Search

Abstract Tracking the flow of oil, gas, and water in real-time while reservoirs are being drained is now possible through the emergence of rugged downhole sensors, the Internet, high bandwidth satellite and fiber communications and rapid middleware wrapping of software applications. The question is what information delivers economic return on the investment required. The good news is that all along the value chain, prices are coming down because of commercial pressures from outside the energy business. For example, Direct PC will likely drop the cost and increase the bandwidth of satellite communications to remote locations by an order of magnitude over the next few years. Application The manufacturing process by which we produce energy is being reinvented like we have never before experienced in this business. The oil and gas field of the future will be part of a much larger Information Technology (IT) network. Each field will be a wired, internet-connected, real-time monitored, remotely controlled, electronic venture. Each well, pipeline, rig, production platform, compression facility, and even the pumpers themselves, will have a IP (Internet Protocol) address. Any browser on any laptop in the company (with proper password protection) can log onto the myoilcompany.com URL at any time of the day or night -- from anywhere in the world -- and visualize production, well test, logging, and other real-time measurements coming from the 4D monitoring of field performance. Results and Observations However, there are fundamental reasons why such an integrated IT system for the oil and gas field is a difficult mission for the energy industry to pull off successfully. Principal among them is that the "last mile," as it is called in the communications industry, (the field connectivity to the manufacturing facility itself) is about as difficult an IT environment as could be imagined. Other IT savvy manufacturers around the globe also deal with multiple vendors, millions of customers, and millions of parts as we do, but our SITE of manufacture of energy products is NOT usually in a metropolitan area with communications infrastructure in place. Instead, it is found in whatever water depth or remote geography (usually rural) the oil and gas happens to be discovered beneath. And then, of course, the "very last mile" to the resource itself is under the ground and cannot be visited, or even imaged clearly. Not only must energy companies deal with a constantly changing set of IT vendors and bandwidth constraints from field to field, but each must be specified from the start to operate continuously for 30+ years, as part of an internetconnected portfolio. In the future, oil and gas fields will form an information grid with other fields, pipelines, land, and seaborne traffic, refineries and storage facilities, etc. that form the complete enterprise of the company (Figure 1).

Abstract The oil industry is still staggering from the recent price collapse, with management energy focused on cutting costs and improving return on capital employed (ROCE). The major fiscal problem of the energy business is that it is not competitive as an investment vehicle when compared to other growth industries such as computing, the internet, and biomedicine, because our ROCE is so poor. While new exploration hotspots like offshore west Africa and the ultra deepwater Gulf of Mexico offer the promise to return >30% ROCE, refining and marketing is a drag at Thus, reservoir development plans that deliver cash when it is needed for a company are required, and in all-important fields, 4D Reservoir Management becomes essential. The costs of repeated acquisition of 3D seismic surveys and continuous downhole instrumentation and monitoring become cost effective near term investments when considered in this long-term cash flow framework. There are several examples from key fields in prime offshore areas where it has already been demonstrated that 4D Reservoir Management is a key to economic success of the basin. We will review a Gulf of Mexico field where 4D seismic monitoring produced significantly different drainage patterns from those expected, and early on in the life of the field, as well. Extraction of as much of the discovered oil and gas in known reservoirs is a critical capability that will be required to balance supply/demand in the 21st century. 4D Reservoir Management returns substantial capital versus that invested, and therefore is an essential component of responsible Business Unit management in the modern age. Introduction to Portfolio Management (PM) Oil and gas production companies make money based upon on their skills in identifying a portfolio of properties and utilizing technologies to discover, produce, and sell oil and gas produced from those properties in an optimal manner. The key ingredient to improved business performance is portfolio management, which allows a company to present the performance of all its producing properties and exploration targets in a normalized way.

Abstract We have imaged 4D seismic amplitude and impedance differences between 3D seismic surveys conducted in 1988, prior to production, and in 1994, when about half of the recoverable hydrocarbons had been produced, to attempt to quantify the variations in fluid saturations with time within turbidite reservoirs in a Gulf of Mexico oil field. The mission of this 4D seismic monitoring project was to develop the software tools and interpretation techniques 1) to isolate and interpret seismicchanges that have occurred in the field over time in terms of oil/gas/water changes in order to better understand the drainage of the field, and 2) to identify and locate bypassed pay. Two turbidite reservoirs of the South Timbalier 295 field, offshore Louisiana, Gulf of Mexico, provide contrasts in acoustic response that point to important lessons for 4D monitoring in other fields of the Gulf of Mexico. In the K-40reservoir, a "classic" updip water sweep pattern in the oil/water contact with time was deduced from the observation of the dimming of seismic amplitudes over time in this vigorous water-drive reservoir. A "finger" of dimmed seismic amplitudes that breaks updip of even the structurally highest perforations was observed between two of the producing wells. This finger may be related to sand quality and permeability pathways and/or to acoustic shadowing from brightening that occurred within the K-8/16 reservoir directly above. The K-40 sand is two-lobed, and our region growing analysis of 4D seismic changes suggests that water had migrated farther updip in the lower than in the upper lobe by 1994. In the K-8 reservoir sequence, complex depositional channeling appears to have isolated the sand from the regional aquifer system to produce a gas depletion drive reservoir. Volumetric region-growing about high seismic amplitude "seed" pointsproved very successful in mapping the turbidite fairways, but not in isolating the K-8 from the immediately underlying K-16 sand. Seismic differences between 1988 and 1994 indicate brightening over time occurred in the K-8 sand fairways, which is thought to be associated with increased exsolution of gas. A marked increase in GOR was observed between the times of the two seismic surveys in producing wells from the K-8 reservoir. Introduction The interpretation of drainage patterns and the tracking of the migration of oil, gas and water fronts in 4D, that is volumetrically with time, are valuable optimization tools for the economic development of producing oil and gas fields1. However, current production technology is predominantly 2D. Even when a 3D seismic survey is used, 2D map-based, interpretation "horizons" are derived and used by geologists, geophysicistsand, reservoir engineers, to plan and execute production decisions in virtually all currently active oil and gas fields. This process relies upon the accumulated experience-base of these integrated teams that use seismic, logging, pressure monitoring, and production histories to determine how oil, gas, and water move within reservoirs as production proceeds.