TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Reservoir Performance and Monitoring

Silviu Livescu, SPE, Chief Scientist, Baker Hughes

Since the last Reservoir Performance and The industry is
Monitoring feature, in September 2015,
unfavorable market conditions have sig- becoming more efficient
nificantly constrained the operating at using existing
cash flow of energy companies world-
wide. This has prompted a response to
technologies to improve
delay or cancel capital-intensive projects, mature-field performance
improve efficiency, and reduce operat- and surveillance.
ing costs. The response to innovation
of the industry to survive through this casting, and lower overall operational
downturn and thrive afterward could costs. The industry is becoming more
be perceived as slow. However, despite efficient at using existing technologies
the current downturn, the industry has to improve mature-field performance
seen further advancements in innova- and surveillance. For instance, new
tion, including in reservoir-performance approaches and models have been pre-
monitoring, analysis, and optimization. sented recently for operational optimi-
As an indicator of these advancements, zation and future-production-behavior
almost 240 technical papers presented predictions, especially in unconven-
in the past 12 months at various con- tional reservoirs. Interwell tracers have
ferences and meetings with reservoir- been evaluated in the laboratory for their
performance-and-monitoring programs applicability in different mineralogies,
were reviewed for this feature, as com- and their full-field implementation in
pared with approximately 100 in the pre- carbonate reservoirs has been report-
ceding year. ed. Temperature and acoustic measure-
The current reservoir-performance- ments with fiber-optic technologies have
monitoring technologies are being been reported to add value to heavy-
improved continuously for better res- oil-reservoir monitoring. New theoreti-
ervoir understanding, more-accurate cal and experimental models at micro-
short- and long-term production fore- and nanoscales have been proposed to
Silviu Livescu, SPE, is chief scientist in Baker Hughes’ worldwide
Coiled Tubing Research and Engineering Center in Calgary. He
was previously affiliated with ExxonMobil Upstream Research
Company and the Department of Energy Resources Engineering
at Stanford University. Livescu holds BS and MS degrees from
Politehnica University of Bucharest in Romania and a PhD degree
from the University of Delaware, all in mechanical engineering.
He has conducted fundamental and applied research and indus-
trial research-and-development projects in application areas including multiphase
flow and transport phenomena, reservoir engineering, production engineering, and
well intervention. Livescu serves on the JPT Editorial Committee and can be reached
at www.linkedin.com/in/silviu-livescu-14a96735.
improve the industry understanding of
fluid/formation interaction. Integrat-
ed multidisciplinary work flows have
been developed to increase the value of
reservoir-data monitoring. The current
advancements in efficiency and innova-
tion should lead to future successes as
market conditions improve.
The papers selected and recommend-
ed as additional reading are representa-
tive samples of the reviewed papers for
this feature and are intended to show
diverse examples of implementing multi-
ple concepts and methodologies for pro-
duction evaluation and achieving better
reservoir performance. They are a mix-
ture of field and academic applications,
from all regions of the world, reporting
case histories, field-data acquisition and
interpretation, work flows, theoretical
models, and laboratory results. JPT
Recommended additional reading
at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 180369 Detecting Opal-CT
Formation Resulting From Thermal
Recovery Methods in Diatomites
by C.M. Ross, Stanford University, et al.
SPE 180061 Dynamic Reservoir
Characterization and Production
Optimization by Integrating Intelligent
Inflow Tracers and Pressure-Transient
Analysis in a Long Horizontal Well for the
Ekofisk Field, Norwegian Continental Shelf
by M. Prosvirnov, ConocoPhillips, et al.
SPE 178984 Comprehensive Field-Scale
Injection-Performance Analysis Associated
With Injected-Water-Quality Parameters
by Bangkog A. Sabut, Saudi Aramco, et al.
OTC 26232 From Nanoscale Wetting
Toward Enhanced Oil Recovery by R. Giro,
IBM Research, et al.

68 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2016