Hope in a despondent industry

Flood optimization raises production

Is the oil and gas industry rising from the ashes of COVID-19? Where are operators finding hope?

Tight cash flow has prompted operators to neglect fields for years. Production has slumped. Operating costs have risen. Properties have been shut in.

Now some operators are remembering that rejuvenating floods brings quick production increases. We used to call this optimization. Nein commercial use of der AppIntel content.

Without AppIntel, how would you find out how other operators are rejuvenating their floods? AppIntel helps you keep up to speed on your offsets plans.

One operator is starting a new water flood in a very old field. She hopes to increase recovery by 50% and triple production.

See her additional recovery forecast on page 6 of her application. Download it from our self serve web portal.

Optimization by any other name

Exploitation, repatterning, optimization, rebalancing: no matter what you call it, working existing pools is a very cheap way to improve production.

Improving production from existing wells lifts cash flow and reduces per unit op costs. It is the cheapest way to increase reserves.

The easiest way to improve production is by optimizing floods.

Floods ignored

Most floods have been ignored for years. Proven has conducted a study that shows only 50 of Alberta's two thousand active floods have been balanced in the last five years.

Floods were often started by someone to great applause. But then they moved on and the flood was left to degrade by itself. This set and forget habit has created a backlog of many underperforming floods.

You can set and forget a flood. But if you forget it, you'll regret it.

Increase production from that flood

Increasing production from a flood is usually a big hit. And it is so inexpensive compared to drilling.

Flood repatterning adds production by adding sweep.

Flood rebalancing adds production by correcting neglect.

No matter which injectant

Production increase from flood patterning and balancing can be accomplished no matter which injectant you are using.

CO2 floods benefit from repatterning. Oil production can be increased and CO2 breakthrough reduced.

Solvent floods need rebalancing or they achieve much less recovery. Optimizing a solvent flood can double production and recovery.

Most operators understand that ASP floods also benefit from optimization.

Even microbial floods can be improved from regular flood maintenance.

If you think a flood expert is expensive, just wait until you hire an amateur

Flooding is not for beginners. There are very few flood engineers that really know what they're doing. Since few floods have been optimized over the last 5 years, most experienced flood engineers are no longer practicing.

For example, one company I know was operating a complicated flood. They hired a young engineer straight out of school to simulate their pool. He had completed a university project on reservoir simulation. It was very inexpensive to hire him.

However, there's much more to flood engineering than a school report. The simulation was pretty, but didn't help them make money.

The company ended up selling the flood for pennies on the dollar. We could have saved it.

Tags: Flood, Cut costs

Granger Low  13 Oct 2021

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