GEOTECHNICAL PROCESSES AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR MATURE BASINS: A CASE STUDY OF THE GIPPSLAND BASIN

Abstract

During the 1990s, exploitation and exploration processes in the Gippsland Basin have been expanded to cater to a surge in mature field redevelopment activity, and have supported continued activity in the more traditional functions of exploration and development of new resources.

The first major field redevelopment project was initiated in 1991 on the West Kingfish Field. Since 1991, similar programs conducted on the Mackerel, Perch, Fortescue and Kingfish Fields have significantly mitigated oil production decline in the basin. The success of the field redevelopment programs has been attributed to the use of multi-disciplinary field teams, the use of high end geophysical interpretation technologies, and the ability of the field teams to integrate and synthesise often voluminous quantities of production and geotechnical information to identify drilling opportunities.

Areas where we continue to improve field redevelopment geotechnical processes include decreasing data acquisition and analysis cycle time, and advancing the precision of geotechnical predictions.

With over 30 years of intensive exploration activity in the Gippsland Basin placing it in a mature phase of development, focus on the risk management of exploration activities has increased. Focussed research efforts to both develop new geotechnical technologies and more accurately assess the limitations of currently utilised technologies have also been undertaken to ensure an economically viable exploitation and exploration strategy for the basin.

The structure of geotechnical teams in the 1990s has seen production and exploration functions amalgamate to ensure that the benefits of operations synergies provided by the high level of platform drilling activity are fully realised. This is enabling the knowledge from intensive field drilling programs to be more readily applied to the evaluation of exploration opportunities. Field re-development drilling activities are at historically high levels and are predicted to remain so into the foreseeable future. Given the mature nature of exploration in the basin, future exploration activities will be undertaken within the defined limits of our technologies to ensure the opportunity to achieve continued economic success is maximised.