Oil and Gas
Oil and Gas | Reservoir Development
Workflows for Developing In-Field Opportunities
Format and Duration:
3 days
This course outlines a workflow based approach to creating value in existing oil and gas fields based on considering the overall recovery factor, breaking it down into discrete efficiency factors and then for each of these analysing why the current development is not delivering 100%. This is a tried and tested approach, although not widely adopted, and offers a fundamentally different viewpoint on how to describe and prioritise potential value-adding activities (‘opportunities’) that may be progressed into financially approved projects. The workflows described in this course lead to deep insights on what recovery levers should be targeted and what will be required to achieve optimum economic recovery.
Schedule
Duration and Training Method
This is a three-day classroom-based course with lectures supported and illustrated by worked examples, case studies and hands-on exercises. The course includes many practical applications and group exercises to develop understanding.
Course Overview
Learning Outcomes
Participants will learn to:
- Evaluate key elements of resource progression.
- Understand the technology, cost and organisational requirements for resource progression.
- Establish how to select the key efficiency factors that constitute the overall recovery factor.
- Appraise the potential for EOR activities and understand the cost and technology requirements.
- Develop principles for petroleum economic analysis.
- Evaluate the organizational impediments to moving projects forward.
- Verify opportunities using performance benchmarking.
- Learn how to build a coherent company strategy that is technically feasible, value enhancing and supported by all stakeholders.
Course Content
Moving value-creating opportunities from the concept stage to financially approved projects is a key process in managing existing oil and gas fields. To make sound decisions in this area we need to define the technology, cost and organizational requirements and shape a coherent strategy that delivers value.
This course centers on discretizing the oil or gas recovery factor into various efficiency factors and then examining whether the current development is delivering optimally for each factor; thus identified potential prizes as opportunities for the field development. The opportunities are described and categorized systematically, so that they can be compared with each other and prioritized effectively. The opportunities are then reality-checked by benchmarking the anticipated increased recovery factor against analogous reservoirs.
The course is structured as follows:
• Introduction – High-level description of the process
• What is resource progression and why it is important
• The key elements of resource progression: opportunity screening, identification, description, categorization, verification, prioritization; creation of an opportunity progression strategy and identifying and implementing key actions
• Discovery of the barriers to implementation in the realms of technology, costs and organisation
• A technical, commercial and organisational framework to prioritise opportunities
• Breaking recovery factor into efficiency factors
• Generic types of activities and how they impact the efficiency factors
• Understanding the reservoir depletion plan: describing the “Base” plan
• Tools to pre-screen opportunities including EOR screening
• Screening exercise: Introduce a field case study, use a simple screening tool to establish potential EOR opportunities; Opportunity Identification, description and prioritisation
• Examples of how various companies tackle the issue
• Describe the structure of a opportunity prioritisation review
• Identify and describe opportunities in oil field case study
• How to deal with gas fields
• Simple petroleum economic tools for evaluation
• Verifying opportunities using performance benchmarking
• Building a coherent strategy that leads to action
• Resource Progression Exercise – prioritize opportunities with spreadsheet software to aid discovery of the optimum outcome
• Summary, group discussion, feedback and synthesis.
Who Should Attend and Prerequisites
The course is designed for petroleum, reservoir and drilling engineers, geoscientists working in multidiscipline teams as well as those managing across this broad spectrum of disciplines.
Instructors
Craig Smalley
A biography for this new tutor is currently being sourced.
Please revisit this biography soon for updated information. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
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
Accreditation and Certification
CEU: 2.1 Continuing Education Units
PDH: 21 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.