PESA Qld Branch was delighted to welcome Dr Nick Lee to present at their April technical meeting. Dr Lee is a petroleum geoscientist with a wealth of experience gained from working internationally and the exploration-production life cycle. He is currently the Subsurface manager at QGC, the Shell-operated venture, responsible for a multi-disciplinary team of geoscientists, engineers, petrophysicists and production technologists based in Brisbane.
The talk focussed on the mega-CSG projects of Eastern Australia and establishing fit for purpose data collection and workflows and expanded from the panel discussion Dr Lee participated in at last year’s SPE Unconventional Resources workshop.
After a look at global controls and drivers for the mega-projects, Dr Lee reviewed some of the tools and workflows that QGC have used in developing their project. Whilst he maintained there was value in the basin-scale, reservoir models employed to understand the play, he highlighted also the value they have gained from a return to simpler analytical tools that, for example, enable them to history match large numbers of wells in a relatively small time. As the projects have matured, the empirical production data gathered allows for a more credible and informed insight into future performance and is a great example of where the oil and gas industry could be making more of the “big data” analysis employed in other sectors.
There were some great questions from the 50-strong crowd in attendance, challenging the need to calibrate the history matched models with core acquisition within producing areas and why the basin scale reservoir models were so readily employed, despite the inherent uncertainties. The more relaxed format of the evening event allowed for follow up conversation with the speaker as guests stayed to network over drinks and canapes.
This was the second evening technical talk PESA Qld has organised, following the positive feedback after the first event last year, and is the first of three planned for 2018. We’re trialling new venues for these events and welcome all feedback on Bar 127!
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