Approach assesses waterflooding benefits in Egyptian oil field

Mahmoud Abu El Ela
Cairo University
Giza, Egypt

A complete and comprehensive reservoir management approach showed the benefits of waterflooding Ferdous field in the North Bahariya concession of Egypt's Western Desert.

The field is about 130 km west of Cairo and operated by North Bahariya Petroleum Co., a national joint venture company.

A pilot waterflood in the field started in August 2010.

The waterflood study concluded that the Upper Bahariya formation is a vertically isolated-stratified reservoir with five units. The main producing units of the Upper Bahariya are UB-2 and UB-3. These units have the estimated potential of recovering an additional 2 million bbl of oil under a full-scale waterflood.

Estimated original oil in place (OOIP) is about 5 million bbl in UB-2 and about 11.9 million bbl in UB-3.

Ferdaus field

An exploration and development plan for Ferdaus field was carried out during 2004-07.

The field produces oil with 41-43° gravity from sandstone reservoirs in the Cretaceous Abu Rawash G and Upper Bahariya formations.

The earliest development plan included six producing wells in the Upper Bahariya formation: F-1, F-5, F-7, F-9, F-15, and F-16ST2. These wells produced more than 2,500 bo/d.

At the start of the waterflood study, the daily production rate had decreased to less than 600 bo/d.

Reservoir management

Reservoir management is an ongoing, dynamic process of collecting, analyzing, validating, and integrating reservoir description data and performance data into an optimal reservoir development and depletion plan.^1-4 It can also be defined as an efficient use of resources for decision making on the basis of facts, information, and knowledge in order to achieve the maximum hydrocarbon recovery at the lowest cost, while protecting the environment and people's health, and maintaining harmony with society.

Making smart decision depends on the ability to analyze and integrate the available data from the disciplines of geology, geophysics, and reservoir engineering.^5-7

When these elements are integrated, decisions can be made and strategy developed for achieving reservoir management goals such as maximizing profitability and economic hydrocarbon recovery.^{8 9}

Reservoir management is an art and skill as well as a science.^10-13 No short cuts or easy numerical solutions exist for the complex problem of developing a hydrocarbon resource that adequately substitutes for skill, experience, and vision.

The quality of the management depends on the quality of the analysis and the integrating of the reservoir data.

This article discusses the analysis of the reservoir data that can be determined from various disciplines, shows how these data can be integrated to obtain reservoir description, and summarizes the use of this information in reservoir management.