New Methodology to Calculate Water Cut in Mature Waterflood - Alba Field

In a mature waterflood, understanding individual well performance is critical to optimize production and operate efficiently. Specifically, accuracy on watercut measurement is one of the most important reservoir management challenges and becomes even more important with time and increasing watercut. Traditionally offshore operators monitor individual wells to estimate watercut with flowline fluid samples, with two-phase separator well test data and with more complex methods such as watercut and multiphase meters when available. At Alba a new methodology based on a better understanding of gas production was derived to calculate more accurately watercut from gas and liquid measurements; it was then successfully applied to calculate watercut during individual well tests. This new approach is more accurate and reliable than traditional methods to estimate watercut. Used on some wells with high uncertainty on watercut, it revealed for the first time the performance of these wells. Deployment of this method to all Alba wells was simple because it did not require any investment and all the data was already available. This new information has already added significant value to Alba by supporting key reservoir management decisions such as slot recovery, workover opportunities, redrill and for optimizing production by shutting-in high watercut wells.