Maximizing Profitability in Reservoirs Using New Technologies For Continuous Downhole Pressure Systems

Continuous down hole data in conjunction with new reservoir analysis tools made to work with this data have the potential to revolutionize the accuracy of reservoir management. The economic value of continuous down hole pressure data and the array of available options justify the use of these systems in almost all petroleum reservoir developments. The greatest value of these gauges is that with new data analysis tools reservoirs can be accurately managed early in the producing life, thus optimizing both short and long term reservoir management strategies. Traditionally, the value of these systems has been for completion optimization using a small subset of downhole data. The full value of the complete data stream has been ignored due to the large volumes of data, and the lack of software systems for efficiently working with these data. Consequently the reservoir has not been fully understood. A system of software tools has been developed to capture the full value of the data from permanent down hole gauges. This new software system automates the filtering of these data in an intelligent fashion. The resulting filtered pressure data can then input into a variety of reservoir analysis tools, for example reservoir simulation programs can now have a continuous reservoir simulation. Reservoir and production engineers can always have the optimal production strategy for the reservoir based on the current data. quickly and continually maintained with minimal effort. Typically it takes less than a week to build the initial model, and only a few hours a month to update and maintain an accurate history match. The paper will include a brief review of the down hole technologies and the software system which makes the data accessible to reservoir simulation and other reservoir analysis tools. Applications for the filtered data in both Gulf of Mexico and North Sea reservoirs will be introduced.