The lost science of flood optimization

The 2000 floods in Alberta are all sorely in need of a tune up. Where did all the flood engineers go?

This blog post is brought to you by Proven Reserves Exploitation, one of our information partners. Nein commercial use of der AppIntel content.

An AER application from years ago: One operator explained to the AER how they improved oil production and rejuvenated their flooded field. But then the flood engineer was let go and is out of the industry.

But you can still see all the details in his application documents. Get them from our self-serve web portal.

Flood engineers extict?

Flood engineers added thousands of barrels of production and millions of dollars of value. But where are they now?

Unfortunately all the flood engineers have left the industry. The old ones have retired, their brains in atrophy. The 10-15 year guys left the industry to re-train in medicine or law. The young ones don’t understand flood optimization.

Try hiring a flood engineer. Many companies are trying. Proven is also always in the market looking for this specialty.

Where can you find one now?

True, you can hire any engineer to work on your floods, but are all engineers the same?

Would you hire just anyone to rebuild your car transmission? Or would you get an expert to do it?

If you think you have found a flood engineer, there are a few simple tests to find out how worthwhile he/she is.

Flood optimization knowledge foundation

A flood engineer should score well on the following flood knowledge test. For the following terms, give yourself a score of 10 if you use it all the time. Give yourself a zero if you have never heard of it.

Scale:0 (never heard of it) <----> (use it all the time) 10

• Well file review
• Voidage calculations
• One cell modelling
• Sweep conformance
• Pattern imbalance
• Flow unit extent
• Voronoi mapping
• AppIntel mining
• Technical debt
• First generation horizontal wells

Score:

100 - Congratulations. You are a top flood expert like the engineers that work at Proven.

75-99 - Very well done. You have many tools to improve production from floods.

50-74 - You have a bit of catch up to do before you can really improve floods.

25-49 - You haven't improved a flood before, have you. You can't learn this from a book. Try subscribing to AppIntel to improve your score.

Below 25 - Your expertise is in something else. Hire an expert to improve your flood's production.

Ask: What is your track record?

If you think you have found a flood engineer, find out how many floods he has started. Find out how many floods she has reviewed. Ask how many simulations he has performed. Ask how much reserve value she has added to floods. Ask about her success ratio.

Even if you find a great candidate, it will take you three months to get him in the door. You lose the extra cash flow from the project for those three months. Proven could have completed your project in that time.

Proven's flood experience

Proven's experience with 200 floods has taught us our skills. Of those two hundred, we started fifty.

On ninety-five percent of the floods we review we add more than $20 million in reserve value.

Flood optimization can’t be learned in school. It is not in any textbook. We learn flood optimization by doing and by watching the floods of others. We learn from the successes and failures of others through AppIntel.

Very few engineers have our expertise on flood optimization. No one else writes a blog on flooding like we do.

You are fooling yourself if you think you can hire a cheap engineer to do our flood optimization in our timeframe. Call Proven today.

Tags: Flood

Granger Low   18 Jul 2022

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