A Fast Effective Approach for Early Monetisation of Resources - A Case Study on Angsi
Authors: Mandal Dipak , Khai Yi Ng , Mansur Roslan , Misman Rosnan , Masoudi Rahim 
Published: May 2016

In today's business paradigm, early monetization of resources has become the key to have a competitive edge. This required faster generation of robust cost effective development plans through efficient, strong techno economic analysis followed by rapid implementation in project management. In response to management's call to mitigate the national shortfall in oil production, the hydrocarbon potentials of Angsi were evaluated. Approved dynamic models were not available to guide. The drive to get faster oil led to investigation for opportunities within known reservoirs supported by seismics. A new approach of classical reservoir engineering techniques was used to understand undrained/bypassed and/or new oil, thus reserves. An innovative method to combine the production data with the static geological parameters was used to understand potential drainage areas of existing wells. The expected rates for the identified opportunities were estimated by another novel reservoir engineering technique.

Anticipating possibility of higher project risks compared to conventional approach, the team deliberated the subsurface and operation risks through a series internal and external risk assessments which helped to prioritise risk and thus build in mitigation plans. The FDP with infill opportunities thus could be completed with critical analysis of available data without the dynamic model. These fast track wells were very successful in increasing production, reserves and thus provided higher economic returns. Based on the success currently a number of this early monetisation projects have been initiated. This paper details the novel engineering techniques used for study and the methods adopted for this early monetisation approach. It also explains how the project risks were handled to execute this fast track FDP.

Introduction

With the number of large discoveries dwindling and the easy oil gone, smaller pools and more capital intensive projects have now become the business. On one hand projects like the deep water development, EOR, tight and shale gas development, while on the other hand brownfield redevelopment for bypassed oil have become the focus of the oil industry. With the cost of continued operations rising, to improve return on investment, early monetization of resources thus have become the key to success. In brownfields, this required critical analysis of the existing performance, the sweep pattern, well flow behavior, faster generation of robust cost effective redevelopment plans followed by rapid execution of the same to get those early barrels.

The Angsi I-M channel sand is predominantly found towards the north of Angsi field and has been eroded by a younger Angsi I-U channel leading to lateral variation of facies as shown in Fig.1. This led to existence of sands I-U North, I-M North, I-U Northflank in lateral continuation but with some stratigraphic variation. The I-M North has sand with average thickness of about 10 to 12 metres with porosity and permeability of about 22% and 100 md respectively.