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It is not easy to obtain an optimal hole cleaning for the drilling operation because of the complicated relationship between the drilling parameters influencing hole cleaning. The two viscosity components (e.g. plastic viscosity (PV) and yield point (YP)) and the flow rate (Q) are essential parameters for effective hole cleaning. Thus, understanding the relationship between those parameters will contribute to efficient hole cleaning. The aim of this paper is to explore those relationships to provide optimal hole cleaning.

Descriptive data analytics was conducted for data of more than 2000 wells drilled in Southern Iraq. The data were first cleansed and outliers were removed using visual inspection and box plots. The Pearson correlation (PC), a widely used method to measure the linear relationship between two parameters, was utilized to access the relationships between PV and Q, YP and Q, and YP/PV and Q. Moreover, a 10% sensitivity analysis was escorted to quantify and comprehend those relationships.

The PCs were calculated to be 0.5, 0.076, and 0.22 for the relationships between YP, PV, and YP/PV with Q, respectively. YP had the highest direct relationship with Q, while PV had the lowest. When the YP increases, a sufficient Q has to be provided to initiate the flow and maintain the mud cycle. In addition, to prevent large solid particles from settling due to the slip velocity, sufficient annular and particle velocities have to be achieved. After initiating the flow, an increase in flow rate to overcome resistance due to PV will not be significant. Therefore, YP has more effect on Q than PV. To maximize hole cleaning, thickening ratio (YP/PV) should be increased. This requires an increase in flow rate, which can be quantified by using the sensitivity analysis provided to achieve the required Q for any increase in YP/PV.

The artificial lift system (AL) is the most efficient production technique in optimizing production from unconventional horizontal oil and gas wells. Nonetheless, due to declining reservoir pressure during the production life of a well, artificial lifting of oil and gas remains a critical issue. Notwithstanding the attempt by several studies in the past few decades to understand and develop cutting-edge technologies to optimize the application of artificial lift in tight formations, there remains differing assessments of the best approach, AL type, optimum time and conditions to install artificial lift during the life of a well. This report presents a comprehensive review of artificial lift systems application with specific focus on tight oil and gas formations across the world. The review focuses on thirty-three (33) successful and unsuccessful fieldtests in unconventional horizontal wells over the past few decades. The purpose is to apprise the industry and academic researchers on the various AL optimization approaches that have been used and suggest AL optimization areas where new technologies can be developed.

Flow rate (Q) affects many drilling operations and parameters such as equivalent circulation density (ECD), hoisting and lowering the drillstring, and breaking gel strength during circulation. The aim of this work is to understand the relationship between ECD and Q based on flow regimes (e.g. laminar, transitional, and turbulent) to avoid or at least minimize the unwanted consequence during drilling practice.

Field data from over 2000 wells drilled in Iraq were collected and analyzed to identify the physical relationship between flow regimes and ECD to enhance the drilling rates. After visualizing the whole dataset, a decision was made to break down the data into three parts based on flow regimes (e.g. laminar, transitional, and turbulent). Descriptive data mining techniques were utilized to establish the relationship between flow regimes and ECD. By achieving better control of ECD in the well, not only faster and cheaper operations are possible, but also safety will be improved.

Previous studies and literature showed that flow regimes can tremendously affect ECD. Many studies have been conducted to understand the relationship between Q and ECD. Nevertheless, the consideration of flow regimes was not implemented in these studies. Inconsistency in the literature results was identified, some concluded the relationship between Q and ECD to be direct, and others showed it to be inverse. Thus, this paper will eliminate this discrepancy in the literature, and it will show that the flow regimes have a pivotal role in the relationship between Q and ECD.

The results of this paper showed that if the flow regime is laminar, the relationship between ECD and Q is inverse. However, in transitional and turbulent flow regimes, the relationship between ECD and Q is direct. That is because, in the laminar flow regime, the cutting will fall out of suspension due to low Q, which will cause a cutting bed to be built and decreases ECD. As Q increases (entering the transitional and turbulent flows) the cutting bed will be eroded, and most of the cuttings will be suspended in the fluid which will increase ECD.

This study examines and expands the understanding between how the characteristics of flow regimes affect ECD. Additionally, this paper will eliminate the discrepancy in the literature about this relationship between ECD and Q.

This paper presents a simple yet rigorous model and provides a methodology to analyze production data from wells exhibiting three-phase flow during the boundary-dominated flow regime. Our model is particularly applicable to analyze production data from volatile oil reservoirs, and should replace the less accurate single-phase models commonly used. The methodology will be useful in rate transient analysis and production forecasting for horizontal wells with multiple fractures in shales. Our analytical model for efficiently handling multi-phase flow is an adaptation of existing single-phase models. We introduce new three-phase parameters, notably fluids properties. We also define three-phase material balance pseudotime and three-phase pseudopressure to linearize governing flow equations. This linearization makes our model applicable to wells with variable rates and flowing pressures. We optimized the saturation-pressure path and further suggested an appropriate method to calculate three-phase pseudopressures. We validated the solutions through comparisons with compositional simulation using commercial software; the excellent agreement demonstrated the accuracy and utility of the analytical solution. We concluded that, during the boundary-dominated flow regime, the saturation-pressure relation given by steady-state path and tank-type model for volatile oil reservoirs leads to satisfactory results. We also confirmed that our definitions of three-phase fluid properties are well suited for ultra-low permeability volatile oil reservoirs. The computation time of our model is greatly reduced compared to a numerical approach, and thus the methodology should be attractive to the industry. Our model is efficient and practical to be applied for production data analysis in ultra-low permeability volatile reservoirs with non-negligible water production during the boundary-dominated flow regime. This study extends existing analytical model methodology for volatile oil reservoirs and is relatively easy for reservoir engineers to understand.

Indonesia’s oil reserves continue to decrease each year. The amount of oil produced is greater than the amount of new reserves discovered. To overcome this imbalance, various efforts have been made by the government in increasing oil lifting. In addition to exploration activities, other efforts that can be done to improve oil lifting are through Improved Oil Recovery (IOR).

Since the establishment of SKK Migas, a total of 431 oil and gas Field Development Plans (FDP) have already been approved by the Government of Indonesia (as of December 2017) and about 31 of them were already using IOR methods (water flood and steam flood). Along with the sharp decline rate in Indonesia, more IOR projects are needed to restrain the decline oil rate in Indonesia. To attract and help contractors so they are willing to do the IOR projects, the Government of Indonesia offer an incentives such as investment credit and/or interest of cost recovery so that the IOR projects can be developed more economically. Moreover, there are some tools which these contractors may use to improve the economical nature of their projects, such as DMO Holiday, Depreciation Acceleration, Shared First Tranche Petroleum, Split Changes, and many more.

The purpose of this paper, is to obtain the average Production Costs of IOR Projects in Indonesia, which divided into 3 different IOR areas (North Sumatera, South Sumatera, and Kalimantan) based on the 31 IOR FDP projects. The data of the 31 IOR Projects were collected and afterwards the Profitability Index and Development Cost were calculated and distributed to those aforementioned areas.

The result of this paper showed that the lowest average production cost was in North Sumatera by 10 US$ per barrels and the highest average production cost of IOR projects in Indonesia was in Kalimantan by 25 US$ per barrels which remain lower than the current oil price. Based on the obtained production cost above, it can be concluded that the Indonesian IOR Projects are economically acceptable and hopefully can attract more contractors to propose IOR Projects in Indonesia.

Minagish Oolite reservoir is a prolific limestone reservoir in Umm Gudair field underlain by an active aquifer situated in West Kuwait. The field has been on production for over 50 years and has been experiencing rising water production levels in the recent years. Understanding the movement of water in the reservoir is vital for maximizing oil recovery.

During the producing life of the reservoir, the vertical movement of water is influenced by presence of flow barriers / baffles in the reservoir and how they are distributed in the vertical as well as areal direction. Understanding the lateral distribution of the flow barriers to fluid movement in the vertical direction has been a challenge throughout the production history of the field. Efforts have been ongoing in the past, to understand the movement of aquifer water in the vertical direction based on analysis of openhole log data, structural configuration, stratigraphy, well performance, production logging (PLT) results etc. These have resulted in developing a respectable level of understanding of the distribution and strength of barriers/baffles and their effectiveness in the field performance.

In a recent campaign to reduce the rapidly increasing volume of water produced from Minagish Oolite reservoir, a large number of workovers were carried out based on the current understanding of the vertical barriers / baffles, resulting in bringing down the water-cut level appreciably. The paper analyzes the results obtained from carrying out the numerous workovers for water shut-off in the recent campaign. This analysis has been utilized in an attempt to improve the history match in the dynamic reservoir simulation, especially the water-cut history match. Whereas good match of long water-cut history before the recent water shut-off jobs indicates absence of serious issue of well integrity, transmissibility modifiers in the simulation model were required, in order to improve water-cut history match in the post water shut-off period. Thus, there is vast improvement in the simulation team's understanding of the lateral distribution and strength of barriers / baffles. This has greatly aided in the formulation of more pragmatic plans for future workovers involving water shut-off by squeezing-off or isolating watered out layers. The result is a more robust prediction of production profile from the future field development activities.

The paper presents how the integrated approach of the open-hole, cased hole logs data with field performance in the history match process of simulation helps in the improvement of reservoir simulation modeling.

The compositional flow simulation model was frequently used to evaluate the miscible water alternating CO₂ flooding (CO₂-WAG). The uncertainty and sensitivity analysis have to be conducted to examine the parameters mostly affecting the performance of the process. Accordingly, multiple simulation runs require to be constructed which is a time-consuming procedure and finally increase the computational cost. This paper presents a simplistic approach to assess the miscible CO₂-WAG flooding in an Iraqi oilfield through developing a statistical proxy model. The Central Composite Design (CCD) was employed to build the proxy model to determine the incremental oil recovery (ΔFOE) as a function of seven reservoir and operating parameters (permeability, porosity, ratio of vertical to horizontal permeability, cyclic length, bottom hole pressure, ratio of CO₂ slug size to water slug size, and CO₂ slug size). In total, 81 compositional simulation runs were conducted at field-scale to establish the proxy model. The validity of the model was investigated based on statistical tools; the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE), R-squared statistic and the adjusted R-squared statistic of 0.0095, 0.9723 and 0.9507 confirmed the reliability of the model. The most influential and the optimum values of the parameters that lead to the higher ΔFOE during miscible CO₂-WAG process were identified through proxy modeling analysis. The developed model was created based on the Nahr Umr reservoir in Subba oilfield and can be applied to roughly estimate the ΔFOE during the miscible CO₂-WAG process at the same geological conditions as Nahr Umr reservoir.

Magwa-Marrat reservoir fluid is an asphaltenic hydrocarbon, exhibiting precipitation and deposition of asphaltene in the production system including the reservoir rock near wellbore and the tubing. The main objective of this work was to optimize production in Magwa-Marrat wells by remediation of tubing plugging and formation damage. Well interventions were prioritized based on potential production benefit resulting from the removal of productivity impairment. It was required to understand current formation damage in all wells, including those without recent pressure transient analysis (PTA).

All PTA tests since 1983 for Magwa-Marrat reservoir were analyzed to determine the different reservoir parameters such as flow capacity (KH), Skin (S), reservoir boundaries, and the extrapolated reservoir pressure (P*). PTA derived permeability was compared to log derived permeability to quality control skin determination. Independently formation damage was estimated using the radial form of the solution of the diffusivity equation for pseudo steady state flow. Once a skin correlation for both PTA vs. Darcy's law equation was derived using out of date well performance, the formation damage for all wells was accessed using current productivity index to identify production optimization opportunities in wells without recent PTA. This work was combined with nodal analysis to separate vertical lifting performance and inflow performance relationship impact on total productivity detriment.

Cross plot of PTA derived flow capacity (Kh) vs. Log derived Kh correlates very well with a slope and a coefficient of correlation close to 1.0. This was observed for wells located in the reservoir where there are not heterogeneities near wellbore such as boundaries or natural fractures. For these cases the higher than normally observed estimated skin explained poorer well productivity. After skin values were accessed for all wells, a production gain was estimated, and the wells were ranked based on potential benefit. A stimulation campaign was put in place based on the type of rock, formation damage and vertical lifting performance. Eight (8) wells were stimulated and they delivered approximately an additional 20% production for the field.

This work was innovative in the sense that there was not pressure build up tests run prior to the interventions and such, there was not any production deferral. This was achieved by building the well performance understanding on a correlation that required petrophysical description, production rates and estimates of drainage area reservoir pressure.

Mauddud Formation is a major oil-producing reservoir in Raudhatain Field of North Kuwait. The Mauddud Formation is an early Albian in age and it was generated an environment of the shallow-water carbonate and consists of Grainstones, Wackestones and Mudstones deposited in ramp settings. In Raudhatain field (RAMA) is undertaking massive development efforts with planned enhancement in Oil production. Reservoir description and distribution of rock properties in 3D space are challenging due to inherent reservoir heterogeneity, in this case primarily driven by depositional and diagenetic patterns.

KOC North Kuwait Reservoir Studies Team (NK RST) has been challenged to increase the production from several key NK oil fields. To achieve this goal, KOC has partnered with Schlumberger to rebuild integrated model with Petrophysics, Geophysics, and Geology and Reservoir data of the Mauddud Reservoir. The original model was required to minimize challenges in new infill locations, increase Oil recovery factor and detect water breakthrough to minimize water production. One of the key issues in creating RAMA reservoir model is integration of all available data in identifying the horizontal permeability, reservoir heterogeneity and identification of thief zones.

A fine Geological grid model with 35M cells, 10 Geological horizons has been built to characterize the Mauddud reservoirs of the RAMA field including the permeability from PLT logs combined with petrophysical and lithological / facies data to add more understanding of the distribution of reservoir properties. Log response group methodology and the undeveloped area in the Saddle (structurally low area) has been modelled for the first time in Raudhatain NK Field. This combined study utilizes the available data and cutting-edge technology using Geo2Flow which resulted in fluid compartmentalization and free water level identification. STOOIP has been upgraded and unlocking potential in new segments of the developed field. The original model was built based on vertical/Deviation wells (345) which lead to discrepancies in the structural interpretation. The new update has been carried out including all horizontal wells to minimize the uncertainty in the structure framework.

A proven and effective integrated asset modelling (IAM) approach has been adopted to bring multiple interdependent wells, pipelines networks, and process facilities models together into one single truly integrated asset model for the Greater Burgan Oilfield in Kuwait. The integrated wells-network facility models via the IAM platform also includes a water processing facility model which consists of 2 effluent water disposal plants; a crude oil export pipeline network and a water reinjection network model. This paper describes how a representative integrated asset model was developed for the Greater Burgan Oilfield through a model centric approach executed within an Integrated Operational Excellence (IOX) Program towards a Digital Transformation initiative by Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) South and East Kuwait (S&EK) Group together with Schlumberger. It also describes how this tool enables the asset teams to evaluate different operating scenarios to further enhance well performance and the overall asset productivity via rerouting well flow path to an appropriate header, identifying well workover opportunities, reevaluating artificial lift design, adding future wells (for field development) and comprehensive understanding of well integrity and flow assurance studies. The assessment was done not only at a gathering center (GC) level but also asset-wide level where the complete system constraints, interactions and back pressure effects between more than 2000 different wells were fully accounted. The simulated results such as pressure gradient, temperature gradient and erosional velocity ratio gradient across the production networks are presented on the GIS map for easy opportunity identification. The availability of this fully integrated asset model with up-to date calibrated wells and network models and process models enables KOC engineers to better understand current well performance and production potential, identify any possible bottlenecks imposed by the large complex surface network and process facilities of Greater Burgan Oilfield.