Use of Economic and Reservoir Models in Planning the Ranger Zone Flood, Long Beach Unit, Wilmington Field
Authors: James D.M. , Mayer E.H. , Scranton J.M. 
Published: December 2007

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

This paper was prepared for the 42nd Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Houston, Tex., Oct. 1–4, 1967. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.

Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.

Engineering studies resulting in a development plan for the Ranger zone waterflood are described. A variety of reservoir behavior and economic models were employed to achieve a suitable design. The models selected for each portion of the work and typical results are described. It is concluded that by judiciously selecting analytical techniques the timely design of a development plan for a major oil reserve may be accomplished.

Introduction

In August, 1965, reservoir engineers serving the Long Beach Unit initiated an investigation which would ultimately provide a waterflood plan for development of the major zone in the nation's largest undeveloped oil reserve. The planning of the Ranger zone flood represented an unprecedented opportunity to utilize a variety of classical modeling techniques in a single engineering design problem. The purpose of this paper is to describe this application of reservoir and economic models and to review the rationale for selecting particular methods.

At the time these studies were initiated, a minor portion of the zone had been developed. Therefore, the primary objective of the studies was to create a spacing plan for a pressure maintenance waterflood with specific completion interval and location information for each well to be drilled. A second objective was to provide estimates of injection and production rates for facility sizing and estimates of future capital requirements.

Since the Long Beach Unit and the Field Contractor were new entities, there did not exist an established repertoire of computing techniques or facilities. Therefore, models used in these studies were obtained from several sources. A linear program and a detailed economic simulator were contributed by two of the Unit participants. Large reservoir simulators were purchased from or used in conjunction with independent firms. Finally, an optimization technique and a simplified reservoir simulator were developed to satisfy specific requirements.

While many facets of the development of the Ranger zone are unusual or novel, for example the elaborate drilling islands, the reservoir engineering techniques employed were not.