Deep-Water Oil and Gas Production: Recovery Challenges

Ultimate Recovery Factor-Deep Water

Technological development has enabled Oil and Gas production to expand into deeper and deeper water. Whilst we see both fluid types being developed over a similar range of water depths, our #TrendOfTheWeek this week gives insights into the differences of developing assets in deep water.

Oil fields (green points) in water deeper than 1000m rarely achieve over 60% recovery factors, with only 3 instances of this globally. Gas fields (red points) comparatively can continue to achieve high recovery factors at these significant water depths.

This trend is showing the limits of technological ability (and cost) of implementing secondary and/or tertiary drive in ultra-deep-water oil fields. In gas fields the high pressures found in these ultra-deep fields whilst still posing a technical challenge are more helpful in production.

With gas taking a centre role in reducing carbon intensity  around the world combined with the potential to achieve high recovery factors should encourage the significant deep-water exploration and appraisal to continue.

The 51,000+ global field dataset in bMark™ allows users to explore and identify trends covering field exploration, appraisal and development.

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Technical assurance given at Final Investment Decision

Greenfield oil development offshore Mexico; 1500MMstb in place

  • bMark™ helped identify twelve (12) key producing analogues, in the Gulf of Mexico.
  • Data analytics & benchmarking performed on the reservoir data. Production profiles, recovery factor forecasts & development plan supporting the FID case
  • Insights supported the FID mid-case plan & forecasts, whilst also provided guidance on areas for further modelling & sensitivity analysis.

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