IPA16-110-E

PROCEEDINGS, INDONESIAN PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION

Fortieth Annual Convention & Exhibition, May 2016

PECIKO FIELD WELL INTERVENTION PLANNING OPTIMIZATION: AN INTEGRATION OF

RESERVOIR ASSESSMENT TO FIELD LEVEL

Irfan Taufik Rau*

Suhesti Herawati*
Muhammad Rully*
Dendy Surya Fajar*

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION

To sustain deliverability of mature fields in the
current economic environment, operations
inevitably will be focused on well interventions
instead of drilling (infill) wells. However, the
elevated complexity of managing well intervention
operations on offshore fields can only meet the
solution through proper and efficient well
intervention planning.
An effort to cope with the aforementioned
challenges has been implemented on Peciko, an
offshore gas field discovered in 1983 (Mahakam
PSC). It is a multi-layered unfaulted field, the
sediments of which being deposited in a deltaic
depositional environment. Currently, Peciko
comprises 8 platforms with a total of 170 active
wells. The fact that Peciko shares offshore barges
with other fields operated in the PSC and performs
simultaneous operations with drilling rigs, indicates
that optimization of well intervention planning
becomes even more crucial. This stimulated the
effort to develop a method that is able to achieve the
objective appropriately.
This paper shares a comprehensive method in
constructing a detailed well intervention plan that
provides not only clear future short and long-term
planning, but also current perforation portfolio
highlighting the remaining yearly un-perforated net
pay length along with the associated gain and
resources. The method utilizes an inductive
approach in the sense that the stakes, risks,
intervention schedule and required intervention type
are initially evaluated at reservoir level and then
progressively summarized to well, platform and
eventually field level. Therefore, this method takes
into account risks management, contributes
significantly to down-hole equipment and surface
facilities logistics planning and ultimately leads to
costs optimization.
Peciko is a mature gas field located 25 km offshore
the Mahakam delta in the East Kalimantan district,
and is operated by TOTAL E&P Indonésie (TEPI).
Started up in late 1999, the field has undergone
seven development phases with cumulative
production of approximately 4.4 Tcf, and currently
comprises 8 offshore platforms with 171
development wells on stream. Peciko is a
multilayered unfaulted field in which the
stratigraphy comprises stacked delta front mouth
bars in the Main Zone (2,200 – 3,500 mSS) and
fluvio-deltaic channels in the Shallow Zone (600 –
2,200 mSS) (Figure 1). The commingled production
from the multilayered reservoirs keeps declining
and the performance of preventive actions has
become necessary. However, exacerbated by the
current low economic environment, drilling infill
wells is not attractive due to limited stakes.
Consequently, well intervention takes over the role
as the focus of operations to sustain the
deliverability of the field.
Well interventions in offshore areas are usually
done on a platform campaign basis in the sense that
a well intervention barge concentrates on
intervention jobs performed on a given platform for
a typical duration of 1-2 months. Currently, TEPI
operates 4 offshore well intervention barges which
are also shared with other offshore fields in the
Mahakam PSC, namely Sisi Nubi (5 active
platforms), Bekapai (3 active platforms), and South
Mahakam (4 active platforms). These barges are all
equipped with slickline units and electric line units
for performing routine jobs, including but not
limited to perforation, production logging,
mechanical water shut off and restriction clearance.
As the field matures, Peciko encounters more
challenges in terms of operations caused by
depleted reservoir pressures along with sand and
water management issues that require non-routine

* TOTAL E&P INDONÉSIE

well intervention jobs. However, coiled tubing units
for performing non-routine jobs such as Sand
Consolidation (SCON), annulus cementing, milling
and sand washing are only available on 2 of the
barges.
Therefore, to effectively assign barge movements,
as well as to properly allocate the limited coiled
tubing units, a comprehensive field review that
yields better and more cost efficient well
intervention planning was conducted. Previously,
Peciko’s future well intervention plan was
determined solely by statistics of the workload in
the previous year. Subsequent to conducting this
review, detailed figuring of workload and number
of jobs with their associated risks and stakes could
be obtained in order to determine the priority of
each job and to build an optimized well intervention
plan.
METHODOLOGY
The method of the field review consists of
multilevel assessments and commences with
gathering the required data. Being an inductive
method, the data is initially assessed at reservoir
level, then summarized and reassessed at a higher
level. These assessments are iteratively conducted
from reservoir level up to field level. This work
depends mostly on the utilization of Microsoft
Excel’s Pivot Table feature, hence avoiding the
requirement of complex and costly 3D simulation
software. Therefore, the idea is to build a
comprehensive excel sheet that contains all the
reservoir data and evaluations, which could then be
summarized by a pivot table into well, platform and
field level. Consequently, changing data and
evaluations can only be done at the lowest level,
which is the reservoir level. Figure 2 shows the
workflow of this method.
Data Retrieval
Prior to the assessments, it is crucial to prepare the
data necessary for the analysis. Reservoir
information such as net pay, porosity, saturation,
pressure, HPM (net pay x porosity x (1-Sw)), latest
fluid status, perforation status, estimated drainage
radius, accessibility and other related information
are gathered for each of the reservoir (Table 1). The
generated table contains data of the current field
portfolio, without taking into account hypothetical
data of undrilled wells, if any. The data is then
sorted by platform name, well name and lastly by
reservoir name. Latest fluid status and reservoir
pressure are gathered by correlation with
surrounding wells since pressure tests were not
conducted on all of the reservoirs. However, to
expedite the data gathering process, correlations
need not to be performed on perforated reservoirs,
as the review is focused on un-perforated reservoirs.
Reservoir Level Assessment
At this level, the aim of the assessment is to
determine whether or not a given reservoir is
adequate to become a perforation candidate, along
with setting up perforation phases of the wells. Each
perforation phase targeting main zone reservoirs
usually comprises between 10 to 30 m of net pay.
Typically, the perforation strategy in Peciko is
bottom up pressure wise, meaning that deeper
reservoirs with higher pressure will be perforated
first. However, other important factors could also
influence the grouping of which reservoir should be
included in which phase. These factors are
instantaneous gain, resources and the risks
associated with the reservoir. Following sections
will show that high gain, high resources and low
risk reservoirs will be prioritized and grouped into
the earlier perforation phase.
a. Instantaneous gain evaluation
Instantaneous gain, in other words the increase of
gas flow rate upon perforation, should be estimated
properly since it acts as one of the most important
factors in the study. Comparisons and prioritizations
at reservoir, well, platform and field level are highly
dependent on the instantaneous gain. The method
and improvement of perforation gain estimation in
Peciko Field have been published by Rully et al.
(2015). The perforation gain is computed through
an iterative process using the following inputs:
reservoir pressure, initial guess of Bottom-Hole
Flowing Pressure or BHFP (random value of BHFP
to initiate calculation), reservoir properties
including porosity to obtain permeability via Phi-K
correlation, Well-Head Flowing Pressure (WHFP),
wellbore radius, drainage radius and skin.
b. Resources evaluation
Estimation method of resources may vary. The
common practice is to utilize volumetric estimation
from an assumed or modeled drainage radius. In the
case of the Main Zone of Peciko field, a previous
study by Akbar et al. (2015) points out that
resources estimation for un-perforated reservoirs
can be assessed by integrating pressure depletion
induced by production into static model. The study
estimated the volume of un-drained areas in each
geological layer of each well by deducting the
produced volume represented by pressure depletion
from the static model while at the same time
providing pressure and drainage radius as output
data.
c. Reservoir risks assessment
The most prominent risk observed at reservoir level
would be water risk, related to the presence of
nearby Gas Water Contact (GWC) seen from the
log either in the well itself or correlated with
surrounding wells. Reservoirs possessing a high
chance of quick water breakthrough upon
perforation are flagged as “Water Risk”. In
contrary, reservoirs with no water issues are
categorized as “Direct Perfo”.
Furthermore, reservoirs that do not surpass the cut-
off to be candidates for perforation are also flagged
by the reason why they are not perforated. For main
zone reservoirs, they are categorized as either “Poor
Properties” if no flow is expected, “Water Rise” if
there is evidence that the reservoirs are already
filled up with water, or “Inaccessible” if the
reservoirs are located below restriction and not
worthy for restriction clearance. Besides these
categories, in the upper and shallow zone of Peciko
field, there is also risk of sand production due to the
poorly consolidated nature of the reservoir. The
produced sand may cause erosion on surface
equipment, thus prior to the perforation of these
reservoirs, the installation of proper sand
monitoring and sand control equipment becomes
inevitable. However, sand control installation could
be costly, and certain resources cut-off as
preliminary screening at reservoir level must be
applied to the reservoirs depending on the gas price
to determine whether or not a given shallow
reservoir is worth to be perforated. Shallow
reservoirs not opted as candidates are flagged as
“Shallow Uneconomical”. This non-candidate
classification is conducted to keep track in case a
technology breakthrough or shifting of economic
environment occurs in the future so that these
reservoirs could be reassessed and potentially
become technically and economically feasible.
Well Level Assessment
By summarizing the assessment at reservoir level,
the potential perforation gain and resources of each
perforation phase in each well have been obtained.
With this information available, the main purpose of
the assessment at well level is to establish the
prioritization and the time frame or schedules of
perforation phases for each well in a platform.
a. Perforation prioritization
Although the reservoirs do not have any risk at
reservoir level, problems may occur within the
wellbore itself. The requirement of heavy
intervention jobs with high cost and/or low success
ratio prior to the perforation job (e.g. milling,
annulus cementing, fishing) will cause shifts of
prioritization of the perforation candidates between
wells. Candidate reservoirs that require these heavy
intervention jobs are flagged as “Special WLI”.
These reservoirs will have a lower priority
compared with reservoirs defined as “Direct Perfo”.
The prioritization evaluation of the perforation jobs
could be facilitated by applying economic cut-off of
costs per unit of expected resources or in this case,
$/BCF. The $/BCF for each job summed up with its
associated non-routine jobs, if any, was calculated
by dividing the total cost of the job by its estimated
resources. A higher value of $/BCF means that the
job becomes less attractive since the expected gain
is not commensurate with the costs. Hence, jobs as
such are less prioritized and will be allocated as the
last option. Moreover, instantaneous gain is also
taken into consideration, and jobs yielding higher
gain will be prioritized. Up to this point, the
perforation sequence for each well has been
determined and the remaining work is to set the date
for each of the perforation phases.
b. Perforation scheduling
Initially, decline curve analysis for each well was
conducted to estimate the decline rate of the current
open reservoirs. The purpose of this work is to
determine the time frame of required next phase
perforations. Since well interventions are performed
in campaigns, summing up the declining gas rate of
each well would be preferable and the next
intervention campaign could be scheduled when the
sum of the gas rate is already considered low. Then
for the next perforation phase, since the resources
and instantaneous gain of the perforation candidate
are available, the estimated decline rate of the well
after the perforation could be calculated. Similarly,
given the decline, we would be able to determine
the time frame where the wells need another
perforation. Figure 3 illustrates this idea by using an
example of 3 wells.
Platform Level Assessment
The schedule of well intervention campaigns
previously determined only considers jobs for a
given platform, excluding other platforms. Now that
the schedule and list of perforation jobs in each
platform are available, some adjustments on the
prioritization and scheduling could be done. These
adjustments are mainly dependent on the $/BCF and
instantaneous gain associated with the well
intervention campaign of the platform. Campaigns
of platforms yielding higher gain with lower
technical costs will be prioritized and the campaign
schedule will be shifted accordingly. However,
these shifts are constrained by the time frame in
which additional perforations would be required as
defined in the previous section.
Since the list and schedule of future additional
perforation jobs have been set, the intervention
campaign of each platform needs to include
anticipated jobs such as unloading by coiled tubing,
as well as monitoring and data acquisition jobs. The
number of these anticipated jobs is determined at
field level and distributed with higher proportion to
platforms with higher stakes.
Field Level Assessment
At this point, a clear view of the field’s potential,
planning and lifespan could be observed. Minor
adjustments remain to be carried out by conducting
a similar exercise with the platform level
assessment in adjusting the schedule of the
campaigns, only that well intervention campaigns
from other fields within the Mahakam PSC are also
taken into consideration.
RESULTS
Statistics for Field Overview
The analysis of perforation gain, resources
estimation and associated risks provides a big
picture of perforation portfolio for well intervention
planning, as shown in Figure 4. Through this
perforation portfolio, we can manage well
intervention jobs in proportion with remaining net-
pay length and resources contained. Platform
(PTF)-7, PTF-2, PTF-1, and PTF-6 contribute the
top-four remaining net-pay defined as perforation
candidates. Therefore, according to this bird’s eye
view of the field, upcoming operations are expected
to be focused on these 4 platforms.
Further analysis (Figure 5) is still necessary by
defining perforation candidates into technical
categories that represent difficulties and/or risk of
having intervention: (1) Direct perforation, (2) Zone
Change, (3) Water Risk, (4) Requires Special
Intervention (i.e. Coiled tubing unit), (5) Sand
Control. Through such technical assessment
(difficulties and water risk impact), a strategy to
focus on cost-optimum jobs can be deduced. In case
complex jobs involving heavy intervention or
special operational requests (e.g. acidizing, long
duration of fishing job and difficult obstruction
removal to regain accessibility) become undesirable
due to economic constraints, mapping job type by
its feasibility will be more beneficial.
Defining Perforation Strategy
Given the potential of each platform by categories
as shown in Figure 5, the perforation strategy of the
platform could be determined by integrating the
most important factor: time. Properly assigning
when and how many intervention campaigns will be
performed on a given platform is the key to an
optimized perforation strategy. In PTF-2, for
instance, a minimum of 3 intervention campaigns
will be necessary within the next 3 years due to the
ample amount of direct perforation candidates. In
the later phase of the platform, however, only
“water risk” will remain to be perforated.
As a final result, by summing all perforation
strategies from all platforms (seen in Figure 6), we
can see that direct perforations will obviously be the
highest priority for operations due to their
simplicity and ability to yield high gain. Some
water and sand risk reservoirs were planned to be
perforated in 2015 since they originated from
mature wells which do not have any safe candidates
remaining. These wells are included to take
advantage of the existence of the barge performing
non-risky interventions on the platform. The
number of perforations associated with water-risk
and sand-control technology will gradually increase
by time. It is driven by the priority to perform less
risky jobs with more certain gain first rather than
difficult jobs or uncertain gain. In the end, we are
getting fewer options to maintain field production
and performing heavy intervention or uncertain jobs
becomes inevitable. Thus, such a philosophy should
simply be accepted in all field management.
Beyond Peciko Field
The fact that Peciko shares offshore intervention
barges with 3 other fields complicates the
arrangement of barge movement in order to
optimize the whole related assets’ level of
production, especially when constrained with
drilling activity and manpower. Intervention
campaigns are avoided if a drilling rig is present on
a platform so that synchronization with the drilling
sequence is required prior to further assessments.
Then, the previously defined annual perforation
strategy needs to be refined and optimized into
monthly schedule and budget to anticipate the
intervention cost. To simplify the cost and
recovered resources optimization, gain in BCF and
cost per month from each field were utilized. It can
be seen in Figure 7 that jobs in Peciko Field
yielding higher resources gain with relatively
similar costs are prioritized. Afterwards, the plot
from each field will be compared as an iterative part
of inter-asset decision making and will be finalized
once all the offshore assets agree that recovered
resources and costs are optimized at regional
(Mahakam Offshore Area) level.
In the end, besides assisting in the determination of
a more efficient barge movement, the fixation of
well intervention schedule for all assets within the
Mahakam PSC will aid in providing better long
term production forecasts. Additionally, it enables
us to more efficiently allocate surface facilities such
as Acoustic Sand Detection, or ASD (Clamp OnTM)
which is used to monitor sand production. Since
detailed jobs list and schedule are available,
engineers are able to determine which jobs would
require the installation of ASD prior to the
perforation and allocate them accordingly. This
logic also applies to the allocation of coiled tubing
units since the jobs requiring these units are also
flagged within the analysis as previously shown in
Figures 5 and 6. Therefore, by performing this
review and optimizing the intervention plan, all of
the logistics related to the planned jobs could be
better and more efficiently allocated.
CONCLUSIONS
Peciko Field has succeeded in optimizing its well
intervention planning by performing a 39th Annual Convention, IPA15-E-307.
comprehensive and detailed field review. The work
was iteratively conducted from assessment at
reservoir level up to field level. The results enable
us to obtain a clear view of Peciko’s perforation
portfolio and to define a proper short, mid and long
term perforation strategy. Ultimately, the
application of this comprehensive review provides
not only cost-optimized and detailed well
intervention planning for Peciko Field, but also
better long-term production forecasts and more
efficient movements of surface facilities, well
intervention equipment and well intervention barges
among the offshore fields within Mahakam PSC.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors are most grateful to MIGAS, INPEX,
and Total E&P Indonésie for granting their
permissions to publish this paper. We would also
like to express our sincere gratitude to Peciko
Reservoir Engineering Team for their continuous
support.
REFERENCES
Akbar, E., Herwin, H., Schulbaum, L., Roussel, S.,
Herawati, S., and Muhazir, Y., 2015, Integration of
Dynamic Synthesis in the Static Model: Enhancing
Future Development Plan in the Multi-Layer
Deltaic Peciko Mature Field: Proceedings of
Indonesian Petroleum Association, 39th Annual
Convention, IPA15-E-119.
Rully, M., Setyawati, A.N., Herawati, S., and
Tafsiri H.A., 2015, Perforation Gain Prediction by
Inflow Characterization through Historical
Interpretation in Mature Offshore Gas Field:
Proceedings of Indonesian Petroleum Association,
 TABLE 1

SAMPLE OF RETRIEVED DATA FOR WELL-1 IN PLATFORM (PTF)-1

Net Water Drainage

RES Depth HPM Porosity Pressure
PLATFORM WELL FLUID MARKER Pay Saturation Perfo Status Access Radius
NAME (mMD) (m) (m) (Deq)
(m) (%) (m)
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-1 GAS Layer-1 2984.0 0.13 1.5 13 34 UNPERFO Clear 0.79 300
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-2 GAS Layer-2 3000.8 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.79 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-3 GAS Layer-2 3002.0 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.79 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-4 GAS Layer-2 3003.0 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.79 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-5 GAS Layer-2 3005.6 0.02 0.3 9 35 UNPERFO Clear 0.71 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-6 GAS? Layer-2 3012.2 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.71 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-7 GAS? Layer-3 3016.9 0.1 1.1 11 37 UNPERFO Clear 0.71 600
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-8 GAS? Layer-4 3039.6 0.01 0.2 9 35 UNPERFO Clear 0.77 350
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-9 GAS? Layer-4 3051.4 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.77 350
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-10 GAS? Layer-5 3060.8 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.77 275
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-11 GAS? Layer-5 3062.0 0.03 0.5 11 45 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 275
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-12 GAS? Layer-6 3081.4 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 300
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-13 GAS Layer-6 3084.9 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 300
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-14 GAS Layer-6 3085.8 0.03 0.3 11 19 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 300
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-15 GAS? Layer-7 3124.5 0.02 0.6 10 75 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 400
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-16 GAS? Layer-8 3138.7 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.23 500
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-17 GAS Layer-8 3154.5 0.05 0.8 10 39 PERFO Clear 0.23 500
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-18 GAS? Layer-9 3165.7 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.54 550
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-19 GAS Layer-10 3174.5 0 0.0 0 0 PERFO Clear 0.54 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-20 GAS Layer-10 3176.0 0.07 0.8 13 29 PERFO Clear 0.20 450
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-21 GAS? Layer-11 3187.8 0 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.20 600
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-22 GAS Layer-11 3200.3 0.11 1.2 14 34 PERFO Clear 0.20 600
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-23 GAS Layer-11 3203.1 0.48 4.1 16 24 PERFO Clear 0.20 600
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-24 GAS Layer-11 3208.3 0.00 0.0 0 0 PERFO Clear 0.20 600
PTF-1 Well-1 Res-25 GAS? Layer-11 3211.8 0.00 0.0 0 0 UNPERFO Clear 0.20 600

 
 Figure 1 - Peciko Field stratigraphy and typical well architecture.

Figure 2 - Workflow of the field review. The assessment is initially conducted at reservoir level then
summarized into well level. These assessment and summarization are repeatedly conducted up to
field level.

 
Figure 3 - An example of 3 wells visualizing the method to determine well intervention campaign time
frame. The intervals shown in red are the proposed time period for a well intervention campaign
to be performed.

 
 Figure 4 - Statistics of perforated-unperforated net-pay and perforation candidate length.

 
Figure 5 - Distribution of perforation candidate net-pay (excluding non candidate and perforated net-pay)
categorized into technical difficulties and risk.

 
 Figure 6 - 3-year perforation strategy of Peciko field.

Figure 7 - Peciko monthly gain & cost profile after barge planning optimization.