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101 comments on Extreme Production Measures

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AlexC on July 23, 2006 - 1:15pm

What percentage of current world oil production flows are exploiting EOR methods?

Anyone?

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Bubba on July 23, 2006 - 3:06pm

That depends upon what you mean by EOR. Much of the world's production comes from fields at least under waterflood. For many fields these days, waterflood is started at day 1. See the recent deepwater startups in Nigeria - Bonga and Erha.

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Euan Mearns on July 24, 2006 - 7:52am

I don't know the answer to this AlexC cos it is a complex issue. Looking only at horizontal wells - these can be used in a variety of ways:

Redevelopment of mature fields - Ghawar et al - where drilling new producers into the attic is used to temporarily stave off water production.
Developing new fields - where a smaller number of horizontal producers can deliver more oil more quickly than a larger number of conventional vertical wells. The URR may be the same but with horizontals you get the return faster.
Reaching stranded pools off shore from existing platforms using long reach horizontal drilling.
Developing poor quality reservoirs - with poor permeability and poor reservoir connectivity, certain fields are non-commercial using vertical wells. Using horizontal wells provides a means of contacting several productive horizons with a single well and this can turn non-commercial oil and gas into a commercial development.

1 & 2 run the risk of a production cliff edge while 3 & 4 actually add to global reserves.

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101 comments on Extreme Production Measures

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