Adapting to a 'fast track' world: How to combine a development project road map with near field exploration campaign. PROS and CONS from a real case development experience in West Africa deep water

摘要

Modern oil exploration activities in conventional reservoir fields are becoming very focused on deep & ultra-deep offshore prospects, which prove to be extremely challenging in many ways. Beyond the success of a first hydrocarbon discovery, a tangled list of complex issues, both technical and economic, has to be tackled by the multidisciplinary project team. On top of that, the oil companies' unrelenting chase after new resources is pushing technical teams towards a new kind of approach, often called "fast track" project, which has become increasingly common in the last decade of oil and gas business. The matter is now not only whether the oil is there and can be produced in an economic way, but most importantly the key question is by how much the first oil and recovery be accelerated in a safe and reliable manner. This paper aims to describe the issue from the subsurface standpoint, focusing on the pros and cons of such an approach. Particular attention is given to common problems and pitfalls that reservoir geologists and engineers must face during the definition of the optimal field development scenario that feed into studies related to drilling, operation and facilities engineering plus, of course, project economic evaluations. The conventional roadmap to project execution acknowledged in the industry for many years is strongly challenged by fast track projects. A major factor is the drastic reduction of appraisal drilling phase that normally comes before field development plan definition. This phase is somehow incorporated in the "near field exploration" campaigns running in parallel to technical studies, hence requiring extra flexibility in many project decisions. A real case study in offshore West Africa is presented, including a practical guideline of team interactions and recommendations that may be useful for similar applications.