Re: Mining question: prospect to mine ratio

In article <122h7bafnong280@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Jo Schaper wrote:

The question that is asked by a "development" well isn't
generally is/isn't a is/ isn't question (that's why you have seismic),
but a oil/condensate/pressure/column-height question where the detailed
numbers answer the develop/ non-develop/ seismic time/ tubing diameter/
downhole choke aize/ expected draw-down rate question


Aidan: is that a sentence? I guess it is, if you speak "oil geo"!

In more broken-out form ...
When you're considering a possible oil field, you start by asking
questions like "does the oil field exist?" That's an "is/ isn't" question.
Once you've decided there is something there, you start to ask more detailed
questions : is it oil, or condensate, or gas? ; what height of hydrocarbon
column do you have? ; what area of trap and volume above spill point do you
have? is the prospect likely to be economic? what oil price do you need to
support the economics of the prospect? This is about the point that you'd
put in an appraisal well to prove the prospect.
Once you've decided to develop a prospect, you may have to acquire
actual rock samples to get the petrophysics properties, rock strength
parameters, hydrocarbon viscosity parameters. With these, you can work out
how many wells you'll need to put in to get enough flow to draw-down the
field within the lifetime of your topside assets. For many reservoirs you
can't just open up the chokes and let the tubing flow as fast as possible
without producing sand with the hydrocarbons, which damages your topside
equipment and adds to your maintenance costs. These rock-strength
considerations can actually make a prospect uneconomic, if the flow rates
that can be supported are too low to pay off the mortgage on the topside
equipment, which can mean the entire develop/ not develop question has to be
re-assessed and possibly the field put aside until prices are higher (or
there's new infrastructure in the area to change the costs at surface. Or
new technologies come along like FPSOs which can be re-used on another field
later instead of being scrapped, amortising the construction cost across
several fields.

--
Aidan Karley, FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

.

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