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Concurrent 26. Oral Presentation for: Maximising gas production from late-life assets: a case study from the Snapper Field, Gippsland Basin

Mohammad Bagheri A *
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A ExxonMobil Australia, Level 9, 664 Collins Street, Docklands, Vic. 3008, Australia.

* Correspondence to: mohammad.bagheri@exxonmobil.com

The APPEA Journal 63 - https://doi.org/10.1071/AJ22393
Published: 2 June 2023

Abstract

Presented on Thursday 18 May: Session 26

Discovered in 1968 and developed in 1981, the Snapper Field has supplied oil and gas to Australia’s eastern seaboard for over 40 years. The field consists of a broad northeast–southwest trending faulted anticline within the Eocene and Paleocene sands of the Latrobe Group. Reserves in 2023 are within the shallowest reservoir interval – the N-1 – which had an original gas in place of approximately 3.8 Tcf. Pressure and wireline log data acquired during exploration and development suggested that the Snapper Field was horizontally and vertically well connected, and it was expected that individual intervals within the N-1 reservoir would water-out sequentially from the bottom to the top of the reservoir during production. As a result, the risk of water over-running gas, and bypassed gas was considered to be low. Production and logging results in 2017 proved otherwise, prompting a period of renewed study from 2019 to 2022. This paper focusses on the culmination of this work effort: construction of a new static geological model and dynamic simulation model, which was built upon and expanded previous models completed prior to 2019. The insights from this study have demonstrated the importance of ongoing and regular reservoir surveillance and the significant value that the construction of new static and dynamic models can add to late-life oil and gas fields. Dynamic modelling results from this study show an extension of field life by 2–4 years according to the low-side and most-likely simulation models, and an increase in reserves by up to ~20% through the optimisation of future work-over programs. The Snapper Field is owned by ExxonMobil (50%) and Woodside Energy (50%) and is operated by ExxonMobil.

To access the Oral Presentation click the link on the right. To read the full paper click here

Keywords: gas production, Gippsland Basin, history match, late life assets, reserves recovery, reservoir management, reservoir model, Snapper Field.

Dr Mohammad Bagheri has been working as a Reservoir Engineering Advisor with ExxonMobil Australia since 2021. He is a Reservoir Engineer with 20 years of oil and gas as well as CCUS experience in Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. Mohammad holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering and has worked for Statoil, Schlumberger, British Gas, CarbonNet, Santos, and CO2CRC in both technical and management roles between 2003 and 2021. Mohammad is recognised as a Chartered Professional Engineer with Engineers Australia. He is a member of the Board of Professional Engineers of Queensland and certified by SPE as a Petroleum Professional. Mohammad has been the Program Chair for the Victorian and Tasmanian chapter of SPE since 2018.