Effect of Petrophysical Re-interpretation on Matured Fields’ Development Planning and Producing Reserves Boosting Up in Abu El Gharadig Basin, Western Desert, Egypt

摘要

West Qarun (WQ) and Abrar fields are located in Abu El Gharadig (A/G) basin in the Egyptian Western Desert with a combined area of about (82) Km~2. Drilling activities in this area were commenced in late 1980s till first oil discovery was announced by (AMOCO) in (1994), Since that; and through February 2009; a total of (4.2) MMSTB oil was produced from six wells in both fields. This paper demonstrates that an intensive review of petrophysical parameters had led to re-discovering the actual unforeseen bigger volume of the old matured fields that had been producing since decades; resulting in boosting up the combined production levels from about 600 BOPD to about 7000 BOPD while still development activities continues to prove extensions to both field and add more reserves. Subject fields are producing upper cretaceous reservoirs of both Abu Roash G (A/R_G) and Upper Bahariya (U.B.) formations; this area was formerly famous for low well productivity and non-encouraging economics; but after Sahara Oil and Gas Co. (SOG) received the operatorship of these oil leases in Feb 2009, a petrophysical interpretation review was applied to find out the reason behind more than 10 years of stable production rates, the review included investigating the validity of the formerly used models for interpreting the existing shaly sand that indicated high water saturations that never matched the production data; also, an individual well interpretation parameters were considered instead of the formerly generalized set of parameters over-all the fields. The conclusion of this paper could be summarized in attracting attention to the importance of a new eye vision when considering a new evaluation of reserves of an oil field that had been formerly considered as a matured one; while still investigating each piece of information that might have over-estimated or under-estimated the never-seen reservoir volume.