Field Development Plan of Offshore Gullfaks Field

Abstract

The report below details the Field Development Plan (FDP) of the Gullfaks Field, which is among the largest offshore oil and gas fields in the Norwegian North Sea, Block 34/10. The field is located in Tampen area, which is on the western side of the Viking Graben, about 175 km northwest of Bergen. In 1978, Gullfaks was found and is today run by Equinor, which was formerly Statoil. The field is found in water depths of about 130-230 meters and occupies an area of about 55 square kilometers. Gullfaks is regarded as a crucial field to understand offshore field development, reservoir management, and optimization of production, owing to its complicated structural environment, extensive history of production, and large volume of hydrocarbons. The Gullfaks Field comprises primarily fault-regulated reservoirs that are created in fault-block rotations. The rifting processes of Late Permian-Early Triassic and subsequent structural development of the Upper Jurassic-Lower Cretaceous period had a significant impact on its geological structure. The primary reservoirs are in the Middle Jurassic Brent Group and the Triassic-Lower Jurassic Statfjord Formation, which contain sandstone units of high quality that formed in the fluvial, deltaic, and shallow marine setting. All these reservoirs tend to be highly porous and permeable and can therefore be used in the production of hydrocarbons, even though faulting and compartmentalization poses a problem on the connection of the hydrocarbon reservoirs and their pressure. Gullfaks needs a well-developed FDP since the offshore field development is a complex process with its own technical, economic, environmental, and regulatory challenges. It is of complicated subsurface structure with major northsouth striking faults, tilted fault blocks and fault bounded closures. Such characteristics affect the distribution of hydrocarbons, the location of wells, the pressure characteristics of a reservoir, and the long-term production characteristics. Thus, geology, petrophysics, reservoir engineering, drilling engineering, production engineering, surface facilities design, and economics must all work together to be successful in development. This research is by DE Oil Company which is involved with developing and managing oil and gas fields based on multidisciplinary technical assessment. The staff of the company consists of geologists, petrophysicists, reservoir engineers, drilling engineers, production engineers, surface facility engineers and economists. Their integration enables the project to interpret underlying information, assess the nature of reservoirs, plan drilling and completion methods, optimize production and examine the economic viability of field development. The primary objective of FDP is to recover as much as possible of the hydrocarbon in the Gullfaks Field and ensure safe operations; long term sustainability of the reservoir; environmental responsibility and profitability...