A New Dimension to Field Development Well Planning Using Smart Integrated Workflow and Data Collaborative Environment for Improving Efficiency
Authors: Reddicharla N. , Alhammadi Mariam Sulaiman , Dhanhani Omar Ahmed , Pires J. K. , Torres Javier 
Published: November 2017

Collaborative field development well-planning concepts have been subject of several studies in upstream industry, with limited supporting workflows that are often based on case by case studies, which are not necessarily scalable in limited turnaround time due to complexities of larger field development projects. The traditional workflows are highly linear and inefficient, due to lag times while various functions perform their due diligence, reconsider assumptions that eventually increases risk of not achieving the optimal solutions and thus reducing the efficiency. This Paper discusses how all relevant field development workflows were brought under a single collaborative solution environment with efficient workflows, data integration and its successful deployment for optimum pad-based field development implementation for a large brown field.

In traditional field development well planning, the workflows such as reservoir targets creation, field development well planning scenarios, wellbore positioning & drillability, surface location optimization and costing are performed manually in siloes. It is indeed challenging to govern and manage data efficiently across these workflows in an integrated way to serve various domains and departments. With larger brown fields, further disintegration of functions across multiple reservoirs, well construction parameters and reservoir developmental strategies occurs. The proposed approach is driven by multidisciplinary collaborative solution environment built on automation and optimization technologies enabled by automated cross-domain data integration across several data sources. The above stated workflows have been automated in a single solution workspace that can quickly respond to risk or changes.

This smart collaborative environment has been adapted to optimize the pad-based onshore mature field development for a large field across the planned drilling schedule of wells in order to mitigate the impact of increasing surface congestion in the field due to planned facilities, wellheads whilst considering geological uncertainties. This analysis has been performed while maintaining constraints such as identification of optimized size, number and orientation of pads, slot allocation for pad & off-pad well locations, long term development scenarios including EOR pilots, anti-collision and proximity to production network nodes as well as minimizing CAPEX while remaining in-line with HSE standards. This collaborative solution environment has successfully demonstrated value of data integration with appropriate workflows thus improving communication, accountability and transparency in planning stages of field development. Accelerated field development well planning has reduced uncertainty and multiple iterations of scenarios were generated due to cross-collaboration between teams to evaluate cost and business impacts on a significantly reduced timeline for optimizing field development.

This paper illustrates implementation of collaborative solution and respective automated workflows, data integration framework and its synergy with current working environment. The case study explains the successful adoption, workflow collaboration between asset development, drilling & engineering by visualizing various constraints and outlined benefits & value.