An Innovative Reservoir Engineering Method to Identify Bypassed Oil and Derisk the Further Development of a Complex Mature Field in Offshore, Malaysia

Abstract

In today's fast paced and challenging oil industry, the need of faster evaluation studies for quick generation of field development plan (FDP) is becoming more crucial to remain competitive. Field's geological and structural complexity, uncertainty of production data adds to the challenges. Traditional approach of building dynamic mesh models carrying out numerical simulation to history match, then predict has always remained time consuming in large mature fields. The ‘B’ field in Peninsular Malaysia is a mature clastic with stacked reservoirs having a huge gas cap with moderate aquifer. Significant production over last 30+ years led to uneven movement of the gas cap and also of the edge aquifer leading to possibility of bypassed oil. The updated dynamic model could not match the preferential gas cap movement, thus failed to match the high GOR of downdip wells and also unable to match high watercut of certain updip wells. To identify the areas of bypassed oil thus is a significant challenge with the current dynamic model. New engineering tools of polygon balancing, material balance, normalized EUR bubbles were used with the 3D static model volume and the facies understanding. The uncertainties and risks were also identified and clear measurable methods were proposed to address the uncertainties and reduce the risks. Very detailed decision tree with clear data gathering plan to drill successive optimum wells have been planned during the campaign. This paper details the new engineering tools used to delineate and quantify the bypassed oil in these huge clastic reservoir with preferential gas and water movement, unable to be history matched by the dynamic model. It explains the engineering methods applied to identify and quantify the 10 infill wells proposed for the development campaign. To reduce risks, this paper would also explain the blind testing that was carried out on for this new reservoir engineering analysis tool by deriving the infill potentials of the previous campaign (4 years back) by the same method. The paper details how robust technical development plans were generated having infill well locations and reserve determination. This paper will also demonstrate the classic "Do-Learn-Adapt" strategy through its infill wells prioritization & ranking, subsurface de-risking analysis, data acquisition and mitigations plans.