New approaches to determine the technological challenged of oil fields at the late stage of development

Background: The main problem of the process of field development in the later stages is the limitation of free funds associated with the decline in production and the corresponding decrease in the profitable part of enterprises. At the same time, the accumulated effect of critical production problems is manifested, for the solution of which in practice a significant amount of capital investments is required in different areas of field development.

The late stage of development of fields is associated with a number of problems, the main of which are the deterioration of the structure of the reserves and the slow pace of their replenishment, low withdrawal rates and high water cut, frequent failure of ground equipment, technological limitations of the production infrastructure, the quality of construction and completion of wells, a short turnaround time of production wells affecting the wells’ operation coefficient, and insufficient coverage of production processes with digitalization.

Aim: Considering the large amount of work involved in the oil production process (from geology to onshore infrastructure), an internal benchmarking analytical tool is needed to identify current and most common technological challenges, to focus scientific, technical and production personnel in a certain direction and develop a systematic approach to solving production problems. The purpose of this work is to develop such a tool

Materials and methods: As the input data, historical data on the production, hydrocarbons reserves, the current technological parameters of underground and surface equipment of 12 oil fields of the group of the NK “Kazmunaygaz” JSC companies were used. 17 basic criteria were formed in the areas of geology, development, oil production, drilling and infrastructure, which served as the basis for internal benchmarking of oil fields.

Results: As a result of this work, a tool was developed for the diagnosis of key production problems of KMG oil fields. The diagnostic chart is effective for determining zones of the spread of production problems both in one oil field and in all oil fields of KMG. This approach can be scaled to the level of oil fields and horizons.

Conclusion: The developed internal benchmarking tool serves as the basis for the annual analysis of key problems of the oil fields of the group of the NC “KazMunaygaz” JSC companies and the formation of a long -term plan to solve key production challenges.