An innovative energy industry consortium set up to tackle the key challenge of enhancing oil recovery from reservoirs has started its mission by holding a kick off meeting to execute its plan of action.
The €3.9 million (approx. £3.2 million) project named OPTION – Optimizing Oil Production by Novel Technology Integration – which is being funded by the Danish InnovationsFonden, is a pioneering collaboration by Lloyd’s Register (LR) Energy, LR Senergy (a member of the Lloyd’s Register Group), the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and Welltec.
Sixteen members of the consortium convened in Denmark, where they agreed the strategy for the integration and optimisation of reservoir and horizontal well simulation models to meet OPTION’s ultimate aim of enhancing oil production and recovery.
Claus Myllerup, senior vice president energy technology at LR Energy , said: “The consortium represents a key step forward for OPTION by bringing together expertise from a diverse range of specialist fields and producing a strategy with clear lines of action. As part of this, LR Consulting and LR Senergy will provide improved reservoir modelling techniques which will be critical to the development of the next generation of industry software technologies.
“These techniques will enhance our ability to understand the critical interface between reservoir inflow and well performance, ultimately improving our decision-making and well design with a focus on enhancing both productivity and reserves.”
Mr Myllerup added that a key element of the rationale for establishing OPTION is the need to improve multiphase flow modelling from well to separation unit to enable optimisation of subsea production equipment.
The first phase in the OPTION initiative marks the beginning of leading global energy services firm Senergy becoming part of the LR Group – as LR Senergy – following LR’s significant investment in the company in September 2013.
LR Senergy, which specialises in providing fully integrated project and asset development services across the international energy industry, willcontinue to operate as an independent company until 2016, by which time LR will have acquired the balance of its shares. The collaboration will see LR Senergy provide a broader service portfolio to the upstream sector of the energy industry, from reservoir to refinery and beyond.
Alasdair Buchanan, chief operating officer at LR Senergy , said: “As a consortium venture, OPTION is an extremely fitting initiative to represent the first major step in our collaboration with LR.
“Establishing collaborative agreements and partnerships is central to Senergy’s success and fundamental to driving forward new industry developments. Together with LR and the other OPTION partners, we look forward to helping create a major step change in improving decision-making and enhancing recovery factors.”
Through OPTION, LR Senergy will deliver its industry-leading production optimisation expertise to bear in modelling the interface between reservoir and wellbore, where current commercial reservoir simulators are known to have significant shortcomings. LR Senergy’s proprietary Wellscope™ CFD (computational fluid dynamics) well and near-wellbore modelling process will also be pivotal to the project.
If OPTION is successful, even a 1% increase in oil recovery from Danish fields would represent an estimated value of DKK 60 billion (approx. €8 billion / £6.8 billion) to the Danish economy.
Press Release, July 10, 2014