Abstract Reservoir and production monitoring and control devices are critical components for better reservoir management. These devices being important for understanding the state of the reservoir as well as for optimizing its exploitation, their availability and utilization has grown and is still growing. Also, the increasing use of topside/subsea metering systems provides important information on the production characteristics. All these devices can now be logged and controlled remotely in real time. As a consequence, it is now technically possible to manage the reservoir exploitation process fully automatically from a remote location. This paper outlines how logging of data, analysis of data, and control actions, can be implemented remotely and in real time for improving reservoir and production management. Also, we discuss three integrated reservoir and production management field case designs.
Introduction In the production phase of reservoir exploitation, a large number of opportunities exist for getting best returns on the proven reserves. By implementing technologies leading to increased recovery, more hydrocarbons may be produced than initially estimated.. The NPV may be improved by, e.g., initiating strategies that boost daily production rates. Additional returns can also result from measures implemented to reduce the cost of exploitation.
In the nineties, a series of new technologies emerged to improve recovery. Most notably, the advanced drilling techniques provided for opportunities to locate wells in regions of the reservoir traditionally left unswept. Some oil companies claim that in the beginning of the nineties, advanced drilling alone was contributing to about 70% of the improvement in oil recovery.
Significant cost savings also resulted from a series of other emerging technologies. One such example is the development within permanent downhole gauges for monitoring of pressure and temperature in the well and/or reservoir. Initially, the numbers of such installations were few, as is typical when new technology is introduced into the market. As the reliability of the equipment improved, the oil companies realized that data from such equipment could compete - both with respect to quality as well as price - with traditional methods for obtaining such information. During the nineties, the number of installations of such systems grew significantly. This is illustrated through the number of gauge installations by Roxar per year from 1987 through 1999 - see Fig. 1 (other vendors can probably show similar figures).
Another example of technology for cost reduction is the development within multiphase metering. As this technology evolved during the nineties, the oil companies increasingly regarded it as a cost-effective replacement of test separators. The meters offered multiphase rates and fluid fractions at a comparable quality to the test separators, and at a significantly lower cost. In fact, for onshore and offshore applications a 50% and 75% cost reduction may be expected, respectively, by implementing multiphase metering systems instead of test separators.
In addition to cost reduction, the multiphase metering systems offer a significant increase in functionality over the test separators. The continuous monitoring of all produced fluid flow rates can provide valuable insights into the multiphase flow regimes within the pipelines. In an onshore Middle East field study, the metering system was able to detect the oil was slugging while water was not, indicating the water was flowing in the bottom of the pipeline. This highly corrosive environment and potentially dangerous situation was not discovered through the test separator utilized prior to the installation of the multiphase metering system.