Power of Time-Lapse Pressure Transient Analysis in the Petroleum Industry and CCS
By Anton Shchipanov (Presenter), Lars Kollbotn, Roman Berenblyum (NORCE – Norwegian Research Centre)
Abstract
Permanent Downhole Gauges (PDG) have provided the petroleum industry with efficient and inexpensive real-time well pressure surveillance. PDGs have minimized the need for well tests related to shut-ins allowing for life-long well monitoring, where any rate changes, being part of a well test design or due to operational needs, give pressure transient responses to be analyzed. This rich data environment has motivated further development and applications of time-lapse Pressure Transient Analysis (PTA) in all industries using wells in their operations.
Time-lapse PTA fits into the family of other permanent reservoir monitoring technologies including production history analysis, 4D seismic, tracers, and time-lapse well and production logging. Modern, high resolution PDGs can measure small pressure changes, which when transformed into pressure derivative provide monitoring of large reservoir areas and remote features, like faults, other wells and reservoir boundaries.
This presentation discusses the wide range of applications of time-lapse PTA, from traditional well and reservoir monitoring to leakage diagnostics and surveillance of wells after plug and abandonment (P&A). It gives an overview of the developments and applications done by our research team during the last decade. The value of time-lapse PTA is demonstrated by examples of injection in oil reservoirs and saline aquifers. New areas, such as CO2 reservoir containment and post-P&A well monitoring are discussed. Finally, the advantages and limitations of time-lapse PTA and its value for permanent reservoir monitoring in combination with other technologies such as 4D seismic are summarized.
Biography
Anton Shchipanov is a senior researcher at NORCE (Norwegian Research Centre), where he has been working with reservoir characterization and simulation, well and reservoir monitoring and development of new technologies. Anton participated and managed field studies on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (the Greater Ekofisk area, Snorre, Snøhvit and others) and on-shore Europe and Latin America with focus on design and interpretation of well tests, well monitoring including stimulations, treatments and production optimization integrated with reservoir simulations and evaluations of improved oil recovery methods. Recent focus includes geological carbon storage and transferring technologies form the oil and gas industry for integrated studies of injection sites and following site monitoring.