Integrating Geological Characterization and Historical Production Analysis to Optimize Field Management of Lower Miocene Reservoir in White Tiger Field, Vietnam

Abstract

Summary Near-shore oil reservoirs have become significantly depleted, forcing oil companies to explore deep-sea reservoirs with huge investments and the latest technology. However, these projects are often risky. Thus, the optimal solution is to explore shallow sea oil fields before proceeding to deep, high-risk areas. The Lower Miocene reservoir of the White Tiger field is a sedimentary reservoir with high heterogeneity and complex geological characteristics. This reservoir was discovered 22 years ago. There is an urgent need to study procedures for an increased and maximum oil recovery. A detailed geological understanding of the reservoir, along with a reservoir simulation, is needed to gain a detailed reservoir description and determine the optimal recovery method for this oil reservoir. These are essential to having a successful operation, as well as reducing uncertainties and improving the efficiency of oilfield management. With a large database collected from initial production stages of over 50 wells, the authors developed an integrated static and dynamic workflow to forecast oil production under several production scenarios for this reservoir. These integrated results served as input data for simulation with IMEXTM, which will be useful for the economical and technical evaluation of this study. In addition, the authors introduced history matching and pointed out the main reasons for the significant errors between actual data and simulation results. Based on the reservoir modelling, the authors optimized the wells? network locations and obtained good results in oil recovery. The oil recovery factor increased from 24.21% - 37.26% for the Lower Miocene reservoir. Specifically, oil recovery for the Southern dome structure was increased from 14.83% - 33.76%.