The oil industry views production optimisation mostly in the narrow sense; optimising the immediate production of an asset. As such most production optimisation projects are really production acceleration projects, the existing recoverable reserves are produced faster, either through removal of processing bottlenecks or by employing existing infrastructure more efficiently. The most common forms of production optimisation in this sense are;
And a variety of software packages is available to analyse the production improvement caused by this optimisation. Most of this software is limited to the instantaneous effect achieved by the optimisation, i.e. it shows the increased production tomorrow, not the reduction in five years. This is illustrated in the figure below. While production optimisation as defined above is a worthwhile exercise by itself, virtually all optimisation exercises which require capital expenditure should also be analysed for their life of field benefit in economic terms and how it changes the exposure to commercial risk. A mature field may be able to increase its production by installing an additional gas lift compressor, but may actually increase its life of field value by abandoning one of its existing compressors. Through a thorough understanding of the interactions between hydraulic limits, capacity constraints, life of field costs and equipment reliabilities the Ingen engineers bring a unique perspective to true production optimisation. Whether your goal is to maximise your recoverable reserves or net present value, or minimise your operating cost or contract exposure our engineers will help you achieve this aim
|