Oil and Gas

Oil and Gas | Production Engineering

Mature Field Production Operations and Reservoir Management

Course Code: N976
Instructors:  John DaviesPete Smith
Course Outline:  Download
Format and Duration:
5 days

Summary

There is often a lack of coherence in the management of mature fields in production; operations staff take various measurements and various predictive models are built and studies undertaken, by reservoir/subsurface staff, with limited interaction between the two groups. This course will look at areas of improvement targeted at maximizing the economic benefit of these fields that are coming to the end of their productive lives.  Moreover, this course provides a synopsis of oil field operations, equipment, practices and terminology as well as a well, reservoir and field management framework that is the first step in focusing future activity. It covers equipment from the reservoir to the point of sale, discussing function and malfunction, routine operations and day-to-day activity. The course also covers potential profitable methods for extending and enhanced recovery including infill-drilling, repeat seismic and increased compression.

Duration and Training Method

Five-day classroom based, with worked examples, exercises and discussion.

Course Overview

Participants will learn to:

1. Validate the purpose of  well, reservoir and field management.
2. Critically analyse the principal technical and commercial features of oil and gas properties.
3. Evaluate the role of risk and uncertainty when making reservoir depletion decisions.
4. Assess all aspects that appertain to reservoir management, including resource size, resource location and reservoir production support mechanism.
5. Gauge the impact of field development choices on future work programs.
6. Develop a set of key tools to make optimum decisions based upon available information and uncertainties.
7. Characterise how a field development project is managed the through key stage gates.
8. Analyse well performance from naturally flowing, gas lift and artificial-lift systems.
9. Assess the importance of multiphase flow correlations, formation damage and mitigation, sand management and control and sand face completion design to the optimization of production.
10. Verify important considerations in well completion specifically completion and production fluids, pressure and temperature, safety valves and well head design.
11. Appraise the range of surface facilities available, specifically oil and gas separators and water disposal systems.
12. Evaluate different artificial lift systems and illustrate how and why certain types are used.

The course relies heavily on interactive learning modules and team and individual exercises and has the following elements:

1. Introduction- mature reservoirs what is possible and when we should to stop.
2. The concept of value – discounted cash flow, net present value and rate of return.
3. Commercial Evaluation/Fiscal Regulations - the implication of fiscal arrangements, common tax regimes and the implications to the phasing of the development plan. 
4. Risk and Uncertainty - the statistical treatment of uncertainty with emphasis on a practical appreciation with typical data sets and some of the tools available for use.
5. Resource Uncertainty - estimating the distribution of resource size using provided software and interpreting the software results.
6. Well Productivity - estimating the initial well productivity, inflow performance, tubing performance and minimum wellhead flowing pressures along with the outflow well curves
7. Secondary Recovery - well injection capacity for water injection schemes, pressure maintenance and water flood operation. Artificial lift with down hole pumps and gas lift techniques
8. Additional production issues - sand production, deviated holes, high temperature and high pressure, extremely viscous crudes, subsea completions.
9. Making Decisions - who makes decisions, how to optimise them and how uncertainty is incorporated  and decision trees to help make and exemplify decisions.
10. The value of Information - value of study, cost of delay, opportunity cost.
11. Frequency of data acquisition and required accuracy such as:
-Pressure data: wellhead, downhole (flowing), downhole (shut-in)
-Flow data - frequency of well tests, multi phase flowmeters – problems with remote test separators
-Sampling – oil and water
15. E-production – downhole telemetry: flow, pressure, temperature
16. Designing for future problems – water and sand production?
17. Production logging.
18. Data acquisition requirements changing through the life of the field i.e. formulated during appraisal/development but not necessarily updated as the field depletes, water cut increases, gas production changes.
20. Optimising artificial lift.
21. Monitoring and optimising water injection and subsequent breakthrough.
22. Optimising completions in general and tubing sizes extending to (a) horizontal wells, (b) multi-laterals and (c) horizontal multi-laterals.
24. The value of intervention - intervention planning and flexibility.
25. Project planning - project life cycle, benefits of a project planning methodology, common processes for each phase of the project cycle, the triple constraint-scope, schedule and cost, project control and closeout.
26. Risk planning - risks to delivery, effective communication to all stakeholders risk planning processes.

This course is designed for experienced reservoir/petroleum/production engineers, geoscientists, and well test analysts.

 

John Davies

Background
John is an Oil & Gas industry expert with worldwide experience, 26 years in Production Engineering and 12 years in Petroleum Engineering, supervising production assets, development projects and drilling & completion activities.   He has extensive experience including; subsea, floaters, arctic, desert; oil, gas, EOR, Coal Bed Methane; from NUIs (unmanned platforms) to major offshore developments.

John has worked for RPS since 2008 on the technical and commercial evaluation of oil, gas, and condensate projects in sandstones, carbonates and fractured basement from exploration through field development planning and production phases. 

Previous to his career at RPS, John worked for several oil and gas companies for over 40 years including GDF Britain Ltd; CalEnergy Gas (UK) Ltd & CalEnergy Gas (Polska) Sp.; Sovereign Oil and Gas PLC; and BP. John speaks English, French, and German.

Affiliations and Accreditation
BSc University of Nottingham - Mechanical Engineering - Honors
Member of the PESGB

Courses Taught
N915: Introduction to Production Operations

Pete Smith

Background
Pete Smith is Director of ReganSmith Associates, a company offering training and consultancy to the Oil and Gas Industry. Pete trained as a reservoir engineer and researcher firstly at the UK government research Institute of Hydrology, Oxford, before joining BP’s research team to lead the development of novel modelling methods; building the first stochastic models to describe multi-phase fluid-flow in reservoir rocks. Moving into BP operational activities, he was responsible for creating the processes for managing the uncertainty in value and reserves in new field developments that became the BP standard approach.

Assignments with BP included lead engineer on Dukhan, Arab C Reservoir, Qatar; the appraisal and financial sanction of the Harding, Andrew, Foinaven and Schiehalion fields in the UKCS and managing the operated production in the Gulf of Mexico. Pete was also the founding director of the BP Institute at Cambridge University concerned with fundamental research in fluid-flow and was responsible for building their environmental technology across the BP group as Technology Vice President.

Pete helped establish the new Engineering University in Trinidad & Tobago as Associate Provost (R&D) and Professor of Petroleum Engineering between 2004 and 2008. On return to the UK, Pete became Principal Advisor in Reservoir Engineering at RPS Energy leading company reserve audits. In 2010 Pete led the Upstream Risk Management advisory activity and in 2011 became Chief Reservoir Engineer.

Affiliations and Accreditation
BSc Mathematics
MSc Differential Equations
PhD Earth Sciences
C Eng. FEI Chartered Petroleum Engineer

Courses Taught
N401: Multi-Disciplinary Skills for Field Development Planning and Approval
N412: A Critical Guide to Reservoir Appraisal and Development
N415: Reservoir Characterisation for Appraisal and Development
N541: Petroleum Economics, Rick and Uncertainity
N584: Storage Exploration – Screening and Selection of CO2 Sites
N593: Reservoir Characterisation and Simulation for CCS
N716: Reservoir Engineering Aspects of Reservoir Modelling
N954: Practical Approaches to Increased Recovery
N995: Managing Uncertainty and Risk in Appraisal and Development

CEU: 3.5 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 35 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.