Geology and Geohistory Contribute to Flow Assurance

Abstract Kashagan is a super giant offshore carbonate field which was discovered in 2000 by a consortium of oil companies (currently, affiliates of): ExxonMobil, ENI, Shell, TOTAL, Conoco-Phillips, INPEX and KazMunaiGaz. The field is located in an environmentally sensitive area of the North Caspian Sea. The field is a deep, large structural relief, over pressured, isolated, carbonate build-up with a high-permeability, karstified and fractured rim and relatively low-permeability platform interior. The field contains a sour, undersaturated light oil with a large gas content. High pressure miscible gas injection is planned for oil recovery enhancement, as well as sulfur management. No-one doubts the importance of flow assurance in offshore projects in particular. Moreover, it is now well known that gas injection operations require the evaluation of asphaltene deposition risk. The consortium has undertaken extensive evaluations to ascertain the likelihood of any flow assurance risks from subsurface to surface. During the asphaltene risk evaluation, many bottomhole samples have been collected and analyzed for asphaltene content, asphaltene onset pressure (AOP), and SARA (saturates, aromatics, resins and asphaltenes). These continuous analysis efforts have revealed some anomalous results such as AOP being detected from some fluid samples while not being detected from others. The apparently inconsistent AOP results are critical to understand how to guide flow assurance measures. Therefore, all available asphaltene data were re-assessed in all their aspects to attempt to clarify asphaltene risk. This paper presents a multidisciplinary approach where a synergy between reservoir engineering and geoscience (geology and geohistory) has been developed to explain AOP results for this complex fluid. The results should help flow assurance specialists to better define the asphaltene operating envelope, which will be used for reservoir and production operations optimization. In addition, these results should be useful for optimizing data-surveillance, flow assurance, and for defining new sample acquisition plans. These findings may also be helpful to minimize future sampling and fluids analysis while achieving reliable flow assurance. The paper will show examples of the related flow assurance analyses, and the geological information which were incorporated in the study, resulting in a detailed asphaltene matrix risk profile for this reservoir.