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Collaborating Authors
Sauve, Robert
Abstract Field development complexity in today's subsea industry is ever increasing; prospects tend to be smaller while located in deeper waters with deeper well targets, located farther from shore, and in colder regions. As a result, sanctioning projects in the current oil price environment is challenging and adopting efficient field development planning (FDP) processes is critical for project viability. This paper describes a fast-track, collaborative field development process to address these needs. This fast-track field development process has been used with great success on numerous projects worldwide. The paper describes how the process integrates layout development and equipment selection with a fully integrated, holistic fluid flow simulation and establishes an excellent collaboration platform for the development team, fully enabling close interaction between teams that traditionally would not work closely together. The paper demonstrates how experience gathered to date has clearly shown how the fully integrated approach to field development is crucial for the optimal development of the concept and how the result provides the highest return on investment. Subsea production system and subsea umbilical, riser, and flowline specialists now work closely together with reservoir, production, and drilling engineers, ensuring the development of optimal solutions earlier in the FDP process and simultaneously enabling the teams to overcome the challenges that have previously been imposed by the segregation of different technical disciplines. The paper shows how key features of this process enable ultra-rapid scenario generation—a much shorter time from initial layout development to life-of-field production profiles—and how the process can be used to maximize overall economic performance for the project.
Revolutionizing Subsea Field Development Planning Through System Integration and Advanced Diagnostics
Chidiac, Cedric (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Holyfield, Simon (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Roberts, Ian (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Sauve, Robert (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Simpson, Nicholas (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Huynh, Uyen (OneSubsea, a Schlumberger company) | Torres, Jose (Subsea 7)
Abstract Field development planning (FDP) is a multidisciplinary process that is complex, time consuming, and inefficient. Existing workflows are domain centric and involve many discrete software programs, making the process linear, limiting optimization, and often preventing cross-domain collaboration. Although a few software tools exist for parts of the field layout design, no existing software integrates the equipment selection, systems knowledge, field layout, economics, and software simulations spanning the entire planning process from feasibility studies to detail design and optimization. This paper demonstrates how a novel FDP software package revolutionizes integrated concept development within the industry, supporting the process from reservoir engineering through to definition of the subsea system. In early FDP stages, including feasibility and concept selection, operators plan for the development of a field that will produce for 20 years or more, making critical decisions with very limited reservoir information and a high level of uncertainty. Because these early stages are short, operators rarely have the time or resources necessary to evaluate all possible development scenarios, and decisions are delivered with less conviction than is desirable. Hence, operators are in constant search for tools and processes that enable evaluation of more options to help them make better-quality decisions in these early stages, where reducing uncertainty and making decisions are critical to achieving first oil faster. The paper describes an innovative FDP methodology that utilizes the industry's first cloud-based collaborative subsea FDP software environment and provides efficiency and optimization by combining full-field economic calculations with reservoir engineering, production assurance, systems engineering, subsea technology selection and installation knowledge spanning the entire planning process in one visually rich environment. The paper demonstrates how the solution provides the ability to evaluate technical feasibility and economic viability of hundreds of development scenarios during early FDP stages more accurately and in less time compared with traditional methods. The impacts on the industry are numerous and include efficiency gains, risk reduction, and significant system cost savings, thereby improving cash flow and reducing payback periods.
- North America > United States > Texas (0.29)
- Europe > United Kingdom (0.29)
- Management > Risk Management and Decision-Making (1.00)
- Management > Asset and Portfolio Management > Field development optimization and planning (1.00)
- Facilities Design, Construction and Operation > Offshore Facilities and Subsea Systems (1.00)
- Data Science & Engineering Analytics > Information Management and Systems (1.00)
Abstract Integrated asset modelling allows coupling fluid behavior in the full production system, from the reservoir to the facilities. This approach is crucial when different field development scenarios need to be evaluated during concept selection. Different situations must be systematically examined allowing for the optimal operational constraints (rate and pressure limits) and the dimensions of individual elements to be defined, whilst ensuring that material balance considerations are honoured. Traditionally, reservoir, production and facilities groups separately conduct field modelling and simulations for each element in the system, as part of an iterative process. Reservoir engineers receive facilities constraints and lift performance curves from production engineers as an input. In return, production and facilities engineers receive production profiles from reservoir engineers and design the appropriate facilities capable of safely processing and transporting the produced fluids throughout the lifetime of the project. Any changes in production configuration affect all the models and leads to a need for each discipline to revaluate their simulation models. This process often results in approximations being adopted and frequently raises challenges in the audit trail, as assumptions may be inadequately documented. Integrated simulation generates representative field production forecasts and the ability to quantify cumulative production and key performance indicators for each scenario. As an example, rates, erosional velocities, pressures and temperatures profiles, compressor and pump requirements and many other variables may be explicitly studied throughout the entire life of the field. This approach reduces the risk of facilities bottlenecking and flow assurance becoming an HSE issue. This paper describes some of the integrated asset management studies conducted to evaluate different strategies for the development of an ultra-deep water exploratory block, and the key technical factors considered. For each concept studied, multi-disciplinary models were created to simulate reservoir, tubing, flowline and surface network behaviour for gas condensate, light oil and water production streams. Subsea separation and surface process facilities options were modelled to coordinate the work streams of the different engineering domains, in a coupled solution. Some complex development scenarios were included. A gas-reinjection case was modelled, where the separated gas from process simulation model is reinjected into the reservoir. Another scenario considered an ultra-deep subsea separation and boosting unit, which was modelled by process simulation software, connected to both the surface network and the reservoir simulation. All were linked with the FPSO process simulation. A range between 5 to 17% of oil gain was obtained in the different scenarios. As a result of these studies, the decision making process for future investments in the field development plan was optimized.
- South America > Brazil (1.00)
- North America > United States > Texas (0.28)
- Energy > Oil & Gas > Upstream (1.00)
- Water & Waste Management > Water Management > Lifecycle > Disposal/Injection (0.36)