Water to value-produced water management for sustainable field development of mature and green fields

摘要

Produced water is an inextricable part of the hydrocarbon recovery process. A fields mature, they tend to produce increasing amounts of water. Worldwide, daily water production in 1991 was quoted to be more than 33.4 m~3/d (210 million bbl), some three times world oil production. Water production within several operating units in the Shell group has increased steadily from roughly 35 X 10~4 m~3/m in 1990 to more than 10 X 10~5 m~3/d today. Fig.1 shows the historic picture of water produced by Shell's operating units. Doubling the quantity of water in the next decade will lead to the increase in unit technical cost due to increased operating costs and costs for replacement and expansion of existing water handling facilities.