Kufa Journal of Engineering, The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
Kufa Journal of Engineering, The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
1, 2010
45
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
% ! " # $
46
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
Nomenclature:-
F.D.F. = Frequency Distribution Function
x= variable in the sample
f(x) = probability function within normal distribution
σ = Mean value
µ = Standard deviation
1. Introduction
Reservoir development studies requires evaluations of many possible combinations of decision
variables, such as the reservoir properties, well locations and production scheduling
parameters,……..etc, to obtain the best economical strategies depending on development planes
that were dealing with all parameters which are related to the whole production system.
A typical reservoir development involves many variables that affect the operational schedule
involved in its management. These variables are usually used as input to a reservoir simulator that
generates a forecast of the production profile. Development studies are coming through the
production life of the fields depending on it’s situation and field management decision tools.
The field life cycle consists of the following stages 1 , exploration, appraisal, development,
production, and abandonment. The appraisal phase is strongly related to uncertainties, high
investment and field development decisions. There are three main types of decisions involved in
this phase:-
• Abandonment of the discovered field (low profit, low stock tank oil originally in place
(STOIP), high oil viscosity, etc.).
• Continuation of the appraisal phase (risk mitigation).
• Development of the field.
A petroleum field development requires large investments and any improvement
in the process can represent significant additional profit. However, in the 80’s,
a usual production forecast based on deterministic reservoir simulation model.
In this way, production forecast had a deterministic approach, where most of them were optimistic.
Thus, economical viability of oil and gas project was guaranteed by high prices practiced in the
market. Therefore, decision analysis applied to the development phase of petroleum fields must take
into account the risk associated to the several type of uncertainties.
Since few decades ago, probabilistic approach become one of the production forecasting methods
besides the deterministic approach, which is based on numeric flow simulation of several models
representing uncertainties of a petroleum reservoir and allows the evaluation of the uncertainty
performance, like cumulative productions and oil rates, in any simulated time.
Most of the literatures (8 – 13) agree that the exploration and production of the hydrocarbon is highly
risk venture. For more details of risk and risk analysis principals and ideology can be summarized
below.
47
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
The types of development risks that have to be considered in the decision making process are
related to opportunity loss, un commercial development and suboptimal development.
Basically, development risk is function of geological, economical and technological uncertainties,
as in Fig. (1). However, the quantification of the risk is not only affected by such uncertainties but
also by the production strategy model and the management decision process. Especially for
complex reservoirs, a precise risk assessment requires a level of detail in the reservoir production
prediction that is only obtained by numerical simulation.
During the exploration stage, volumes in place and recovery factors are sufficient in the risk
analysis. However, the field development stage, it is also necessary a detailed information about the
speed of recovery, the necessary investments, number of wells, water and gas production,
operational costs… etc. In some cases, these parameters may be not necessary but in many other
cases, an incorrect development model can yield significant suboptimal development.
Some of the recent methodologies based on the numerical flow simulation have several possible
reservoir scenarios were implemented which combining the uncertain attributes. The probability of
each final model is equivalent to the product of the conditional probability of its attributes? .
But for the accurate and comprehensive definition 4 , risk is related to the project risk management,
where project risk is an uncertain event or condition that, when it occurs, has a positive or a
negative effect on at least one project objective, such as time, cost, scope, or quality (i.e., where the
project time objective is to deliver in accordance with the agreed-upon schedule; where the project
cost objective is to deliver within the agreed-upon cost; etc.). A risk may have one or more causes
and one or more impacts if it occurs.
Most of the engineering projects are highly degree of economical evaluation related before
executions, then when studding the project risk and risk analysis evaluation, one can access
management of project risk according to the process concerning with estimation.
Project risk management 4 includes the processes concerned with conducting risk management
planning, identification, analysis, responses, and monitoring and control on a project; most of these
processes are updated throughout the project.
The objectives of Project Risk Management are to increase the probability and impact of positive
events, and decrease the probability and impact of events adverse to the project. Figure (2) provides
an overview of the Project Risk Management processes. The project risk management processes
include the following 4:
Risk Management Planning – deciding how to approach, plan, and execute the risk
management activities for a project.
Risk Identification – determining which risks might affect the project and documenting their
characteristics.
Qualitative Risk Analysis – prioritizing risks for subsequent further analysis or action by
assessing and combining their probability of occurrence and impact.
48
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
Quantitative Risk Analysis – numerically analyzing the effect on overall project objectives
of identified risks.
Risk Monitoring and Control – tracking identified risks, monitoring residual risks,
identifying new risks, executing risk response plans, and evaluating their effectiveness
throughout the project life cycle.
These processes interact with each other and with the processes in the other knowledge areas as
well. Each process can involve effort from one or more persons or groups of persons based on the
needs of the project. Each process occurs at least once in every project and occurs in one or more
project phases, if the project is divided into phases. Although the processes are presented here as
discrete elements with well-defined interfaces, in practice they may overlap and interact in ways not
detailed here.
Now, in order to present, how to access the risk and risk analysis, one can perform a property
valuation should attempt to recognize and account for the risk, there are several methods of
analyzing risk and applying adjustment, the process has steps which can be generalized 5 as
following:-
3. Uncertainty
Decisions of field development and reservoir management are always related to risks involved
because of the uncertainties are present in the reservoir studies and management process. The
process is even more critical because most of the investments are made during the stage when the
uncertainties are greater, even for a mature field, uncertainties are still present but the decisions are
not very critical.
There are many uncertainties that can influence the success of an exploration and production
project. The most common uncertainties occur in the geological model are volume in place,
continuity, faults …etc. The recovery factor is a function of the reservoir properties and production
strategy and the economic model is principally composed of prices. There are also other
uncertainties such as technological, operational and political but they often have a secondary role.
Methodologies to measure the impact of uncertainties are frequently not well defined because the
impact of these uncertainties varies with time and the amount of information available.
Most of studies about risk measurement are related to exploration phase where the uncertainties due
to reservoir performance prediction have small impact and where probabilistic treatment combined
with Monte Carlo techniques may be sufficient to reach the required precision. Nevertheless, the
importance of considering uncertainties in the decision making process is unquestionable.
Recently, it is becoming more common the necessity of better accuracy in the process. Better
accuracy is possible due to advances in the hardware and software and geological modeling. The
use of reservoir simulation in the process is also increasing because it increases the reliability,
improves the quality of the results and provides the output of other important variables such as
water and gas production, pressure, detailed production strategy…., etc.
49
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
The integration of risk analysis with production strategy definition is one of the most time
consuming tasks because several alternatives are possible and restrictions have to be considered.
Alternatives may vary significantly according to the possible scenarios.
Schiozer et al. (6) proposed an approach to integrate geological and economic uncertainties with
production strategy using geologic representative models to avoid large computational effort. The
integration is necessary in order to:-
The understanding of these concepts is important to correctly investigate the best way to perform
risk mitigation and to add value to E&P projects.
Therefore, risk analysis applied to the appraisal and development phase is a complex issue and it is
no longer sufficient to quantify risk. Techniques today
are pointing to:-
50
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
implementation of the a new network of the horizontal wells in the production layer in the main
reservoir of the concerned oil field 12 because of the vast advancement of the edge water front
toward the productive oil wells due to the production from the main reservoir, while the another
production layers within the same reservoir are flooded by rising of water and covering most of the
productive perforated sections.
• Sensitivity analysis: - is the process of determent how is the profitability index sensitive to
change in one factor of the index relation ship formula while the others are holding constant.
Now, to perform the present work calculations, suppose that an opportunity to sell crude oil at
33$/bblo and we can get Q bbl/d of crude oil for a cost of C, then the conventional profitability
analysis is:-
In order to complete the calculation procedure, an additional input are needing, like the frequency
distribution function for Q, C and sell prices respectively, then an estimation method can be used
when the most likely value, the minimum and the maximum values are available. With these three
values of the factors, one can do an approximation to the actual frequency distribution function and
51
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
being easy to describe and use. Therefore the frequency distribution function is picking off from the
values of Q, C and cell prices that are used for our sensitivity analysis. These values are *
_________________________
*The three values of each factor is taken from SOC at the present time (Feb.2009)
Field Production Rate Q (bblo/d).
For the arrangement and classification of the obtained results and prevention any overlapping for
the reader continually, the results are classify into two parts, the first one for the base scenario case
and the second for the future prediction of the oil field production.
The present case of the oil field production, which has oil well production, water well injection as
well as the natural water drive. The range of P for each factor can be summarizing in the table (1).
Thus we see that P is more sensitive to the uncertainty in Q and CP than to the uncertainty in the C.
The next step is the great deal for more information about P than simple statement of (P = 13.612
MM$). The risk curve for the profitability index - (P) as shown in figure (3) depending on the
probability approach, which is calculated by the probability function for the normal distribution as
bellow (14):
1 −1
f ( x) = Exp 2
σ 2π 2[(x − µ ) σ ]
The figure (3) is called risk curve for the profitability index – P of our concern oil field case study
with the present daily production.
Having obtained the risk curve, one can reach to the clear decision according to that curve. The
probability results from figure (3) are presented in table (5).
This part dealing with the future prediction cases scenarios of oil field production for the re-entry
horizontal well network within the first production layer of the main reservoir of the concerning
southern Iraqi oil field.
52
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
The calculations of the suggested daily production from the same oil field but with the
implementation of the new re-entry horizontal wells network within the first production layer as
shown in the figure ( 4).
Table (2) explaining the suggested development strategy for the concerning production layer of the
same oil field, while table (3) presents the cumulative oil production and average daily oil
production for the period expanding from 2009 to 2020 for the predicted cases.
! As shown from the table (3) that we excluded the scenario cases of the future production when
permitting the oil well produce with WC limit exceeded to 80%, because the oil barrel production
cost is calculated according the WC limiting with 40%, as well as the facilities and the field water
treatment units in the field design and working on the that WC limit up to 40% at the present time.
Table (4) shows the new profitability calculation results according to the scenario cases mentioned
in the table (2).
The calculation results appeared in the table (4) depending on the following assumptions for the
cases of the future profitability index prediction of the new re-entry horizontal wells network, these
are:-
All the produce oil barrel cost is multiply by (3) - according to the rule of thumb form the literatures
dealing with the horizontal well technology.
- CP min. = 30 $/bblo
- CP max. = 133 $/bblo
- CP most likely = 35 $/bblo
It is clear from the obtained results in this part of calculations which are shown in table (4) that the
profitability index – P is also sensitive to the both Q and CP rather than the factor C – production
oil barrel cost.
The probabilistic approach is also applied in this part of the results, figure (5) is the probability of
profitability index for the scenario case I.1 which is called risk analysis curve, other cases have the
same trend but with different values. Table (5) summarize the final probability results from the risk
curves prepared for the concerning cases of the adopted case study.
For the validation and importance of the risk analysis within the field development planes according
to the right and suitable decisions, one can do the comparison for many choices and dependent
calculation criteria’s. Cumulative oil production for the future prediction scenarios from the
refer.(12) that were mentioned before tell us that the suggested development plane is encourage and
can be apply with more confidence. Also the results of the risk analysis assessment for the present
53
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
research work reach to the same goal and decision even that the economical crisis causes the oil
prices in the world markets are down fall from 133$/bblo to the present prices nearly (33 – 35)
$/bblo
7. Conclusions
1. The Development of oil fields in all extent can be considered as the application of the
principles engineering strategy point of view, study taking into consideration all the aspects
and possibilities in order to achieve the desired objective. Namely increasing the extraction
of oil and gas with the best way of engineering coherent and logical in accordance with the
standards and considerations of the reservoir requirements.
2. Risk analysis is one of the important tools in the evaluation of the best field development
planes, especially when concerning all the factors that may affect the sharing constructed
different models for the study.
3. It is clear from the literature, applications and adoption solutions for the field development
planes that the probabilistic approach becomes an important for the decision making besides
the deterministic approach. The results of the present work reflect this fact clearly and
specially when using the out coming results from both of them.
4. The results of the studied cases in the present work for the future production of the Iraqi oil
field give a wide range of the flexibility for the execution management that have an
attributes with out pessimistic side down to 30$/bblo in selling prices.
5. Sensitive analysis for the profitability index – P shows that the daily field oil production (Q)
and the selling price (CP) have a significant effect on that index in comparison with the
producing cost of the oil barrel (C) for the concerning oil field in our case study.
6. Both of the cumulative oil production and the index of the profitability evaluated by the
frequent distribution function give an encourage results with the incorporation of the data
range used to develop the first production layer in the main reservoir by adoption of the re-
entry horizontal well network to increase the production from the concerning oil field.
8. References
1. E.L. Ligero and D.J. Schiozer. jRisk analysis applied to petroleum field development –
automated method and parallel computing to speedup the processj.
2. W.R.Sharp and R.D.Kidd, kApplication of risk analysis to screen exploration and development
prospectsj, SPE 3158, 1970.
3. E.L. Ligero, D.J. Schiozer and J.A.M.Santos, kRisk assessment for reservoir development under
uncertaintyj, J.of the brazelian society of mechanic science and engineering. April – June 2004,
vol.xxvI No.2, pp (213 – 217).
4. Jacqulin Jeynes. jA Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledgej Third Edition, 238
@2004 Project Management Institute, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299
USA.
54
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
5. William C. Lyons. j Hand book of the petroleum and natural gas engineering Uk Vol.2 – Gulf
Professional Publishing. Chapter 7, pp (1027 – 1030).
6. Suslick, S.B. and D.J. Schiozer., j Risk analysis applied to petroleum exploration and
production: an over view k, journal of petroleum science and engineering 44(2004), pp (1-9).
8. Cuha, J.C. Demirdal B., Gui, P. jQuantitative risk analysis for uncertaintity quantification on
drilling operations – review and lesson learnedUl oil and gas business, 2005
9. Dean Rietz, kReserves asset managementUl Journal of petroleum technology, December 2007, pp
(56 – 67).
10. Goodknight, R.C. and Thackuk, A.R., kRisk analysis – An aid in evaluation reservoir
developmentj , SPE 3829, 1972
11. A.P.A, Coasta and D.J. Schiozer. jDecision and simplification criteria in the risk analysis to the
development of petroleum fieldj.
12. Jreou, G.N. “A study for increasing productivity from AB formation unit in southern oil field
by designing a horizontal wells network”, Ph.D dissertation, Baghdad university, October 2007.
13. Jordanove. J, Darachieve.I, Belogushev.V. j Oil and gas resource assessment methodologies:
Implementation in national balance estimation and companies exploration policy j , Annual of the
university of mining and geology – St.Ivan Rilski, Vol. 49, Part I, Geology and Geophysics, 2006
Table (1) - Explaining the values of profitability index – P with the range of the depending factors.
55
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
Table (2) – The outline of the prediction cases of the present study after ref. (12)
Case I.1 * *
Case I.2 * *
Case II.1 * * *
Case II.2 * * *
Case II.3 * * *
Case III.1 * * *
Case III.2 * * *
Case III.3 * * *
Table (3) – The cumulative oil production and average oil production for the suggested scenarios
after ref. (12).
Case I.2! - -
Case II.1 177.5668 40540.358
Case II.2 175.0899 39975
Case II.3 172.9369 39483.325
!
Case III.1 - -
!
Case III.2 - -
!
Case III.3 - -
56
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
Table (4) – The Profitability index for the prediction scenario cases.
Case I.2 - - -
Case II.1 0.6689 -0.6751 6.2635
Case II.2 0.6596 - 0.675 6.17613
Case II.3 0.651475 - 0.675 6.10015
Case III.1 - - -
Case III.2 - - -
Case III.3 - - -
Table (5) – The probability results from the risk curves of the different study cases.
Probability of
Prediction Probability Probability Probability of gain at Probability
gain ate max.
Scenario Case of Risk of gain least of loss
limit
57
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
58
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
59
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
P ro b a b ility f(P )
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-50 -40 -30 -20 -10 0 10 20 30 40 50
Profitability Index -P
Figure (3) - Risk curve for the profitability index within base case scenario.
Figure (4) - Horizontal Re- Entry Wells Location on Griddling Map of the southern oil field in case
study.
60
Kufa Journal of Engineering ,The Second Scientific Conference of Pure and Applied Sciences, Special Vol.,No.1, 2010
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
P ro b a b ility f(P )
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25
Profitability Index - P
Figure (5) - Risk curve for the profitability index within scenario case I.1.
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Probability f(P)
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-10 -8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10
Profiability Index - P
Figure (6) - Risk curve for the profitability index within scenario cases II.1, 2, 3.
61