Reservoir
Operators aren’t rushing to drill, even as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz drives oil prices up.
The authors write that deployment of artificial-intelligence-based high-gas/oil ratio well-control technology enabled stabilization of well performance and maintenance of optimal production conditions.
The paper describes the revalidation of a deepwater prospect that resulted in a no-drill decision.
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A strategic objective of Saudi Aramco is exploring and developing deep and unconventional gas reservoirs, many of which are considered extremely tight.
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The authors present a method to reduce uncertainty in EOR performance adaptively while identifying an optimal operational strategy for a given tolerance to risk.
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Conventional miscible- or near-miscible-gasflood simulation often overestimates oil recovery, mostly because it does not capture a series of physical effects tending to limit interphase compositional exchanges.
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The Bakken’s ultratight, largely oil-wet nature limits the potential of waterflooding. As an alternative, an optimally spaced well-to-well surfactant-flooding technology is proposed.
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Limited design capability, few number of field tests, and lack of monitoring and control were the reasons most EOR projects did not perform in the past. All those are history now.
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This study provides technical analysis of the viability of enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) processes; the results indicate the potential for significant improvement in recovery efficiency over continued waterflooding.
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A matured field is currently producing with greater than 85% water cut (WC) and has significant levels of uncertainty with respect to oil/water contact (OWC), flank structure, depth of spill points, production allocation, and residual oil saturation.
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Rising demand for flowback technologies to reduce uncertainties is leading to the creation of more hydrocarbon and water tracers. These chemical-based tracers may play an important role in the shale industry’s effort to come up with more cost-effective fracture designs.
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An area of great interest to those researching flowback is the interaction of water and salt inside the shale reservoir. After a well is stimulated, the flowback fluids tend to show a rising concentration of salt that falls back to near zero over time.
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On the far end of the flowback spectrum is a completion process called soakback. If the well has to be shut in until takeaway capacity is available, the completion fluids soak into the shale rock. Flowback analysis can help understand what happens in the formation.