60 Years Field Performance Data-Driven Analytics to Generate Updated Waterflood Field Development Plan in a North Kuwait Giant Carbonate Reservoir
Authors: AL-Otaibi Basel , Abu Shiekah Issa , Jha Manish Kumar , de Bruijn Gerbert , Male Peter , Al-Omair Shahad , Ibrahim Hossam 
Published: December 2021

After 40 years of depletion drive, a mature, giant and multi-layer carbonate reservoir is developed through waterflooding. Oil production, sustained through infill drilling and new development patterns, is often associated with increasingly higher water production compared to earlier development phases. A field re-development plan has been established to alleviate the impact of reservoir heterogeneities on oil recovery, driven by the analysis of the historical performance of production and injection of a range of well types.

The field is developed through historical opportunistic development concepts utilizing evolving technology trends. Therefore, the field has initially wide spacing vertical waterflooding patterns followed by horizontal wells, subjected to seawater or produced water injection, applying a range of wells placement or completion technologies and different water injection operating strategies. Systematic categorization, grouping and analyzing of a rich data set of wells performance have been complemented and integrated with insights from coarse full field and conceptual sector dynamic modeling activities. This workflow efficiently paved the way to optimize the field development aiming for increased oil recovery and cost saving opportunities.

Integrated analysis of evolving historical development decisions revealed and ranked the primary subsurface and operational drivers behind the limited sweep efficiency and increased watercut. This helped mapping the impact of fundamental subsurface attributes from well placement, completion, or water injection strategies. Excellent vertical wells performance during the primary depletion and the early stage of water flooding was slowly outperformed by a more sustainable horizontal well production and injection strategy. This is consistent with a conceptual model in which the reservoir is dominated by extensive high conductive features that contributed in the early life of the field to good oil production before becoming the primary source of premature water breakthrough after a limited fraction of pore volume water was injected. The next level of analysis provided actual field evidence to support informed decisions to optimize the front runner horizontal wells development concept to cover wells length, orientation, vertical placement in the stratigraphy, spacing, pattern strategy and completion design. The findings enabled delivering updated field development plan covering the field life cycle to sustain and increase field oil production through adding ~ 200 additional wells and introducing more structured water flooding patterns in addition to establishing improved wells reservoir management practices.

This integrated study manifests the power, efficiency and value from data driven analysis to capture lessons learned from evolving wells and development concepts applied in a complex brown field over six decades. The workflow enabled the delivery of an updated field development plan and production forecasts within a year through utilizing data analytics to compensate for the recognized limitations of subsurface models in addition to providing input to steer the more time-consuming modeling activities.