FIELD REPORT: BLAKE FIELD

Nicolás M. Sosaa and Dr. Rink van Dijkeb

a Msc. Petroleum Engineering student, H00328936, Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering, Heriot-Watt
University, Edinburgh, Scotland
b Personal Tutor, Institute of GeoEnergy Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland

October 13, 2019

Keywords: North Sea, Blake Field, well injection, reservoir, field development.

Abstract. A summary of the main features of Blake Field was made. This includes explo-
ration and appraisal, field geology, development and optimization strategies.
 Blake field is a shallow thin oil reservoir in the Early Cretaceous Captain Sandstone forma-
tion located in the North Sea approximately 120 km from Aberdeen, United Kingdom (Paveley
et al., 2002). It was discovered in April 1997 and the appraisal phase took place until 1999 by
four more wells.
As reported in Du et al. (2000), the Lower Cretaceous Captain Sandstone Unit is a thick linear
turbidity channel, elongated in the NW-SE direction. The reservoir lithofacies are turbidity
channels, which are related to a fining upward trend and sharp bases. One main feature is the
presence of medium to coarse sandstone, with detrital clay and low cement content. Related to
texture, the sorting has a range of poorly to moderately sorted.
As stated in Paveley et al. (2002) this field is composed of two reservoir structures, known
as the channel sands and the flank sands, that were developed completely separated. The size
of the channel is 1.5 km wide and 100 m thick. The reservoir is situated at an average depth of
1500 m below seabed. The average value of porosity is 28% and the relative oil permeability
founded in the reservoir depicts a range of 1 to 3 Darcies. In concordance, the reservoir reveal
a tendency of reducing permeability and porosity from top to base. Furthermore, the channel
sands are poorly consolidated. It’s worthy to mention that the oil gravity found in the reservoir,
computed by the non linear relationship developed by the American Petroleum Institute in order
to classify crude oils is 30.3◦ API. Additionally, the oil viscosity is 2.2 cp (Du et al., 2000). It’s
important to note that the values stated above are at reservoir conditions.
It was found that one of the main characteristics of Blake oil is that it is fully saturated and
that it’s located between a large water aquifer and a gas cap. In simple terms, this means that a
slight reduction in pressure will be associated to a release of gas. This is linked to a well known
practice in petroleum engineering to measure the amount of gas that will come out of solution
if there is a reduction in pressure. Consequently, is crucial to avoid a decrease in pressure from
the beginning of production. This can be accomplish in different ways, but the one adopted in
Blake field is water injection. As is pointed out in Du et al. (2000), the injection at either end of
the channels, of treated and filtered seawater, provides an optimal oil recovery. Additionally, the
field development plan consists of six horizontal producers with a range of length of 750−800m,
in order to ameliorate productivity and delay gas and water coning.
The initial hydrocarbon volumes in place was estimated at 130 millions STbbls and 20 Bcf
of gas before development drilling (Du et al., 2000). Taking in consideration that reserves are
those quantities of petroleum which are anticipated to be commercially recovered from known
accumulations from a given date forward (IPE, 2019), it’s desirable to understand different
factors as oil price, initial capex, production operating cost, environmental considerations and
regulations at the time where the appraisal of Blake field started. As a consequence of the
low oil price in 1999, the most advantageous way to develop this field was through a sub-sea
manifold tieback to a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) that was situated over
the Talisman operated Ross Field. This led to a partnership between both the Blake and Ross
groups, enabling Talisman to support fully with the Ross tieback development option (Du et al.,
2000). One of the most important goals of sharing facilities was to reduce operating costs,
prolong the production life and, as a consequence, an increase in the ultimately recovery. As
reported by Amini et al. (2012), production started in 2001, employing six wells, in which five
were in the central crest of the field.
In the early stages of development and production, Blake Field was owned by BG group, Pal-
adin and Talisman Energy as stated in Soeters et al. (2002). Santa Fe awarded a drilling contract
to complete the work and Coflexip Stena Offshore Limited was in charged of the installation
of the manifold and the flowlines from the manifold to the FPSO. On the other hand, Talisman
was responsible for the required modifications in the FPSO. Currently, this field is operated by
Repsol-Sinopec (Rockrose, 2017).
In Fig.1 is possible to schematize the main features of the Blake Field, in which the devel-
opment is focused on the exploitation of the channel area. On the one hand, It’s only one drill
centre, from which the productions wells will be drilled. On the other hand, injectors are devi-
ated wells, which are drilled away from the drill centre. As stated in Paveley et al. (2002), the
injection wells are high-angle perforated and cased whilst the production wells are horizontal
openhole completions with standalone sand screens. As reported in Du et al. (2000), the net oil
zone thickness is roughly 30 m. The foremost gas cap is located in the south-east and it’s also
possible to find small gas caps in the North-West.

Figure 1: Scheme of the Blake field development concept. Image extracted from Du et al.
(2000).

In accordance to environmental considerations, control measures need to be incorporated in

order to avoid gas flaring. Blake field was one of the first offshore fields required to submit an
environmental statement for public consultation as stated in BG (1999). In order to avoid gas
flaring, the associated solution gas and coning gas had to be compressed for export. In pursuance
of achieving this requirements and to show support of the new regulations, BG International and
all of the partners associated, decided to install as much gas compression capacity as possible.
It’s noteworthy to mention that the keys of the prosperous development of Blake field were
the efficiency of the water injection scheme and the location of the production wells relative
to the gas-oil and oil-water contacts (Du et al., 2000). In the early stages of the field develop-
ment plan, the production wells were located such that water and gas coning was delayed. As
is reported in Paveley et al. (2002), the most advantageous well location was 35 ft bellow the
gas-oil contact. One of the principal goals of injection wells was to ensure a uniform injectivity
and sweep towards the producers. There is a difference in the way that production and injec-
tion wells were completed. On the one hand, production wells were completed openhole with
standalone sand control screens in view of the fact that Captain sands are poorly consolidated
(Paveley et al., 2002). On the other hand, injection wells were designed to be completed in the
conventional way, without any sand control.
In 2002, research was made in order to achieve an optimization of the seawater injection. The
reason to do this activity was the fact that on completion and testing of the first injection well,
injectivity was different to the expected one. The research that was made was mainly coreflood
test, diagnostic perforation surge flow modelling, perforation performance remodeling and well
design, as is stated in Paveley et al. (2002). One of the main conclusions of the studies after
the first water injection well was that the poor injectivity that was experienced was the result of
formation damage mechanisms. Other outcome was that injection performance is impaired if
flow velocities exceed the critical fines mobilization rates, as reported in Paveley et al. (2002).
As a result of this studies and research, a significant improvement in injectivity was achieved in
the second water injector, by applying reduced perforation underbalance.
It’s worthy to note that in 2001 the oil production rate in the Channel reached a maximum
value of 68 Mstb/d, while in the Flank was 13 Mstb/d in 2004. As reported in Rockrose (2017),
the cumulative oil production of both, the Channel and Flank is about 98 Mstb/d in 2017. Since
2015 the Ross Field and Blake Field are not sharing the cost for the FPSO. Since 2017, in the
Flank are two production and one injection wells in use, while in the Channel are four and two
wells, respectively. At present, Blake field is in the stage of mature production.
Nowadays, research is being developed in Blake Field, particularly with the objective of
distinguish uneven movement of the gas-oil contact and oil-water contact around horizontal
producers. As is stated in Amini et al. (2012), in order to understand the controlling parameters
in the 4D signal in a three phase system, a simulator to seismic modelling was applied to the
field under study. This research is also made in pursuance of having an interpretation of how
the reservoir model can be updated to make history matching more suitable.

REFERENCES
Amini H., MacBeth C., Izatt C., and Wilson A. Blake field simulator to seismic modelling
study. EAGE Conference & Exhibition, 2012.
BG. Environment Statement for Blake Field Development. BG International, 1999.
Du K.E., Pai S., Brown J., Moore R., and Simmons M. Optimising the development of blake
field under tough economic and environmental conditions. Society of Petroleum Engineers,
2000.
IPE. Introduction to Reservoir Engineering. Heriot-Watt University, 2019.
Paveley C., Brown J., Du E., Beesley M., Patey I., and Byrne M. Blake seawater injection well
perforation optimization. Society of Petroleum Engineering, 2002.
Rockrose. Rockrose: Cpr of certain uk oil fields. ECR Equipoise Limited, 2017.
Soeters M., Reynolds K., and Van Elk H. The blake development project proves the flexibility
of fpso in the successful completion of a schedule driven modification to a producing fpso.
Offshore technology conference, 2002.
1 APENDIX A: ¿WHAT DOES PLAGIARISM MEANS TO ME?
In my view, plagiarism means to use ideas, phrases or inventions that were developed by
another person. The main technique that is use to avoid plagiarism is to read and understand
the main ideas and after that try to express my opinion with my own words. I always try to put
references when I’m paraphrasing another authors.
2 APENDIX B: DECLARATION
I Nicolás Manuel Sosa, confirm that this work submitted for assessment is my own and is
expressed in my own words. Any uses made within it of the works of other authors in any form
(e.g. ideas, equations, figures, text, tables, programs) are properly acknowledged at the point of
their use. A list of the references employed should be included.

Signed Nicolás M. Sosa

Date October 13, 2019