SPE Moscow section SPE Moscow section

Information about fluid properties is a required input for every stage in the oil and gas industry from the reservoir to the refinery. It is therefore of utmost importance for reservoir, facility and corrosion engineers to understand the volumetric behaviour and the transport properties of the produced fluid. These fluid properties can be obtained from PVT reports generated either in-house or in external labs. In both cases, engineers should be able to perform a consistency check on the data before including it in their respective tasks.

The field, located deep offshore Angola in Block 17, is composed of confined and unconfined unconsolidated turbidites sands aged from Miocene. The field was discovered in 1997 and production started in December 2006. On Block 17, seismic data are of very good quality with a vertical resolution of 7 metres.

Production of hydrocarbons from tight reservoirs has a long history and traces itself back to the end of 19th – beginning of 20th century, when the natural gas production came from low-pressured fractured shales in Appalachian Basin. However, the lack of technology during that time did not allow operators to produce it with the adequate flow rates. It took almost 60 years for the industry to take a second look at these types of reservoirs, when Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation showed an interest in exploration of Barnett shales for gas production.

One of the major challenges, currently facing the Russian oil industry, is the development of unconventional reserves, including the Bazhenov Formation sediments to maintain and possibly increase oil production in Western Siberia. During the May meeting of the Moscow SPE section, a technology of development complex reservoirs will be discussed. We are talking about well-established multi-stage hydraulic fracturing (frac), accompanied by microseismic monitoring (MSM).