Challenges of Full Field Polymer-Flood Development from Front End Management of Large Dark Brown Field Towards Delivering Competitive Commercial Scale Project Paper Number: SPE-222812-MS

Abstract Polymer flood is a mature technology where it has been applied in several fields in the past decade in Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) whether in full field scale or pilot/trial scale and at different development concepts (vertical and horizontal polymer injection concepts). However, managing such opportunities to develop them at commercial scale competitively is still deemed to be a challenge especially in a dark brown field from Urban Plan, interface/stakeholders/risk management, contracting strategy and execution prospectives. For the field of subject in this paper, full field polymer development plan and concept selection was endorsed with the concept of developing the polymer project utilizing the existing wells stock drilled during the infill waterflooding phase. Polymer flood is scheduled to be on-stream in 2026 injecting polymer in 2 phases with over 100 polymer injectors in total. The field is a mature dark brown field in South of Oman with waterflood history of over 16 years. Due to the congested nature of the field, it was difficult to define a cost-effective polymer development concept for the entire field. More challenges were faced managing several complexities i.e technology maturation, resources constraint & continuity, contracting strategy endorsement and managing different stakeholders integrating all interface aspects. However, with continuous persistence and innovation, the project has managed to mature total volume of ~ 6% increment with remarkable unit cost reduction (> 50%). Furthermore, additional opportunities were identified to reduce the Unit Technical Cost (UTC) further by 4–5 units cost toward execute phase mainly more efficient polymer facility and chemical costs through competitive contracting strategy and introduction of Category management (CM) approach with further scope optimizations. In terms of Green House Gases (GHG) reduction, the project has demonstrated CO2 reduction in the field to more than 50% compared to Field Infill Waterflood development. This is due to the polymer nature of reducing the water cut in the field and thus reducing the energy required for produced water handling at the surface. This paper will demonstrate the key Front End Development Management challenges, project risks/opportunities, stakeholders and interface management along with key steps made to efficiently manage validate/de-risk the proposed concepts before the full field implementation driven by Decision Quality (DQ) exercise. Moreover, it will demonstrate the capital efficiency journey to improve project competitiveness through an integrated subsurface and surface efforts along with optimized contracting strategy.