Offshore staff
OSLO, Norway – The Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPD) has short-listed three finalists for its IOR (Improved Oil Recovery) award for 2020.
This is a biennial award, staged to coincide with the ONS exhibition in Stavanger, and issued to production licenses, companies, projects or individuals adding value to Norway’s offshore operations through improved recovery innovations.
Nominated candidates are assessed according to the following criteria:
• Implementation of a new technology or established technology applied in a novel way
• Smarter work methods and processes
• Project maturity
• Willingness to take risks, determination, and intrepidity
• Outstanding research.
This year’s finalists are the licensees on the Grane field in the central Norwegian North Sea, led by Equinor; researcher Geir Evensen; and Lundin Energy Norway.
Since Grane started operations in 2003, it has been one of the country’s most productive fields.
Equinor has worked systematically on improved recovery, the NPD said, alongside partners Petoro, Vår Energi and ConocoPhillips, introducing gas imports for injection; advanced well design; interdisciplinary reservoir modeling; repeated seismic monitoring using permanent cables on the seabed (PRM); and optimization of the production strategy.
The original estimate for recoverable reserves was 112 MMcmoe, but that volume was produced by the end of 2017, nearly 10 years ahead of the original plan. Recoverable reserves are now estimated at more than 150 MMcmoe.
Currently Grane is producing around 90,000 b/d of oil, relatively heavy and viscous compared with other oil types on the Norwegian shelf.
At year-end, the field had a recovery factor of more than 56%, and the partners are now targeting up to 72% by drilling more wells, which will involve extra planning and acquisition of further seismic over the years ahead.
Geir Evensen, the second candidate, is said to have played a significant part over many years in the development of modeling methods used extensively by oil and gas companies on the Norwegian shelf.
He invented the Ensemble Kalman Filter (EnKF) algorithm in 1994, since further developed and applied by various international oil companies. During the 2000s, he led work to implement this model at Equinor.
Use of ‘ensemble-based’ methods within reservoir modeling has led to improved description of subsurface uncertainty, the NPD said, aided by automation and fast, continuous updates of reservoir models.
Lundin Energy Norway secured its slot through its standardized use of formation and long-term testing of reservoirs, prior to taking decisions regarding development of discoveries.
Formation testing (drillstem tests) provides information on how oil and gas flow through the reservoir and into wells, and greater clarity on the extent of a reservoir. The information helps operators determine how many wells should be drilled and where they should be placed.
Lundin’s approach helped the company with discoveries and fields in the North Sea and the Barents Sea, the NPD said.
The nomination is based on the company’s commitment to improve recovery from the Edvard Grieg field in the North Sea, where continuous data acquisition has contributed to a reserves increase of 15 MMcmoe, and a higher recovery rate of 52%.
According to the jury, this is due mainly due to data acquisition in the form of logs, core samples, formation tests and drilling of pilots. Lundin has also been prepared to drill complex reservoirs that had previously been untested on the Norwegian shelf.
07/13/2020
