Step Change in Delivering High Fracture Wells by Eliminating Expandable Liner

This paper discusses the journey of finding alternate solution for having to run the Expandable Liners operations in the Fahud field which is already one of the most operationally challenging fields to drill in Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), due to the presence of a gas cap in highly fractured and depleted limestone formations with total losses and the need for dynamic annulus fill to maintain primary well control. In Fahud field, there is a highly reactive shale formation within reservoir limestone formation. Due to high likelihood of total losses, this shale formation caused bore hole instability challenges while drilling. And with more depletion took place, the challenges became more frequently to occurred. In 2001, expandable tubular liner was introduced to address these bore hole instability challenges while drilling highly reactive shale formation under total losses in the 8-1/2″ section. The use of expandable technology was sustained over the years in delivering all wells drilled to traverse this reactive shale column. Previously before 2001, wells used to have fat well design by installations of extra casing to cover the formations and problematic zones. Also, Fahud field was not depleted as it is now, and the problematic shale zone used to drill by normal conventional way without any issue using inhibition frilling fluid. Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) identified expandable liner as a preferred alternative to ‘Fat’ well design. The ‘Fat’ well design would have a large hole size through potential loss zones, resulting in unmanageable volumes of water being required. Expandable liber was fast-tracked - various technical options were considered by PDO with expandable liner technology being identified as the best solution to address the problem of the shale column. However, the deployment of expandable tubular liner technology supported to drill & deliver wells but also has its associated challenges incurring additional time and cost with reasonable installation and low operations success rate due to number of operational steps required prior and after the expandable liner. Adding to that, all the challenges associated with each step. The installation of the expandable liner required eight operational steps with multiple trips to under-ream, install and expand, cement, caliper log and drill through the liner which increased the probability of something going wrong due to mainly the challenging well profile and multiple operations steps. The expandable liners technology was required when the target formation was below the reactive shale interval. The team carried out a study of previous deployments with the intention of identifying well planning and operational contributors to the installation difficulties and operations failures, with a view of eliminating the need for installing the expandable liner and drilling the well to the desired landing point at designed section total depth. Most of the unsuccessful installation rates were observed to be prevalent in wells with high angle applications. The team also observed that the length of the hole interval below the reactive shale column contributed to the number of unsuccessful installation and operational failure rates recorded. The team evaluated the impact of reducing well inclination on the ability to deliver the hole section without installing the expandable liner. Subsequently the team developed an optimization plan which involved keeping all build activities above and below the problematic interval and holding tangent at less than 45° inclination while drilling across the problematic shale. In conclusion, in 2020 the team delivered six wells (90% of wells crossing reactive shale formation delivered) using the above described approach and traversed the historically highly reactive shale formation without installing expandable liners. This resulted in a 20% reduction in total well construction time and 17% reduction in total well delivery cost per well. In addition to the time and cost saving, with the new approach, described in this paper, less water needed to be pumped for dynamic fill. This allowed bringing the wells quicker to production, thus reducing oil deferment.

Standardized Development Planning for Satellite Fields in the South of the Sultanate of Oman

This article will show how a standardized rule-based approach was used by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) to shorten the cycle time required to mature the opportunity of implementing waterflood developments in small-to-medium sized satellite oil fields in the South of the Sultanate of Oman. The standardized concept relies on a common development strategy for a portfolio of satellite fields with similar reservoir and fluid characteristics that are still under depletion or in the early stage of waterflood. The targets are early monetization, driving cost efficiency through standardization & replication, and increasing recovery factor through the accelerated implementation of field-wide waterflood. This is achieved by leveraging excess capacity in existing facilities, applying analytical workflows for forecasting, standardizing well design and urban planning, and by applying the learnings and best practices from nearby fields that already have mature developments.

Intelligent Operating Envelope Integrated with Automated Well Models Improves Asset Wide PCP Surveillance and Optimization

Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) has been a pioneer in improving Well management processes utilizing its valuable human resources, continuous improvement and digitalization. Managing several PCP wells through Exception Based Surveillance (EBS) methodology had already improved PCP surveillance and optimization across assets. The key to trigger EBS was to keep Operating Envelope (OE), Design Limits updated in Well Management Visualization System (WMVS) after every change in operating speed (RPM), workover and new completion. The sustainable solution was required for automatic update of OEs, having well inflow potential and oil gain opportunities available for quicker optimization decisions for further improvements. PDO has completed a project automating PCP well modeling process where models are built and sustained automatically in Well Management System (WMS) for all active PCP wells, with huge impact on day-to-day operational activities. The paper discusses utilization of physics based well models from WMS to automatically update OE, identify oil gain potential daily and enable real time PCP performance visualization in WMVS. The integration of WMS and WMVS was completed to share data between two systems and automatically update well's OE daily. A tuned well model from WMS was utilized to provide well performance data and sensitivity analysis results for various RPMs. Among the various data obtained from WMS, live OE of torque and fluid above pump (FAP) for various speeds, operating limits, design limits, locked in potential (LIP) for optimization and pump upsize were utilized to process PCP well EBS and create live OE visualization. The visualization is created on a torque-speed chart where a live OE and FAP can be observed in provided picture with current RPM and torque with optimum operating condition. The project is completed after conducting successful change management across PDO assets and after thorough analysis of implementation following benefits were observed: 5% net gain of total PCP production is being executed with zero CAPEX using LIP reports. 50% of engineer's time was saved by updating OEs in WMVS automatically, reduction of false EBS and EBS rationalization. 200% improvement in PCP well performance diagnostics capabilities of Engineers. 15% CAPEX free optimization and pump upsize cases were identified based on well inflow potential. 100% visibility to PCP well's performance was achieved using well model. The visualization has supported engineers monitoring well performance in real time and easily identifying ongoing changes in well and pump performance. PCP well models have supported engineers in new PCP well design and pump upsize. The current efforts in utilizing real time well models, inferred production, automating processes to update OE is one more step toward Digitalization of PCP Surveillance and optimization and to achieve self well optimization for further improving operational efficiency.

The Journey of Uplifting: First Ever Petroleum Development Oman Corporate Digital Competency Development Program

With capability training becoming ever important, our Pilot in-house developed and run program during COVID-19 delivered a comprehensive digital learning ecosystem which enabled participants to develop their digital skills and competencies. The digital learning journey empowered Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) staff to become ambassadors working in collaboration to enable their department digital plans. Building on international best practices, uplifting our engineers to become data scientists will drive direct business value in an efficient decentralized manner and cater for the ever-growing demand for digital transformation. As PDO embarks into the digital world, the program offered participants customized learning paths enabling them to utilize technology to optimize their daily operations, increase efficiency and effectiveness. Also the program enabled staff to get hands-on exposure to digital projects and what other companies in the sector add a practicing in the space of digital transformation. Hence, participants have built the required digital muscle and competencies to drive PDO digital agenda and bring value to the business. With the vision of promoting and pioneering our talent and organization as future ready, the program played a vital role in reshaping PDO's image in coping with the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VOCA) working environment. The program started as a pilot project covering a specific number of PDO staff to build their digital competencies and experiment with various learning paths and tools. Also, the program focused on on-boarding their managers into the program to fully understand the added value of launching a 19 week program with diverse approaches to build their staff's skills. Moreover, one of the key goals of the pilot project is to test various mentorship and coaching approaches to ensure higher completion rates from all participants and cater for their technical challenges. As PDO working towards corporate digital strategy, the program is paving the way to build a robust training and competency framework, a task force capable of driving change and forward looking plans. With the successful results of the pilot, replication of the methodology and maturing the program is now being taken by PDO Information technology department to corporately build digital muscle within PDO value chain. As a result of participants' first pilot project and implementation posts evaluation assessment, the management endorsed the launch of cohort 2 for the program tackling a bigger number of staff and expanding the range of competencies to tackle in the areas of data science, machine learning and personal intelligence. One of the key learnings which was implemented in cohort 2, is building a comprehensive stakeholder map and alignment plans to ensure the right path of corporate scale beyond and benefit a bigger audience within the corporate. For example, multiple workshops and engagement sessions have been done with PDO Learning Academy and technical coaches in different departments to match the outcomes from cohort 2 and the aspiration of PDO building digital competency framework. In addition, PDO digital competency development program has aspired to build an ecosystem within the organization and in collaboration with external stakeholders like universities, e-learning platforms and technical partners to ensure sustainability of such initiatives and their scalability beyond PDO. The program sparked many conversations within the ecosystem to build collaborative teams and joint task force to investigate how we can build digital competencies for our staff and as well for startups to encourage growth from various aspects.

Developing Capability for a Continuous Improvement Culture in Petroleum Development Oman PDO

Objectives/Scope To highlight at a high level the successful method of building Continuous Improvement (CI) competence Pan Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) and the different pathways used to engage everyone at every level of the organization circa. 10,000 people as part of PDO transformation to a Continuous Improvement organization Methods, Procedures, Process PDO is developing a CI culture through 2 pathways, CI Professional & CI Generalist. CI Professionals, limited to 50 high potentials, spend 3 years full time developing CI competence to a level they can coach autonomously in the business. CI Generalists build CI skills though training and deliberate practice becoming Lean Practitioners, Lean Managers and Practical Problem Solving (PPS) practitioners & facilitators. Results, Observations, Conclusions A CI function has been created to own the development of staff, standards, and deployment. Having quarterly competence development reviews for CI Professionals, to discuss and monitor progress and establish goals for the next quarter have resulted in a step change in speed and quality of development. We have had 100+ CI Coaches through the development program as of July 2021, either returning to the business to germinate CI in their new teams or developing further to become a career CI specialist. Developing the CI competences for CI Generalist has seen an explosion in ideas circa 10,000 with 500 teams practicing CI Fundamentals, 200+ qualified PPS facilitators & 250+ Lean managers coaching in the business. Benefits to date include circa 150K M3 production gain and many millions saved from the budget. Observation is we are developing autonomous teams able to solve problems for themselves resulting in an engaged workforce:- Improving today for a better tomorrow. Sponsorship from the top is the imperative ingredient for success. Engagement of the workforce from the bottom up, staff doing the work, creates the momentum required to make a CI transformation successful. Novel, Additive Information Holistically the approach used can be transferred to any other business and although tailored for PDO is business/sector is agnostic. The coaches who have graduated through our internal certification can and are applying Continuous Improvement in our business and externally in other organizations. Looking to the future we can partner with universities to have Continuous Improvement as part of the curriculum either as modules or a whole syllabus.

Petroleum Development Oman Forecasting Management System

Production performance forecasting is considered as one of the most challenging and time consuming tasks in petroleum engineering disciplines, it has important implications on decision-making, planning production and processing of facilities. In Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), which is the major petroleum company in Oman, production forecast provides a technical input basis for the economic decisions throughout the exploration and production lifecycle. Reservoir engineers spend more than 250 days per year to complete this process. PDO Forecast Management System (FMS) was introduced to transform the conventional forecasting of gas production. Employing the latest state-of-the-art technologies in the field of data management and machine learning (ML), PDO FMS aims at optimizing and automating the process of capturing, reporting, and predicting hydrocarbon production. This new system covers the full forecast processes including long and short-term forecasting for gas, condensate, and water production. As a pilot project, PDO FMS was deployed on a cluster of 272 wells and relied on agile project management approach to realize the benefits during the development phase. Deployment of the new system resulted in a significant reduction of the forecasting time, optimization of manpower and forecasting accuracy.

Standardization Lead to Potential Cost Saving in the One of the Clusters in Southern of Sultanate of Oman

This paper is for people to realize a strategic way of continuous improvement though optimization and standardization process with a minimum of 10% target cost reduction while developing capability in the organization in the south of Oman. BN area is one of the main production areas in PDO (Petroleum Development of Oman) and is being operated under BR cluster from 1980s. Approximately eleven fields in the BN area are contributing to the success today. Continuous improvement through optimization and cost reduction has always been a top priority, where long term production and safety has been fulfilled. In 2020, this team has been put together to look into the overall cost saving potential with the clear management steering of "Do not Leave any Stone Unturned". A mixture of experience and young team members are retained to ensure capability development in the organization. One of the key items that this team looked at is to standardize of upcoming Oil Producers and Water Injectors well design. The well design in at least 7 fields in the BN area has been reviewed and realized the value and risk through competitive scoping exercise. By avoiding looking at the fields in isolation, the team has considered a similarity of well functionality and had identified where the standard well design can be applied. Minimum functional requirements lead to minimum technical specification and building into a staircase of option with clear associated risk for each option. Through the analysis, a potential optimization of an existing well design has been discovered and is currently undergone further maturation toward design endorsement. With the maturation of the uniformity of well design in the area, it is foreseeing as an opportunity to ensure improvement can be sustained in the long run. Minimum 10% saving of well cost through standardization and efficiency in project management is a target set, aiming to provide stability in planning. In addition, the team are looking into even more than 10% cost saving through innovative contracting strategy. It could potentially help to speed up the delivery of the project, accelerate production with less waiting time i.e. improve material stock management, simplify procurement process, ensure that the experience remains in the organization and will allow for replication in the future. The approach involves a combination of integrating team from subsurface, surface, wells, contract, and procurement to enhance cost saving to the company. This has proven to be effective and aligned with the company's focus to consolidate a commercial mind-set thinking in each development.

Impact of Static and Dynamic Wellbore Strengthening on Well Planning in Petroleum Development Oman

Formation Integrity Tests (FIT) or Leak-Off Tests (LOT) are common techniques to reduce the uncertainty in Fracture Gradient (FG) prediction for well planning, but are usually performed at the casing shoe. This article will discuss the first examples of open-hole LOT and FIT in Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), targeting depleted formations in water injector or oil producer wells. The data was used to justify continued drilling of slim wells with two casing strings, where otherwise three casing strings would be required, provided dynamic wellbore strengthening is applied. In addition, the concept of static wellbore strengthening was also trialed for the first time in Oman, using the hesitation squeeze testing procedure, by which the effective leak-off pressure was incrementally increased to match the maximum ECD required for cementing.

Digital Ways of Working: PDO Knowledge Management Program

Petroleum Development of Oman (PDO) has grown rapidly over the past few years and is seen as an innovative organization and a leading company within the Middle East when it comes to applying best practice, adding value to the economical and societal development of the Sultanate of Oman through many Knowledge Management (KM) activities. As the Sultanate's leading Oil and gas exploration and production company it is the central engine of the Sultanate's economy. Key to the success of our Digital KM Program has been focus on the importance of developing the human intellectual capital elements to nurture, develop and sustain our people as key assets. PDO is aware of the potential value of the Enterprise Information and the robust data as showcased In the Figure-1 which can be transformed into knowledge that can be turned and can be used to gain the business benefits such as a competitive advantage, cost minimization, innovation.

Collaborations Involving Malaysia Upstream Regulator to Enhance Decommissioning

This paper aims to share the collaboration efforts of Malaysia's governing body for Upstream oil & gas industry with various stakeholders to enhance decommissioning in Malaysia. By virtue of Section of the Petroleum Development Act 1974, Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) ("PETRONAS") is vested with the entire ownership in, and the exclusive rights, powers, liberties and privileges of exploring, exploiting, winning and obtaining petroleum lying onshore or offshore of Malaysia. MPM manages the decommissioning liabilities for all Upstream petroleum facilities in Malaysia, specifically to strategize, regulate, promote, and drive decommissioning execution that is safe, cost-effective and brings the best benefit to the environment. Due to the shift in the industry with uncertainties in the long-term crude oil prices, depleting reserves, and operating cost challenges, it has made this non-revenue generating activity unavoidable. Thus, it is crucial to drive down decommissioning costs while protecting the environment. To achieve this objective, one of the focused initiatives pursued by MPM is through collaborations with relevant stakeholders such as industry players, upstream operators, government bodies, and academia. Such collaborations were found to be the fastest way to develop innovative solutions whereby the collaborators work together to achieve a common goal. Collaborations were done through, among others, constant and systematic engagements, workshops, brainstorming sessions, etc. A notable example would be in 2017, MPM successfully entered into a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOUs") with the Department of Fisheries ("DOF"), Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery Industry on rigs-to-reef. In 2020, MPM had successfully conducted a series of virtual workshops to capture decommissioning enhancement areas and lessons learnt with Operators and decommissioning contractors based on real-life experiences and past projects in Malaysia. A total of 115 enhancements areas were captured for consideration. Beyond these two items, MPM had successfully collaborated with many other stakeholders related to decommissioning and will continue to explore more collaborations in the future to support decommissioning in Malaysia. Details of these collaborations will be shared as part of this presentation. There were great experiences and important lessons that PETRONAS had learnt from these collaborations. PETRONAS believes that the culture of sharing experiences and lessons learnt will be the epitome for Operators and Contractors to work safely, stimulate creativity and strive towards decommissioning cost compression for every decommissioning project.