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Teamwork and technology resurrect mature field

ChevronTexaco, Lafayette, Louisiana, USA

Jim Stevens

Landmark Division, Halliburton Energy Services, Houston, USA

Corresponding author: jstevens@lgc.com

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Exploration and production asset owners focus their most vital resources—capital, technical expertise, and management time—on core areas and activities in order to maximize the value of their investments. Therefore, it is not unusual for E&P companies to have a number of declining fields in their portfolios that may hold substantial upside potential but lack the resources necessary for further development. In many cases, teaming up with professional service providers and applying innovative technologies has proven effective in revitalizing mature properties.

This article describes how ChevronTexaco and Landmark's Consulting & Services group joined forces to resurrect a 30-year-old, noncore asset in the Gulf of Mexico. Using new and evolving seismic, well planning, drilling, and completion technologies, the collaborative asset team successfully increased daily production more than 800% over a five-year period, achieving levels comparable to peak rates of the 1970s. Today, this field is among ChevronTexaco's best producing properties in the Gulf.

	The business challenge

 
In 1966, ChevronTexaco discovered this field on the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico. During the 1970s, production reached nearly 200 million ft³/d. By the mid-1990s, 56 wells had been drilled in the field and it had produced approximately one trillion ft³ of natural gas. However, daily production had dropped to about 15 million ftft³/d, which was approaching the economic threshold for the field. Due to poor financial performance, the field was designated a noncore asset, and most of the company's E&P resources were redeployed to other, higher performing assets. Rather than divest the property, however, ChevronTexaco decided to investigate cost-effective ways of evaluating the field's remaining potential. There were, after all, multiple pay zones between 9000 and 16 000 ft worth taking a more in-depth look at, and a speculative 3D survey was shot over the area in 1988 to help do just that. Early . . . [Full Text of this Article]