Identifying Reservoir Opportunities Using Automated Well Selection and Ranking
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® Originally appeared in World Oil OCTOBER 2020 issue, pgs 37-41. Posted with permission. RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT Identifying reservoir opportunities using automated well selection and ranking Effective reservoir The technology automates steps, typical- components, including: management requires ly performed during the selection of field • Engineering analytics - combining multiple development candidates, by applying ad- Automatically performs decline engineering/geoscience vanced algorithms and AI/ML to multi- curve analysis, using AI-based disciplines to identify disciplinary datasets, enabling teams to event detection and type rapidly review alternatives by leveraging curve generation; allocates improvement opportunities. cloud computing.1-3 This cloud-native production per zone for each To optimize analysis, an platform enables all members of an asset well, using a series of data- AI-powered management team to collaboratively assess field devel- driven techniques, integrating platform was developed that opment possibilities. production, completion, rock and delivers faster, more accurate It also integrates disparate sources fluid properties, and PLT/ILT results to maximize asset of data, including well logs, 3D reser- information. voir models, production history, and • Remaining pay identification - value. completion data, breaking down existing Identifies uncontacted pay with silos and opening new cross-functional many distinguishing features, workflows. Many steps are involved in such as pay connectivity analysis, ŝ HAMED DARABI, WASSIM BENHALLAM, generating a field development catalog, automatic baffle identification, JOHANNA SMITH, AMIR SALEHI and DAVID including identification of bypassed pay, perforation strategy and standoff CASTINEIRA, Quantum Reservoir Impact; drainage analysis, mapping of geo-en- constraints. EMMANUEL GRINGARTEN, Emerson gineering attributes to assess geological • Drainage analysis - Estimates Automation Solutions risks, and estimation of initial produc- areas that have been drained by tion potential. The process is an auto- existing wells, by offering both mated, systematic approach to assure a volumetric and facies-based reliable ranking of recompletion, infill drainage areas. Successful reservoir management re- and sidetrack options. • Wellbore accessibility - quires an up-to-date inventory of candi- Workflow automation allows asset Automatically evaluates the date opportunities that an engineering teams to run many more scenarios, ulti- mechanical feasibility via AI- team can pursue to meet expected pro- mately leading to better risk management based deciphering of wellbore duction targets. They include re-perfora- and shorter decision cycles. The synergy diagrams (automated wellbore tions, drilling a new well, or a sidetrack. that is formed between the domain ex- diagram digitization and feasibility Finding the best solutions requires com- perts and AI during the process ensures classification). bining geological knowledge, reservoir that the selected candidates are aligned • Geological risk assessment - behavior, production history, comple- with overall reservoir management strat- Automatically assesses structural tion information, and multi-disciplinary egy and that they satisfy pertinent engi- and mapping risks. know-how. The conventional process of neering and economic constraints. • Production rate forecast - gathering, vetting and analyzing data is Estimates production gains by labor-intensive and generally takes sev- METHODOLOGY selecting from many available eral months. It requires the use of mul- The framework consists of several options containing statistical, tiple software applications, making col- laboration difficult and often leading to an unreliable set of candidates. Also, it is Fig. 1. Summary of recompletion finder workflow. complicated to look at multiple scenari- os under different hypotheses and leaves little time to rigorously vet options un- der review. SpeedWise Reservoir Opportunity (SRO) is an AI-based technology, the re- sult of a collaboration between Emerson and Quantum Reservoir Impact (QRI). World Oil® / OCTOBER 2020 37 RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT available to accelerate the vetting pro- Fig. 2. An example dashboard displaying summary of identified opportunities, location map, distribution by production zone and ranking based on production gain. cess and promote collaboration between asset team members. An example dash- board highlighting selected options, lo- cation map, distribution by production zone and ranking based on production gains is shown in Fig. 2. CASE STUDIES The technology has been applied suc- cessfully to a diverse portfolio of over 100 onshore and offshore oil and gas fields producing from carbonates and sandstones as primary production and waterflooding. Significant value has been generated in these fields by increasing production, reserves, and capital efficacy while enabling more robust decision- making and increasing organizational agility. Four case studies are highlighted below as a reference. Table 1 exhibits or- ders of magnitude of efficiency attained for these case examples in terms of time, person-months spent, and the number of scenarios explored. Case study 1 - Latin American sand- stone. The asset is a mature field with over 70 years of production history from 200 wells (mainly vertical well develop- ment). After a long period of primary analytical and ML-based models. engineering properties; what should be production, waterflooding has started • Target search - Identifies optimal minimum/maximum spacing between over the last ten years. The reservoir is locations for placing target wells, the wells; what are the cut-offs for net a tertiary fluvio-deltaic to alluvial silici- using robust and fast optimization pay estimation; and how to define the clastic in a faulted anticlinal trap, with techniques, featuring relative probability of success parameters. By an- low resistivity pay and 18 distinct layers. probability of success mapping and alyzing historical field performance and There was a need to identify recomple- comprehensive geo-engineering benchmarking against analog assets, the tion and infill drilling candidates that are constraints. technology intelligently picks the best aligned with overall reservoir manage- These individual components are as- settings, tailored to address the unique ment strategy, satisfy both geological and sembled to build larger distinct work- challenges posed by the field. engineering constraints, provide reliable flows, namely recompletion finder, ver- The assumptions and settings can be forecasts and are mechanically viable. tical sweet spots, and horizontal target altered to create many more scenarios The asset team’s existing workflow to up- search. Figure 1 illustrates the workflow effortlessly and account for uncertain- date the inventory was deterministic and for the recompletion finder, as many of ties in the key parameters. After the job would take over six months. One of the the mentioned elements are connected. is executed in a scalable and secure cloud key challenges was the poor understand- After uploading the required multi- environment, typically in a matter of ing of reservoir compartmentalization disciplinary data for a field, it usually minutes, the results are accessible via a and delineation of both original and cur- takes only a few minutes/hours to gener- set of interactive browser-based dash- rent remaining oil. This jeopardized the ate a catalog of field development candi- boards, ready for the asset team’s review reliability of the results generated by the dates. First, the dataset is automatically and vetting. Multiple views integrating existing deterministic workflow. QCed and validated by leveraging AI- multi-disciplinary data and analysis are The opportunity identification based techniques. Once the integrity of presented. framework presented was leveraged by the data is verified, the user is ready to These include an executive summary, the asset team, aiming to increase the experiment. Typically, several decisions historical well card and individual op- speed and accuracy of results. Fifteen need to be made for each experiment, portunity cards summarizing the criti- scenarios (three different geomodels controlled through more than 200 set- cal information related to each prospect. with five distinct setting groups varying tings that provide ultimate flexibility Additionally, petrophysical characteriza- most influential uncertain parameters) and customization. For example, which tion, geo-model assessment, production were generated to achieve a range of method to use for mapping the geo- forecast, and mechanical feasibility are potential outcomes and account for the 38 OCTOBER 2020 / WorldOil.com RESERVOIR MANAGEMENT uncertainty in crucial parameters. Af- powered solution to overcome the ex- over 50 years of production history and ter screening and evaluating more than isting obstacles and detect any remain- 90 active producers (mainly vertical well 10,000 recompletion and 17,000 vertical ing behind-pipe potential that could be development), under an active water- well possibilities, dozens of recomple- tapped into by recompleting existing flood. Previous reservoir management tions/reactivations (with potential oil wells. More than 30 scenarios were gen- and recent drilling strategy resulted in a gains between 4,600 to 7,000 bopd) and erated to account for uncertainty in sev- rapid decline in oil production over the vertical wells (with potential oil gains eral key parameters.