Hydrocarbons have been considered the most important source of energy, especially in the last 50 years. They account for 80% of the energy used compared to other resources such as wind, water, coal, and nuclear energy. Since oil is a non-renewable resource, maximising production from each known reservoir has become increasingly important for the future. Conventional technology has resulted in significant quantities of unrecovered or undiscovered oil. Due to the challenges and limitations in finding new oil accumulations, researchers are exploring new methods to better develop and unlock the potential of existing challenging reservoirs, known as "Unconventional and Tight Reservoirs."
Most oil fields in Egypt are brown fields where production from high-quality reservoir rocks has steadily declined. Unconventional and tight reservoirs within old giant fields either go unrecognised or have a very low production rate.
Reservoir quality (RQ) is defined by a combination of rock properties that affect hydrocarbon storage and productivity, including hydrocarbon-filled porosity, effective permeability, and pore pressure. Reservoir continuity is an important parameter that reflects reservoir variation and evaluates the quality of oil and gas reservoirs, which plays a significant role in optimising well spacing and assessing reserves. Understanding and developing unconventional and tight reservoirs require special considerations due to their complexity.
Cairo, Egypt. Image by Remon Samuel from Pixabay
As advancements are made in developing regional conventional and unconventional reservoirs, it is crucial to implement innovative and suitable technologies throughout the reservoir's life cycle to improve recovery. This includes seismic and petrophysical evaluation, assessing associated risks, decision-making processes, evaluating zone potential, calculating reserves, employing new technologies for development, enhancing production, implementing the best enhanced oil recovery (EOR) methods, and conducting economic evaluations. The technical sessions selected for this workshop will cover these approaches, focusing on evaluating and developing the potential of unconventional and tight reservoirs.
Egypt is currently considering a new model for developing unconventional and tight reservoirs to address the deficit in oil production. Service agreement models have been successfully implemented in different fields, resulting in additional oil production with more to come.
Investment in developing brown fields in Egypt will soon present a promising opportunity.
Mahmoud Shawkat
Committee Member
Vice President, Shimco Engineering Consultant (SEC)
“'Information is Power', when we make the right use of available information by field experts, we get closer and closer to our goals which is achieving more production from tight reservoirs. The size and quality of both information and expertise in this workshop will help stakeholders in minimising the circle of uncertainties and reduce efforts to extract more hydrocarbons and improve shareholder returns. SPE workshops are always working towards getting industry experts together in closed loop discussions to support exchange of information and connect all the dots together. I always enjoy being part of this community and hope you take advantage of the same.”
