CHALLENGES IN OFFSHORE OIL FIELDS
Large well spacing
The distance between offshore wells tends to be greater than between onshore wells. This increases the likelihood of undetectable relationship between wells, impairing simulations of well behaviour.
Limited space on the topsides
Limited space on the topsides and number of wells that can be drilled from existing topsides further restrict strategy for secondary recovery and EOR.
The physical and economic limitations of topside facilities reduce the ability to develop subsea fields. The cost of topside floating offshore processing facilities is related to the load weight that they are expecting to carry, which increases with the requirement to process unwanted fluids (e.g. water) and to carry out chemical injection.
The presence of water in solution with oil and gas is a major problem not only because it reduces the actual hydrocarbon throughput at the host processing facility, but also, because the presence of water requires the host facility to be designed with the capacity and facilities to store, treat and clean the water to prepare it for safe disposal.
The host facility also requires the plant and equipment to inject chemicals into solution with significant chemical storage capacity and to facilitate transportation from the seabed. This adds significant weight to the topside facility as well as reducing processing capacity.
The above challanges extend the time between EOR initiation and meaningful results and flattens the recovery response.