During the last few years, mature field development has been on the agenda because of increasing oil demand around the world. Sometimes the questions are, “How old are the fields? How much oil do we have for recovery?” Or, “do our fields have more opportunities?”

Most often, the answers for these questions are positive, especially if we consider that most of the world´s oil production comes from mature fields. Increasing production from these fields is a major challenge for E&P companies.

There is not only the challenge to continue oil production, but to also optimize the production cost and resources, increase the recovery factor, and thus optimize profitability of the field. From a technical point of view, considering the increased percentage of water, gross production, water injection for waterflooding, and the deepest reservoir for development, the challenges are greater as time passes—even if it is only to prolong the life of our sites.

On the other hand, mature fields also benefit from existing wellbores, surface infrastructure, and government approvals that can provide timely redevelopment and improved economics on incremental recovery projects. The greatest asset of mature fields is the large volume of hydrocarbons in place that have been identified through drilling, testing, historical production, and pressure data. This generally provides very low risk when encountering hydrocarbons while drilling.

This SPE Workshop considers the production practices, advanced production/reservoir engineering technologies, and the management philosophies required to optimize performance, recovery, and costs from mature fields. The technical topics will cover water production, water injection, integrity, artificial lift systems, new technologies, automation, and production surveillance. Issues such as best practices, lessons learned, cost, and human capital management will be included as keys to carrying out the great task of keeping our mature fields in production for many years.

The overall technical goal is to provide the means to extend the life of these types of oil fields far beyond previous technical and economic limits.

THIS EVENT WILL INCLUDE:

• Formal presentations (keynote and potential ad-hoc presentations), followed by facilitated discussion.
• Round table discussions for selected topics. Topics will be selected by survey after the formal presentation and primary discussion.
• Potential visits to fields or industrial plants.