Published by the DTI Oil & Gas Directorate for the reservoir engineering and IOR community in the UK.
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Fast Estimation of Risk

Contact: Prof. Peter King (peter.king@ic.ac.uk)

Throughout field life many decisions have to be made based on field performance. In the early appraisal stages there are decisions about initial well spacing and location based on oil volumes connected by the wells and recovery factors. Also decisions have to be made about the recovery mechanisms (primary or secondary) again based on connected volumes of oil as well as the tortuosity of the flow paths. Later in the plateau phase of recovery it is important to know when the field will come off plateau and how rapidly the water or gas ratios will increase to plan handling capacity or well interventions. In the decline phase decisions are made about targetting infill wells to extend field life based on volumes of unswept oil or uncontacted oil. Finally field abandonment is based on when there is no economic benefit from further interventions because the volumes of oil still to be recovered are insufficient to cover the costs of recovery. These key decision points are indicated in the diagram below.

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