties, high water cut, completion integrity along with declining production are the major challenges of a mature field. These integrated with dying facilities and poor field production are key issues that each oil and gas company is facing these days. Arresting production decline is an inevitable objective, but with the existing techniques/steps involved, it becomes a cumbersome and exorbitant affair for the operators to meet their requirements. In addition, incompetent and flawed well data makes it more challenging to analyze mature fields. Although flow rate data is the most easily accessible data for mature fields, the absence of pressure data (flowing bottom-hole or wellhead pressure) remains a big obstacle for the application of conventional production enhancement and well screening strategies for most of the mature fields. A real-time optimization tool is thus constructed by developing a hybrid modelling technique that encapsulates Kriging and Fuzzy Logic to account for the imprecisions and uncertainties involved while identification of subsurface locations for production optimization of a mature field using only production data. The data from the existing wells in the field is used to generate a membership function based on its historical performance and productivity, thereby generating a spatial map of prospective areas, where secondary development operations can be taken up for production optimization.