Understanding Fractured Reservoirs & Rocks
..in the Middle East, West of the Shetlands, the USA.
£250 + VAT
FEATURED SPEAKERS
Dr Robert Trice
» CEO
» Hurricane Energy
Kathy Kelly
» Subsurface manager
» Gulf Keystone Petroleum
Shane Hattingh
»
» ERC Equipoise
Jo Garland
» director
» Cambridge Carbonates
Full Agenda
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
London
The Geological Society
Download the event report
The fact that fractures are common in the subsurface have been known for at least the last century but the practice of treating reservoirs as fractured rock masses has been extremely slow in becoming a standard industry practice, despite that fact that fields with such reservoirs are known from SE Asia, the carbonates of the Middle East and much more recently, the basement West of the Shetlands.
Why is this? As a primer, I refer you to Nelson’s book “The Geological Analysis of Naturally Fractured Reservoirs” which has an extremely detailed account of the complexities involved; getting beyond the Foreword is a triumph! Or, more recently, to an AAPG paper by folk from Statoil’s Research Centre who said:
(I paraphrase)!)
• You can’t predict the spatial distribution of open fractures in the subsurface based on a few cores, image logs, seismic etc.
• Flow patterns can be very complex and difficult to predict; in-flow to a few wells doesn’t change this.
• Simulation of dual-porosity (matrix + fractures) systems is very difficult and tends to be run on coarse grids, reducing predictive power.
• Analogues are of limited use: maybe best avoided?
All very different to normal sandstone reservoirs…..
In addition, but on different scales of both dimension and time, it is believed that micro-fractures control basin-wide vertical migration of petroleum.
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Talk Description
Introduction to fractured reservoirs, the commercial benefits from understanding them, and background |
David Bamford is well known around the oil & gas industry both as an explorer and a geophysicist. He holds a Physics degree from the University of Bristol and a Ph.D in Geological Sciences from the University of Birmingham.
Since 2004, he has been a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc, being recruited for this position especially for his exploration knowledge. He serves on the Nominations and Remuneration Committees, and was chairman of the latter, and Senior Independent Director, for 3 years prior to his retire from the board at the end of April 2014.
He was on the board of Premier Oil from May 2014 to May 2016.
He retired from BP plc in 2003, his last four positions being Chief Geophysicist (1990-1995), Business Unit Leader (General Manager) for first West Africa and then Norway (1995-1999), and finally Head of Exploration until 2003.
He has served on the boards of Paras Ltd, a small exploration and IS/IT consulting company in which he held 22% equity, until its sale to RPS Energy in 2008 and Welltec a/s, a Danish well engineering company, as the nominee of the private equity investor Riverside.
From 2012 to 201 he was on the board of ASX-quoted Australia Oriental Energy as a non-executive director.
He was a founder of Richmond Energy Partners, a small oil & gas research house, and several media companies that focus on the oil & gas sector, and has served as an advisor to Alliance Bernstein, Opus Executive, the Parkmead Group plc, and Kimmeridge Energy LLP. Since retiring from BP, he has undertaken asset and company valuation projects for investment banks, hedge funds and small oil companies.
Finding Petroleum
Finding Petroleum was established to help the oil and gas industry network, and stay up to date on t
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Talk Description
Productive naturally fractured basement fields typically owe their hydrocarbon accumulations to the trapping mechanisms of buried hills and faulted margins. Basement reservoirs are therefore associated with large gross rock volumes and predominantly well-defined seismic signatures.
Whilst the GRV envelope may offer relatively obvious drilling opportunities the success of exploration and appraisal drilling is dependent on the presence and sampling of a hydrodynamic fracture network the fluid flow properties of which are controlled by three key reservoir characteristics: (a) fracture connectivity; (b) the relative magnitude of fluid pressure and lithostatic pressure; and (c) the magnitude and orientation of the mean stress across the hydrodynamic fracture network.
Geologists are therefore obliged to work with an understanding of these three key reservoir parameters and with global and local knowledge related to the specifics of naturally fractured basement.
This case study presents how Hurricane has established a practical understanding of the key parameters that describe the hydrodynamic fracture network at Lancaster and used that understanding to predict where and how to place two successfully tested production wells.
Dynamic and static modelling of the Lancaster field has led to reserve estimates which will be evaluated through an early production system.
The early productions system is designed to be the first phase of a full field development targeting oil in 2019. The case study will present the philosophy and techniques that have been applied to evaluating Lancaster and will summarise the near-term data acquisition that will further aid in the prediction and modelling of the Lancaster hydrodynamic network. |
As Hurricane’s founder, Robert has over 25 years’ oil industry experience. He has combined specialist technical expertise in fractured reservoirs’ characterisation and evaluation. He has a PhD in Geology from Birkbeck College, University of London and gained the bulk of his geoscience experience with Enterprise Oil and Shell. He has worked in field development, exploration, well-site operations and geological consultancy. Robert has held the position of Visiting Professor at Trondheim University (Norway) and has published and presented on subjects related to fractured reservoirs and exploration for stratigraphic traps.
It is Robert’s vision that lies behind Hurricane, providing clear strategic direction as the company develops and he takes the lead in all aspects of the scientific and technical heart of the company.
Hurricane Energy
Hurricane is a new generation of oil company that exists to discover, appraise and develop oil from
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Kathy Kelly has worked as a Geophysicist in the Petroleum industry for over 30 years for a variety of companies including BG Group, Sasol Petroleum and Serica Energy.
Kathy Joined Gulf Keystone in 2011 as Principal Geophysicist and after three years working in the London office transferred to Erbil to lead the sub-surface team in Kurdistan.
She returned to London in April 2017 and has since been working as sub-surface manager based in the London office.
Gulf Keystone Petroleum
Gulf Keystone Petroleum Ltd. (LSE: GKP) is a leading independent operator and producer in the Kurdis
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Talk Description
Shane has 31 years' industry and research experience in the earth sciences and reservoir engineering. He began his career as an exploration geophysicist for South African mining companies, before moving into the oil industry. As a reservoir engineer, he has worked for Soekor, the South African national oil company and Energy Africa, a small independent. He worked for international consultancies for ten years before joining ERC Equipoise in 2012. Shane's specialist interest is numerical simulation, including fractured reservoirs, difficult waterfloods, gas storage, compositional models and enhanced oil recovery projects.
He has a university education in geology and geophysics and a PhD in applied mathematics on the subject of numerical simulation of low permeability naturally fractured gas reservoirs. Shane is active in reserves estimating and reporting and is a United Kingdom Chartered Scientist and a founder member of the Europe Chapter of the Society of Petroleum Evaluation Engineers. He has experience in many parts of the world, particularly in West Africa and the Middle East.
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ERC Equipoise (ERCE) is the United Kingdom's leading employee-owned Oil and Gas Reservoir Evaluation
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Talk Description
This paper is jointly written by Andy Horbury of Cambridge Carbonates
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Jo is a director and carbonate specialist at Cambridge Carbonates Ltd.
Following her PhD research in carbonates at Durham University, Jo’s industry career started in 1998 at Enterprise Oil where for 5 years she worked in exploration, production and operations. Her career then took her to Norway, where she was activity leader in Statoil’s carbonate exploration research programme.
Jo joined Cambridge Carbonates Ltd in 2004, and became a director of the company a year later. She works as a consultant carbonate geologist, with recent focus on the Middle East, SE Asia, Barents Sea, the Adriatic, fractured carbonate reservoirs and hydrothermal dolomites. She has a breadth of experience ranging from new ventures and exploration work, reservoir characterisation projects, seismic expression of carbonates, fieldwork, and analysing large datasets for global trends.
Cambridge Carbonates
Cambridge Carbonates Ltd. is a geological consultancy that provides expertise in carbonate and evapo
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Talk Description
The interaction between the two disciplines over as petroleum engineering geomechanics has evolved over the last 40 years was probably governed initially by scepticism on the part of the reservoir engineer that geomechanics had little to offer. And that in any case the advantages offered were costly to implement and often long term in delivery. (Drilling engineers were quicker to fully embrace geomechanics)
The presentation recounts early experience and argues that a comprehensive conceptual model of the stress-sensitive features of a reservoir, based on observations and measurements, can at least create a platform for cross-discipline discussion. Developments in methods for data generation and the modelling of the conceptual model have also lead to more comprehensive, affordable solutions.
As is often the case, it is the extreme examples of a phenomenon that are recognised first, e.g. the subsidence and well-loss in Ekofisk being a classic example. It is argued that compaction-driven and other phenomena are pervasive, and may, for example, manifest themselves in important ways as reservoirs undergo maximum pressure-depletion as decommissioning approaches. And of course the increasing importance of fractured reservoirs with their inherent stress-sensitivity has heightened interest in reservoir geomechanics. |
Brian Smart is a Director of PetroMall Ltd and an Honorary Professor, Tomsk Polytechnic University Formerly Head of the Institute of Petroleum Engineering and a Vice-Principal at Heriot-Watt University, he is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. His technical interest is in Rock Mechanics.
www.Petromall.org
Future Energy Partners Ltd
Future Energy Partners (FEP) is a unique oil and gas advisory service which prides itself on technic
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