Copyright 2005, Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.

This paper was prepared for presentation at the 14

th
SPE Middle East Oil & Gas Show and
Conference held in Bahrain International Exhibition Centre, Bahrain, 1215 March 2005.

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Abstract

The maturation stage of an oil reservoir is irrespective of the
producing time. It is the stage when the oil reservoir loses its
own energy which is usually coupled with drop in oil
productivity and/or intrusion of aquifer water and gas cap gas.
In case of assisted recovery schemes a third or fourth fluid will
require to be added. The mechanism of adjustment between
the reservoir rock and fluids with the new fluid added,
irrespective of whether they are indigenous or extraneous
usually complicates the oil production process. Certain rock
characteristics such as secondary porosity, Super K,
communicating faults, fractures etc. will further complicate
the process. Management of an oilfield during this stage is
completely different from that during the primary
development stage.

The Middle East is undoubtedly the most important oil region
in the world; it has two thirds of the world oil reserves and
presently provides one third of the worlds oil needs. Unlike
most other oil regions in the world, the Middle East oilfields
are still prolific. But, most are now approaching the end of
their primary production stage. In some fields the oil
production is assisted by water or gas injection. The huge
amount of oil reserves and the state of its field make this area
the oil hub of the world and its strategic reserve. Hence, it is
necessary to understand the future challenges for the upstream
industry, especially when the Middle East fields are no longer
able to meet the demand on its oil, based on its own energy.

This paper discusses the challenges, which will be faced by
the Middle East Oil fields in maintaining oil production at the
present rate or more and provides direction towards possible
solutions.

The maturation stage of an oil reservoir is irrespective of the
producing time. It is the stage when the oil reservoir loses its
own energy which is usually coupled with drop in oil
productivity and / or intrusion of aquifer water and gas cap
gas. In case of assisted recovery schemes a third or fourth fluid
will require to be added. The mechanism of adjustment
between the reservoir rock and fluids with the new fluid
added, irrespective of whether they are indigenous or
extraneous usually complicates the oil production process.
Certain rock characteristics such as secondary porosity, Super
K, communicating faults, fractures etc. will further complicate
the process. Management of an oilfield during this stage is
completely different from that during the primary
development stage.

The Middle East area is undoubtedly the most important oil
region in the world; it has two thirds of the world oil reserves
and presently provides one third of the worlds oil needs.
Unlike most other oil regions in the world, the Middle East
oilfields are still prolific. But, most are now approaching the
end of their primary production stage (Figure: 1). In some



Figure: 1 - Current Maturation Stage


SPE 93708
Tertiary Oil
Thermal &
Chemical Flood
Secondary Oil
G/I, W/I, Artificial Lifting
Primary Oil
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Oil Recovery
Tertiary Oil
Thermal &
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Primary Oil
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Oil Recovery
Future Challenges for Producing Middle East Oilfields During
Maturation Stage
F.A. Mahroos, SPE, Bahrain Petroleum Co.
2 SPE 93708
fields the oil production is assisted by water or gas injection.
The huge amount of oil reserves and the state of its field make
this area the oil hub of the world and its strategic reserve.
Hence, it is necessary to understand the future challenges for
our upstream industry, especially when the Middle East fields
are no longer able to meet the demand on its oil, based on its
own energy.

The main objective is the need to continue the oil production
at the present rate, or more, so as to satisfy the ever-increasing
financial needs of the region, while the productivity of our
oilfields are declining because of the natural maturation
process. The challenges can be summarized as follows: -

1. The massive amount of operations required for
maintaining oil production or even increasing it, as
required. This will be a reflection of the number of
wells to be drilled, workovers, stimulation, logging,
coil tubing, cementing, pipelines, surface facilities,
construction, inspection and maintenance operations
etc. to be carried out.

2. The environmental effect and the cost impact of the
increasing rates of produced water and associated gas.
This situation will be further aggravated by the
increasing amounts of chemicals and additives being
used for drilling, cementing, acidizing, separation and
treatment processes.

3. The characterization of the carbonate rock to identify
bypassed oil and initiate enhanced recovery schemes
such as water, gas, CO
2
and steam floods; and
horizontal drilling etc. will pose a major technological
challenge.

4. Developing and producing oil from tight oil
reservoirs.

FIRST CHALLENGE

A detailed discussion on these challenges is required to
understand the full implications. First of all let us look at the
massive amount of oil operations. When the Middle East area
is compared with the mature region of the United States and
project the same, the future operational requirements in
Middle East, its type and volume can be clearly visualized.
Thereby, it is possible to come up with a curve that will take
the Middle East operations from its present level to the future
when it reaches the maturation level of the US operations.
Such a direct comparison may not exactly be valid, due to
various technological reasons, but will certainly show us the
trend on the increasing oil operations.

For instance, presently the mature fields of United States
produce about 6 million barrels of oil per day, from a reserve
base of 22 billion barrels with about 580,000 wells. So, for the
mature region of USA there is a well for every 37,000 bbls of
reserve, with an average production of about 11 bbls per day.
While, in the Middle East area around 10,000 wells produce
about 20 million bbls of oil per day from a reserve base of 600
billion bbls. Hence, the average well productivity of the
Middle East area is about 2000 bbls per day and the reserves
per well are about 60 million bbls. Accordingly, when we
reach the maturity level of USA, it can be projected that we
will need about 2 million wells to maintain our daily
production (Figure: 2). So, the operational growth curve starts



Figure: 2 - Growth of Number of wells

from the present population of 10,000 and will end with 2
million. Although, technology will limit that growth of the
number of wells, the number will definitely be far bigger than
what is there today. The increase of the number of wells will,
as a consequence, result in an increase in the related activities
such as drilling and workover rigs, well logging, stimulation
units, pipeline construction, field facilities etc. For example,
the rig count in our area is about 150 against 1500 in North
America and we have about 300 logging units in the Middle
East against 1100 in USA. All these operations will be
required in the very small area of Arabian Gulf basin
(Figure:3).


Figure: 3 Projected Oil Field Activities in Middle East
Present
F
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12,000
200,000
2,000,000
Bahrain Field
maturation level
USA
maturation level
Present
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maturation level
USA
maturation level
Rig Count
Logging Units
MIDDLE EAST
CURRENT
200 1200 5000
5000 1100 300
U S A
CURRENT
FUTURE
MIDDLE EAST
Other areas :
Pipeline construction, water facilities, gas facilities, LPG plants,
compressor stations, fabrications, X-mas trees etc !
Rig Count
Logging Units
MIDDLE EAST
CURRENT
200 1200 5000
5000 1100 300
U S A
CURRENT
FUTURE
MIDDLE EAST
Other areas :
Pipeline construction, water facilities, gas facilities, LPG plants,
compressor stations, fabrications, X-mas trees etc !
SPE 93708 3
The main challenge that is going to be faced with the increase
in activities will be the lack of a diversified industrial support
base that will include oil service companies, rig contractors,
manufacturing and equipment maintenance sectors, pipeline
and surface facilities construction companies etc. The growth
rate of these support services has, in fact, not matched the rate
of maturation of the oilfields (Figure: 4). The limited number
of the operating oil companies does not give incentive for the
natural growth of the support groups.



Figure: 4 Gap between the Growth of Oil Operation due to
Maturation and the Growth of the Support Groups

In addition, we also notice the weakness of enrollment in the
Petroleum Engineering cadres that will result in a shortage of
skilled human resources. Further, research and development
activities are still in its primitive stage.

A decision of opening up the oil sector to the international oil
companies similar to what happened in Venezuela will
accelerate and provide an impetus to the industry and will
bring such a challenge near ensuring that the rate of growth of
support services matches the maturation of the oilfield.

SECOND CHALLENGE

The second challenge will be the environmental cost of oil
production during the maturation stage. With aquifer
encroachment, gas injection, water injection etc. the produced
water and associated gas will be on a continuous increase.
When the water cut reaches just 50%, we will have to dispose
off about 20 million barrels of oil contaminated-water every
day. Most of the Middle East aquifers have a salinity of above
50,000 ppm with many exceeding even 100,000 ppm. Such
saline fluids are highly corrosive for the tubulars and surface
facilities materials. The disposal of this water is in itself a big
challenge. Disposal of such water even after perfect
separation will result in salination of the Gulf waters and will
not be acceptable. Further disposal into shallow and medium
depth aquifers will result in inducing oxygen and bacteria,
which will sour the aquifers. This in turn, will result in the
corrosion of the well casings leading to casing leaks, which
has its own disastrous consequences, such as: an internal
blowout resulting in the high cost of casing repair and drilling
of relief wells to secure the blowout wells. Therefore, suitable
disposal schemes will have to be devised and put in place well
ahead of time. Some of the methods for such disposal will
include disposal back into the producing reservoirs, down hole
separation and re-injection of water into deeper zones etc.
With stricter legislation being put in place to save the
environment from oilfield disposals, devising of a suitable
way to control the water production and disposing it off is a
challenge, which has to be met during the field maturation
stage.

Further, the increasing infill drilling, workover and stimulation
operations will result in large amounts of spent drilling fluids,
acids and chemical additives that are likely to contaminate the
environment if not disposed off properly. The small area of
the shallow waters of the Gulf is mostly covered by coral reefs
and is rich in marine life and cannot absorb any contaminated
disposals. Therefore, regulation and early solution of the
likely future environmental issues is of great significance.

The increasing amounts of associated gas that will be
produced are more manageable. However, investment will
have to be made in terms of compressor stations, LPG plants
and outlets to consume the residue gas. Here again, we may
also be impacted by the necessity of handling sour gas, its
sweetening and disposal of toxic wastes.

Environmental issues are not just peripheral to the oil industry
and it should be our endeavor to ensure that our technical
initiatives result in clean oil, thereby protecting our planet.
Although, this will come only at a price, it should be
considered an investment rather than a cost. Only if we act
responsibly and work towards a pollution free oil industry, can
we ensure that oil and gas will remain the key energy source to
fuel the worlds economic progress.

THIRD CHALLENGE:

The third challenge for managing the Middle East oil fields
during the maturation stage is the inherent disadvantages of
the carbonate rocks, in the oil recovery process during the
maturation. In the Middle East there are about 93 giant oil
fields each of them holding oil reserves of one billion barrels
and above (Figure: 5). The total reserves of these fields are
600 billion barrels. Out of the 93 fields, 63 fields produce
mainly from carbonates, 8 from sandstones and the remaining
22 have both sandstone and carbonate reservoirs. The
distribution of the 600 billion barrels of reserves is 63% in the
carbonate, 16% in the sandstone and 21% the mixed sandstone
/ carbonate fields. Thus 80% of the Middle East oil lies in the
fields where characterization of the carbonate rock is an issue
of vital concern. One scientist has clearly described this rock
by stating that Carbonate sediments are born, not made.
Unlike clastic sediments that are mostly homogeneous, the
carbonate rocks are generally heterogeneous, layered, faulted
and fractured.

Maturation
Rate
Growth of the support groups
Time, years
Maturation
Rate
Growth of the support groups
Time, years
4 SPE 93708


Figure: 5 - Middle East Oil Fields Discovery & Reserves

The carbonate grains, which are usually of marine origin, are
chemically active and very susceptible to diagenetic changes.
Thus the basic control on the ultimate porosity and
permeability of limestone are dominantly diagenetic in nature.
The diagenesis of carbonate rock begins soon after deposition,
with the dissolution of the mostly unstable minerals and the
precipitation of stable calcite. Thus the pore shape of these
sediments are a reflection of the hydraulic regime of the
marine depositional environment, the shape of the organisms
from which the grains were derived and chemistry of these
grains and their dissolution fluids along with environmental
conditions. Such a complex relationship between various
parameters at that end makes a complex pore system. What
adds to these complications is the physical properties of the
deposited carbonate sediments that are mostly brittle and make
these sediments prone to faulting and fracturing under stress
caused either by tectonic movements or simply by the weight
of the overlying sediments.

Hence, we can summarize that these rocks are extremely
heterogeneous dominated by the various porosity and
permeability systems like intergranular, intragranular and
vugular porosities; flow communicating faults and fractures.
Minor amount of argillaceous material or evaporites can
produce regional permeability barriers. Compartmentalization
of the reservoir also can occur due to faulting and presence of
evaporites. The diagenetic processes like leaching,
dolomitization, recrystallisation and cementation will increase
or decrease both the porosity and permeability. These complex
variations make every unit volume or grid block in the
carbonate rock differ from another one. Hence, the
characterization of carbonate rock from the basic borehole and
3 D seismic data becomes a formidable task.

During the primary recovery when oil is the only movable
fluid, the carbonate heterogeneities work favorably for the
productivity of the oil well. The oil finds its way easily
through the vugular porosity, faults, fractures and super K
layers. However, during maturation the companion reservoir
fluids water and gas are more mobile than the oil and will find
their way to the wells through the same way, vugular porosity,
fractures (Figures: 6 & 7). Or when we inject gas or water to
displace the remaining oil the injected fluids will also use the
easiest paths that have been used initially by the primary oil
and thus leaving behind the secondary and tertiary oil. All
these factors will result in lower recovery even with improved
recovery processes or horizontal drilling.



Figure: 6 Maturation Symptoms : Water Encroachment



Figure: 7 Maturation Symptoms : Gas Fingering

Such complex rocks need characterization of almost virtual
reality so that an engineered recovery process can be planned.
Yet there is no simple or straightforward means to give such a
detailed description even with the use of 3 D seismic. Hence it
is very important to take cognizance of all related information
such as bore hole data from logs, cores, drill cuttings, 3 D
seismic data, production data, pressures, lost circulation zones
etc. Also we need at the beginning to put a conceptual
depositional model that can be refined along with the
production process by super imposing the structural events.

The characterization of carbonate reservoirs has not yet
received the full attention, as most of the oil field research and
development projects are done on fields or data obtained from
sandstone reservoirs. These include the research and
development work on the mathematical code for seismic
interpretation, reservoir simulation, geostochastic modeling or
calibration of diagenetic logging tools etc. This is due to the
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W WO O W WO OW OW
OG GO O GO G G O
SPE 93708 5
fact that the oil fields in the developed world (North America
and Europe), where most of the research and development take
place are sandstone reservoirs. In United States only 20% of
the reserves are in carbonates. Most of the oil owned by the
Major oil companies is in sandstone fields. On the other hand
90% of the worlds carbonate oil reserves are in the Middle
East and most of that oil is in fields that are still under primary
production stage. Also, the oil is owned by not more than five
national oil companies, where their research and development
potential is still in the primary stage. Great efforts need to be
taken in this area, to find effective solutions for the formidable
tasks involved in carbonate characterization of the giant and
super giant oil fields, well ahead of the maturation stage of
these fields.

FOURTH CHALLENGE:

The 4th challenge will be the development of tight and non-
prolific reservoirs, which have not been developed during the
early period of the field life. Such a development usually starts
during the maturation stage when prolific reserves get depleted
and search for oil in less prolific reservoirs starts - to replenish
the decline of oil from the prolific reservoirs. In most cases the
tight and non-prolific layers are located in the same field,
where the initial development took place through the porous
and permeable layers. The tight layers that are overlying or
underlying these prolific layers were kept as salvage objects
for later stages. However when the time comes to salvage the
wells in the tight layers, it is found that these layers cannot
make up the required volume of oil. The productivity of these
tight layers are too low compared to the initially completed
prolific reservoirs. In addition the financial position becomes
tight and funds become scarce, the inherited over heads are
high and rate of return on the investment in these tight layers
is low because of high production costs.

Typical porosity of such tight layers range between 15 and 25
% and the permeability can be as low as 1 md. The oil in these
reservoirs is huge compared to their primary reserves. For
instance four such fields in the Middle East area has 60 billion
barrels of oil in place, while the primary reserves of these
reservoirs is not more than 6 billion barrels.

The option of improving recovery when kept for the last stage
is also difficult. Water flood needs special water treatment
facilities. Water has to be filtered to an extent that the
suspended solids are of sub-micron sizes. Horizontal well will
find very little flow of oil. Only the oil in the vicinity of the
trajectory of the well flows in initially. The areas, which are
away from the trajectory, do not have enough driving force to
reach the well bore. Gas flood under dynamic conditions has a
tendency to bypass lot of oil and not enough addition in oil is
expected.

With this huge amount of oil in tight reservoirs we are faced
with a great challenge. One of the possible solutions to
improve recovery in these tight reservoirs is gas diffusion. The
availability of high pressure gas in Middle East gives the
opportunity of enhancing the recovery of these tight
reservoirs. Gas diffusion is a slow process and produces best
results if done on static rather than dynamic conditions. Some
parts of a tight reservoir in Bahrain field have undergone the
diffusion process accidentally. The injected gas in the prolific
layer has channeled through juxtaposed faults and diffused
into the oil in the tight layer. The diffusion process took place
over a period of time, at a low gas rate and practically at static
conditions. Such a condition gave sufficient opportunity for
the gas to contact a large volume of oil. The oil wells in the
diffusion influenced areas showed a flash production 50 times
higher than the average well productivity of that tight layer
and the stabilized production was about 10 times that of an
average well. Also emerging technologies like Maximum
Reservoir Contact (MRC) wells may help in improving oil
production (Figure: 8)


Figure: 8 Maximum Reservoir Contact Wells

Conclusions:

Emphasizing once again on the steps that have to be taken to
meet the challenges that will be faced by the Middle East oil
companies during the maturation period of their fields, the
following conclusions can be made:

Sufficient steps needs to be initiated early in the field
life to cater to the massive amounts of oil operations
required during the maturation of the oilfield in terms of
services and manpower.
Care needs to be taken to develop suitable ways and
means for the treatment, use and disposal of the effluents
that will be generated during the life of the field.
Reservoir characterization of very near accuracies will
have to be developed to enable the introduction of the
correct secondary and tertiary recovery techniques in the
maturation period.
Suitable plans for the development of the tight and
marginal oil reservoirs should be initiated even at the
early stages of the field life to make their exploitation
economically.

Ahmadi Shale