The Large Scale Steam Flood Pilot with two patterns in South Ratqa Field (Heavy Oil – North Kuwait) is considered the first of its kind in KOC and a major milestone for North Kuwait (NK) Heavy Oil Development program. The pilot program is crucial for NK Heavy Oil development plans as it will allow the evaluation of the Lower Fars Heavy Oil reservoir at close spacing, and it will assess the implication of the selected recovery process for South Ratqa (SR) field operations and project economics. In addition, the project will enable NK to:

The two patterns test different schemes, one for the evaluation of 10-Acre spacing with the second for evaluation of 5-Acre spacing with inverted five spot configurations. The 10-Acre pattern consists of 13 wells (Producer/Injector) plus 7 observation wells; the 5-acre pattern consists of 13 wells (Producer/Injector) plus 4 observation wells. All observation wells are equipped with Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) systems. Furthermore, for the first time in KOC, all wells are equipped with the thermal wellhead stack up to allow operations while injecting or prodcing. This will greatly save time, rig cost and minimize workover interventions.

Production and Reservoir engineers frequently use allocated volumes to estimate current production volumes from wells based on frequent well test data or theoretical calculations using well and reservoir characteristics.

The KOC Heavy Oil asset deployed a production data management system (PDMS) from early days of Large Steam Thermal Pilot North (LSTPN) production to establish a scalable and reliable workprocess among the organisation. The production and operations data management system manages steam injection, soaking and the production phases through data collection, quality control validation and production back allocation as well as shortfall analysis for planned and unplanned downtime events.

The new system provides main checks for the steam injection and emulsion production streams, track gathering systems functionality through time, derive the allocation networks, and produce internal and external reports.