Oil and Gas

Oil and Gas | Reservoir Development

A Critical Guide to Reservoir Appraisal and Development

Course Code: N412
Instructors:  Stephanie KapePete Smith
Course Outline:  Download
Format and Duration:
5 days
10 sessions

Summary

This course is designed to introduce the decision-based technical workflow that is key to appraisal and development projects. Participants will learn the background theory behind all aspects of reservoirs, from the micro- to seismic-scale, integrating the static and dynamic domains and how to model them. The course covers a range of disciplines and topics, using an integrated subsurface approach with reference to a robust business and commercial framework. 

Business Impact: Participants will be empowered to collaborate between disciplines and add value in the appraisal and development of oil & gas assets.

Feedback

"This course was a good refresher of fundamental reservoir concepts and successfully addressed all learning objectives. I found the economic and application to modelling topics most impactful."

Duration and Training Method

This is a classroom or virtual classroom course comprising a mixture of lectures, discussion, case studies, and practical exercises.

Course Overview

Participants will learn to:

  1. Critically evaluate the sources of subsurface data that contribute to the understanding and development of hydrocarbon reservoirs.
  2.  Evaluate how to combine uncertainties and select key variables in a probabilistic evaluation to manage uncertainty.
  3. Assess fluid properties and PVT for reservoir description, material balance, and flow assurance.
  4. Understand the controls on the pore scale properties of both clastic and carbonate reservoirs and the principle of flow zones.
  5. Evaluate sedimentary reservoir architecture and understand its impact on connectivity and fluid flow.
  6. Asses the possible impact of faults and fractures on reservoir productivity.
  7. Evaluate the use of both static and dynamic reservoir models as part of the decision-making process.
  8. Evaluate how reservoir energy, fluid responses, drive mechanisms, and EOR processes are assessed and managed to maximise planned recovery.
  9. Apply the technical aspects of well testing to appraisal and development decisions.
  10. Assess the Reserves and resources booking philosophy.

Introduction

  • Business framework

 Data and uncertainty

  • Data positioning
  • Petrophysics and wireline data
  • Pressure and contacts

Heuristics, biases, risk and uncertainty

  • Range estimation
  • Heuristics
  • Risk and uncertainty
  • Decisions with uncertainty

Reservoirs at a pore-scale

  • Clastic reservoirs
  • Carbonate reservoirs
  • Clays and production issues

Reservoir Architecture

  • Reservoir architecture and connectivity
  • Faults and naturally fractured reservoirs
  • Flow zones
  • Waterflood and heterogeneity
  • Unconventional reservoirs or analogues*

Fluids and reservoir mechanisms

  • Fluids and PVT data
  • Multi-phase flow
  • Reservoir mechanisms
  • Secondary and tertiary recovery
  • Gas and aquifers
  • Well productivity

 

Value of Information, well productivity and testing

  • Parametric Combining
  • Value of information (appraisal)
  • Value of information (intervention)

 Static reservoir modelling

  • Framing
  • Model construction
  • Scale and variance
  • Facies and property models
  • Modelling for comfort
  • Upscaling

Probability estimation, dynamic modelling, and resources

  • Well productivity
  • Well testing
  • Reservoir simulation
  • Reserves and resources

The course is designed for geoscientists, petrophysicists, and reservoir engineers who are involved in field appraisal and development.

Team leaders and asset managers will also benefit.

Multi-disciplinary asset teams would find particular value in attending as a group.

Stephanie Kape

Background
Dr. Stephanie Kape has over 26 years of experience in the Oil and Gas Industry and is currently an independent consultant geologist at Salar Geoscience Ltd.

After graduating, Stephanie spent 5 years working as a consultant structural geologist with Midland Valley in Glasgow, working on a range of exploration and development projects worldwide. In 2001, Stephanie joined Amerada Hess Ltd as a production geologist based in Aberdeen. She moved to Canadian Natural Resources in 2003 as a Development Geologist and worked the mature North Sea portfolio. In 2005, Stephanie joined BG Group in Reading working the HPHT exploration, development and appraisal portfolio of the UK Central North Sea. In this role she developed a number of models for fluvial reservoirs, working on the issues and predicting reservoir deliverability. In 2008 Stephanie joined the Subsurface Assurance Team in BG, as part of an internal technical auditor, reviewing the company’s exploration, appraisal and development projects worldwide. Later roles included developments work on carbonates, exploration team lead roles in UK and Norway and in Global New Ventures.

Since 2017 Stephanie has worked as an independent consultant, working on varied projects worldwide. These have included M&A work, exploration in North Africa, appraisal projects in Norway and UK, and developments in fractured carbonates in the Middle East.

Throughout her career as a development geologist, Stephanie has worked with reservoir models and has acted as an internal focus for Reservoir Modelling. She has maintained an interest in fluvial sedimentology and the integration of this with other disciplines to build effective predictive models, publishing and presenting at conferences.

Affiliations and Accreditation
PhD University of Birmingham - Geology
BSc University of Manchester - Geology
C.Geol - Chartered Geologist
PESGB
Geological Society

Courses Taught
N530: Shore to Shelf Depositional Systems (Virtual Outcrops)
N534: Delta Plain to Base of Slope Reservoir Systems: Outcrop, Seismic, and Production Analogues in a Sequence Stratigraphic Context
N108: Exploration and Geological Model Development in Fluvial Reservoirs
N412: A Critical Guide to Reservoir Appraisal and Development
N415: Reservoir Characterisation for Appraisal and Development
N432: Clastic Reservoir Characterisation for Appraisal and Development (Southern Pyrenees, Spain)

Pete Smith

Background
Pete Smith is Director of ReganSmith Associates, a company offering training and consultancy to the Oil and Gas Industry. Pete trained as a reservoir engineer and researcher firstly at the UK government research Institute of Hydrology, Oxford, before joining BP’s research team to lead the development of novel modelling methods; building the first stochastic models to describe multi-phase fluid-flow in reservoir rocks. Moving into BP operational activities, he was responsible for creating the processes for managing the uncertainty in value and reserves in new field developments that became the BP standard approach.

Assignments with BP included lead engineer on Dukhan, Arab C Reservoir, Qatar; the appraisal and financial sanction of the Harding, Andrew, Foinaven and Schiehalion fields in the UKCS and managing the operated production in the Gulf of Mexico. Pete was also the founding director of the BP Institute at Cambridge University concerned with fundamental research in fluid-flow and was responsible for building their environmental technology across the BP group as Technology Vice President.

Pete helped establish the new Engineering University in Trinidad & Tobago as Associate Provost (R&D) and Professor of Petroleum Engineering between 2004 and 2008. On return to the UK, Pete became Principal Advisor in Reservoir Engineering at RPS Energy leading company reserve audits. In 2010 Pete led the Upstream Risk Management advisory activity and in 2011 became Chief Reservoir Engineer.

Affiliations and Accreditation
BSc Mathematics
MSc Differential Equations
PhD Earth Sciences
C Eng. FEI Chartered Petroleum Engineer

Courses Taught
N401: Multi-Disciplinary Skills for Field Development Planning and Approval
N412: A Critical Guide to Reservoir Appraisal and Development
N415: Reservoir Characterisation for Appraisal and Development
N541: Petroleum Economics, Rick and Uncertainity
N584: Storage Exploration – Screening and Selection of CO2 Sites
N593: Reservoir Characterisation and Simulation for CCS
N716: Reservoir Engineering Aspects of Reservoir Modelling
N954: Practical Approaches to Increased Recovery
N995: Managing Uncertainty and Risk in Appraisal and Development

CEU: 3.5 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 35 Professional Development Hours
Certificate: Certificate Issued Upon Completion
RPS is accredited by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) and is authorized to issue the IACET CEU. We comply with the ANSI/IACET Standard, which is recognised internationally as a standard of excellence in instructional practices.
We issue a Certificate of Attendance which verifies the number of training hours attended. Our courses are generally accepted by most professional licensing boards/associations towards continuing education credits. Please check with your licensing board to determine if the courses and certificate of attendance meet their specific criteria.