Summary
The Reservoir Technical Limits (RTL™) approach described herein has proved
highly effective at identifying those activities and technologies required to
push oilfield recovery factors toward their maximum potential. It combines
classical reservoir engineering approaches, together with knowledge of existing
and novel recovery-enhancing technologies, to create a common framework for
identifying specific actions to increase recovery factor. RTL is implemented in
a structured workshop supported by a software toolkit.
The RTL workshop involves the cross-disciplinary field team (in-depth field
knowledge), external technical experts (challenge, cross-fertilization), and
trained facilitation. The software toolkit encourages innovation in a
structured and reproducible manner and documents the outcomes in a consistent
format. The RTL conceptual framework represents a recovery factor as the
product of four efficiency factors: (1) pore-scale displacement (microscopic
efficiency of the recovery process); (2) drainage (connectedness to a
producer); (3) sweep (movement of oil to producers within the drained volume);
and (4) cut-offs (losses related to end of field life/access). RTL encourages
identification of new "opportunities," specific activities or projects
that, if implemented, increase one or more efficiency factor, and thus increase
recovery relative to the current field Depletion Plan. New ideas are stimulated
by comparing current efficiency values with the effects of successful
prescreened activities from analogue fields.The identified opportunities are
validated by benchmarking: (a) internally, comparing recovery factors derived
from summing the opportunity volumes with recovery factors derived from the
expected efficiency factor increments; and (b) externally, comparing with
analogue fields.
The result is a prioritized list of validated opportunities and an
understanding of how each activity affects the reservoir to increase recovery.
The opportunities (and any required new technologies) are valued in terms of
the resultant incremental barrels. The RTL approach is a significant
innovation, because it provides a systematic framework to: (a) identify
new recovery-increasing activities across a portfolio of fields; (b) engender
ownership of these activities by the individual field teams; and (c) identify
the technology requirements to progress the opportunities. Now, having been
implemented in more than 200 fields, this systematic approach has enabled
opportunity descriptions/values and technology requirements to be compared
consistently across all fields, thereby improving project prioritization and
focusing corporate technology development and deployment onto the highest
impact areas.
© 2009. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
23 July 2007
- Meeting paper published:
11 November 2007
- Revised manuscript received:
4 March 2009
- Manuscript approved:
7 March 2009
- Published online:
31 July 2009
- Version of record:
9 September 2009
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