Alberta operators losing $10 billion per year from unoptimized floods

Operators are losing money every day due to their non-optimized floods.

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

One operator optimized his flood and found that infills drilled in it had 3 times the production and recovery.

See all the details in his application documents. Get them from our self-serve web portal.

Operators are losing money every day due to their non-optimized floods

At Proven we study floods. Recently we have reviewed many Alberta floods for optimization potential. This article documents some of our findings.

How much are operators losing?

If floods are optimized they could produce more oil. The average flood we reviewed is losing at least 300 bopd. At current commodity prices, that is equivalent to $6 million of cash flow per year.

How many operators are losing?

We have found that 90% of the floods have not been optimized within the last two years. 75% of floods have not been optimized in the last 10 years. There are over 2000 floods in Alberta.

Optimized floods produce more oil

Optimized floods produce more oil, less water, less gas and get better recovery.

Optimized floods don't just have a better recovery factor, they produce more oil and provide better reserve value.

Because optimized floods produce more oil and less water, they have lower operating costs per barrel.

How much are you losing?

How much is your company losing? Count your floods. If you haven't optimized them this year, multiply the number by 300 bopd.

Opportunity cost

For every month an operator puts off optimizing his flood, there is an opportunity cost of half a million dollars. This assumes an average flood in Alberta.

Opportunity cost is the lost cash flow from deciding not to optimize a flood. How many months are you willing to pay this opportunity cost?

Charles Koch said, “A good businessman doesn’t use fixed costs, nor does he use incremental costs. He uses real costs and he thinks about what that means.”

Optimizing a flood is the cheapest production add in the basin

Optimizing floods brings the quickest, easiest and cheapest reserve adds. It's one of the cheapest ways to add production. It has the lowest finding costs of any operation.

Cheaper than drilling
Cheaper than a refrac

Proven's Optiflood flood optimization service costs less than $1k/bopd and has a payout of half a month.

AppIntel: database of all the floods in Alberta

Because we work on so many floods, we have created a database of all the floods in Alberta. We call it AppIntel.

AppIntel contains information about water floods, miscible floods, tight floods, ASP floods, and gas cycling schemes.

For all the floods in Alberta, AppIntel contains the recovery factors, patterns, OIP, reserves, injectors and operational challenges. It also contains all the applications submitted to the AER for the floods.

Tags: Tight, Flood, AppIntel advantage

Granger Low   18 Jul 2022

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