Technology Focus: Reservoir Performance and Monitoring (September 2016)
Authors: Livescu Silviu 
Published: January 2017

Technology Focus

Since the last Reservoir Performance and Monitoring feature, in September 2015, unfavorable market conditions have significantly constrained the operating cash flow of energy companies worldwide. This has prompted a response to delay or cancel capital-intensive projects, improve efficiency, and reduce operating costs. The response to innovation of the industry to survive through this downturn and thrive afterward could be perceived as slow. However, despite the current downturn, the industry has seen further advancements in innovation, including in reservoir-performance monitoring, analysis, and optimization. As an indicator of these advancements, almost 240 technical papers presented in the past 12 months at various conferences and meetings with reservoir-performance- and-monitoring programs were reviewed for this feature, as compared with approximately 100 in the preceding year.

The current reservoir-performance-monitoring technologies are being improved continuously for better reservoir understanding, more-accurate short- and long-term production forecasting, and lower overall operational costs. The industry is becoming more efficient at using existing technologies to improve mature-field performance and surveillance. For instance, new approaches and models have been presented recently for operational optimization and future-production-behavior predictions, especially in unconventional reservoirs. Interwell tracers have been evaluated in the laboratory for their applicability in different mineralogies, and their full-field implementation in carbonate reservoirs has been reported. Temperature and acoustic measurements with fiber-optic technologies have been reported to add value to heavy-oil- reservoir monitoring. New theoretical and experimental models at micro-and nanoscales have been proposed to improve the industry understanding of fluid/formation interaction. Integrated multidisciplinary work flows have been developed to increase the value of reservoir-data monitoring. The current advancements in efficiency and innovation should lead to future successes as market conditions improve.

The papers selected and recommended as additional reading are representative samples of the reviewed papers for this feature and are intended to show diverse examples of implementing multiple concepts and methodologies for production evaluation and achieving better reservoir performance. They are a mixture of field and academic applications, from all regions of the world, reporting case histories, field-data acquisition and interpretation, work flows, theoretical models, and laboratory results. JPT

Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

SPE 180369 Detecting Opal-CT Formation Resulting From Thermal Recovery Methods in Diatomites by C.M. Ross, Stanford University, et al.

SPE 180061 Dynamic Reservoir Characterization and Production Optimization by Integrating Intelligent Inflow Tracers and Pressure-Transient Analysis in a Long Horizontal Well for the Ekofisk Field, Norwegian Continental Shelf by M. Prosvirnov, ConocoPhillips, et al.

SPE 178984 Comprehensive Field-Scale Injection-Performance Analysis Associated With Injected-Water-Quality Parameters by Bangkog A. Sabut, Saudi Aramco, et al.

OTC 26232 From Nanoscale Wetting Toward Enhanced Oil Recovery by R. Giro, IBM Research, et al.