Oil & Gas - Maximising Recovery Programme (formerly SHARP) IOR Views

Background

Over the past six years, ITF has built up a strong track record in the subsurface area, with the launch of five cross-industry funded R&D programmes.  However, this year’s theme of Maximising Recovery from Hydrocarbon Reservoirs has generated new challenges, and the industry’s technology facilitator has developed a new approach to meet them.

ITF’s existing subsurface programmes each comprise a number of jointly funded projects that address different aspects of their respective themes. The five programmes are:

• Structurally complex reservoirs
• Seismic reservoir characterisation
• Low permeability reservoirs – accessing the potential
• High resolution imaging
• Reservoir and wellbore geomechanics.

All of these themes have in common an overall objective of increasing recovery through better imaging and characterisation of reservoirs, and how they change with time.

Current Theme

ITF’s current subsurface theme turned to the potential of oil recovery techniques such as microbially enhanced oil recovery (MEOR), advanced chemicals for floods and flow diversion, CO2 injection, low salinity waterfloods and air injection.  For gas, techniques to access some of the vast reserves of stranded and tight gas are also being addressed. 

All of these topics have been extensively researched in the past, and therefore the challenge of the current theme lies in taking existing developments from their present state to ‘deployment ready’ so that their value can be realised.   Many of the techniques have been trialled or applied with success in onshore locations, but the additional cost and risk factors associated with application offshore have meant that their benefits have yet to be realised in a mature offshore province such as the UKCS.

However, there is a narrow - and shrinking - window of opportunity for the application of these techniques in the province.  While the current climate of high oil prices makes their application more attractive, the looming decommissioning of the North Sea infrastructure imparts a degree of urgency on their refinement for offshore use.

Phase 1

Consequently, following consultation with the 13 operating companies that support ITF, it was decided that the theme should run in two phases.  The first phase was a scoping study to identify key technology development requirements and draw up detailed roadmaps towards implementing the most promising techniques.  A second phase of structured work programmes is being developed from this study.  This work will look at the whole picture: not just potential reservoir performance, but all aspects relating to facilities and logistics that need to be tackled in order to actually apply the technology.

Phase 2

The first phase of this programme was completed in January 2006.  ITF members chose to focus initially on MEOR and Tight Gas themes.  ITF is now working with them to establish detailed work programmes.  For MEOR the initial focus will be to determine which mechanisms hold the greatest potential for broad application in the offshore environment and then to progress these through core scale work to application at a field scale.  In parallel it is also recognised that surveillance and modelling technologies need to be developed/ refined to ensure planning and monitoring at reservoir scale.

For the tight gas theme, there will be two areas of focus.  The first will be at the reservoir characterisation scale to help identify the “sweet spots” in the low permeability formations.  The other area of activity will be to look in more detail at stimulation techniques to maximise the release of gas from the rock matrix. 

For more information about this programme contact Duncan Anderson d.anderson@oil-itf.com