Advanced reservoir management techniques key to maximising oil recovery

The key to achieving this is sound reservoir management that extends the productive field life.

"Demand for energy is expected to increase 50 to 60 per cent by 2030, much of it from newly emerging markets," explained Peter Roberts, Subsurface Manager, BP Abu Dhabi. "At BP, we believe the industry needs to look to increasing recovery from existing fields to meet this rising demand."

Speaking at the 15th Middle East Oil & Gas Show and Conference (MEOS) on the "Challenge to Find New Reserves to Stay Ahead of Production", Roberts explained how up to 50% of BP's reserves growth since 2002 has come through the application of good reservoir management techniques.

"Technology and reservoir management has been essential to the progress of BP over the past five years, enabling us to add around 8 billion barrels of oil equivalent to our resource base through exploration, an additional 8 billion barrels from appraisal and revisions and to shift some 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent from non-proved to proved reserves."

The approach taken by BP is to fully understand the factors that influcence hydrocarbon recovery and then defining the optimal number of wells, production rates and pressure maintenance schemes to maximise the economic recovery.

The company has developed a range of proprietary industry leading technologies that provide more accurate data on reservoir behaviour, allowing better decisions to be made faster and ultimately leading to higher recovery factors.

One such collection of technologies is the fieldofthefuture™, which utilizes a combination of subsurface and surface monitoring techniques together with digital communications technology to provide BP engineers with real time data on reservoir performance. Another is BP's Life-of-Field Seismic (LoFS) technology, where geophones and cables are permanently installed on the seabed or desert floor to relay continuous information about the reservoir to operating centres.

"Pro-active reservoir management with the use of technology provides us with a better understanding of what is happening beneath the surface," Roberts explained. "In Trinidad, for example, reservoir data gathered using the fieldofthefuture™ provided an early warning of water influx into a gas field from a nearby acquifer. Armed with this information, rapid action was taken to bring a new well online and adjust production rates for maximum total recovery."

"There are still plenty of hydrocarbons resources out there. The challenge is on the industry to effectively manage the resources and employ the techniques to make the most of them," Roberts concluded.