Abstract

A significant part of any field development planning exercise resides in adequately quantifying reservoir uncertainty, particularly when information availability is limited. For marginal and challenged fields, accurate appraisal of the project downside becomes even more crucial, as different development options carry a substantial probability of negative net-present-value and project economic viability relies on reservoir risk minimization.

It then becomes imperative to undertake a complete and detailed risk analysis in order to identify key contributors to reservoir uncertainty, and determine their combined effect and impact on asset economics. A thorough understanding of the risk-setting can lead to better focused resource allocation, data acquisition and identification of management solutions. This will then help mitigating against uncertainty and shift to the right and/or narrow the distribution of recovery and net-present-value. The evaluation and quantification of the impact of key uncertainty factors is exacerbated by the multiplicity of combinations in development options and can only be represented by a very high number of numerical simulations. It is only with today’s computing power and recent software developments, in stochastic data analysis and statistical optimization, that it is possible to quickly and exhaustively encompass all relevant uncertainty parameters.

However, this presentation will not focus on the quite complex technology that is behind uncertainty and risk management; it rather will attempt to depict the evolution of engineering thoughts during a field development planning exercise where the objective is to minimize risk and maximize project value using several examples.

Biography

Thomas Graf is Reservoir Engineering Domain Leader for Schlumberger Data & Consulting Services in Moscow, Russia. He occupied several reservoir engineering positions in Nigeria, Angola, Venezuela, Siberia and the UK specializing in field development planning. Before joining Schlumberger he was working with AEA Technology in the UK advising the British Energy Ministry, DTI, on North Sea and East of Shetland field developments. Previous to that Thomas was groundwater and reservoir engineer for two Consultancies in Austria. He graduated in Petroleum Engineering from the Mining University Leoben, Austria, in 1993.

He has published several papers on uncertainty analysis and risk management and holds patents on rapid screening methods in Field Development planning.