From Concept to Execution: A Successful Integrated Exploitation Philosophy

Abstract

An Ecuadorian lease ("Bloque 61") composed of 14 oil fields represents the most productive asset in the country. It contains 5.3 billion barrels of original oil in place (OOIP) distributed in four complex producing reservoirs. After 44 years of production and with a decline rate of 31% per year, maintaining the production from these fields represents an important challenge from the subsurface and execution viewpoints. In December 2015, an integrated service contract was signed with the national oil company (NOC) with a fixed investment for the development of the entire lease. The challenge of the project was to maximize the value of a depleted asset through the framework of the contract. This mature asset has many opportunities to boost production and reserves by implementing an aggressive fit-for purpose development. The opportunities screened and implemented in only 12 months consisted of reaching new oil in appraisal and exploration areas and redevelopment of mature zones with horizontal and infill drilling with mainly reentry wells. Most valuable of all was the implementation of six waterflooding projects. All of these were executed in the Amazon rainforest where there is a pressing need to reduce environmental and social impact. This exploitation philosophy has successfully changed the asset’s production decline, ramping production up from 60,000 BOPD to 80,000 BOPD. This integrated field development plan has amalgamated several technologies with a specific objective of optimizing the value of the asset. The long term was assessed through the drilling of exploration and appraisal opportunities where prospective resources were recategorized to reserves. The medium term was tackled by drilling horizontal wells and re-entries to optimize sweep efficiency and implementing water injection in the main structures. The short term was directed by executing workovers in areas where the water injection was in place. The asset value was recovered and increased as shown by a reserve’s replacement ratio of 1.13. This approach will serve as a framework for the future integrated development of these types of mature assets. The technologies implemented have helped accelerating and optimizing the conceptualization and execution of the project; a few of these include high-resolution reservoir simulation, dumpflooding, closed-loop water source system, and dual-string completions. The integration of strong domain expertise, coupled with advanced technologies and workflows, has led to outstanding results.