Technological Innovation Needed To Extract Value From Mature Oil Fields

With the oil industry facing an uncertain future in the wake of low oil prices, the maintenance of mature fields has become an extremely tough challenge. Despite the volatile economic environment, it is still possible for operators to wring additional value from these fields while keeping costs at a reasonable level, a trio of experts said. In a forum that took place at IHS CERAWeek in Houston, Tim Dodson, Michel Hourcard, and Leta Smith discussed the need for the industry to preserve mature fields by emphasizing technological innovation and creative management strategies. Dodson is the executive vice president at Statoil; Hourcard is a senior vice president of development, exploration, and production at Total; and Smith is a director at IHS. Dodson’s presentation focused primarily on Statoil’s efforts in the North Sea, particularly the Norwegian continental shelf. He said the mature areas in the Norwegian shelf remain attractive to the company because it is familiar with the geology, and it has the infrastructure in place to take advantage of the resources in the area. “As an operator of large production hubs in Norway, Statoil puts a lot of effort into proving up additional, timely resources in the surrounding areas in order to prolong the lifetime of the existing structure,” Dodson said. An example of this strategy is the Aasta Hansteen field, which was discovered by BP in 1997. Statoil is building a spar platform from which it will run the Polarled pipeline approximately 300 miles to a gas plant on the Nyhamna peninsula off the central Norwegian coast. Polarled is expected to deliver up to 70 million scf/D of gas to the Nyhamna plant. Furthermore, the company plans to build a separate pipeline between Polarled and the Kristin platform.