RESERVOIR SIMULATION IN THE MEREENIE FIELD

Abstract

The Mereenie Field in the Amadeus Basin was discovered in 1964 and contains an estimated 240 million barrels of oil and 480 billion (USA) cubic feet of gas in three formations. The field commenced production at 1500 barrels of oil per day from seven wells in September 1984. The structure is large and elongated and the oil in the permeable sands appears as a rim round the structure. This paper describes a reservoir simulation study initiated to evaluate the recovery of oil from wells sited on the north and south flanks of the anticline where the steep dips cause the oil rim to become very narrow.

Ten studies were made on a 21 × 15 cell pattern model using a three phase semi-implicit black oil reservoir simulator. The ten runs compared oil recovery and gas/oil ratio as a function of formation dip, bottom hole flowing pressure, gas injection and water injection. These showed that the flank wells could be expected to recover 300 000 stock tank barrels of oil from primary and secondary operations which represents about 25 per cent of the oil in place for wells sited on half mile spacings. However the wells will experience high gas/oil ratios and a steep decline in oil rate.