The 12th Conference on Field Reservoir Management 2007

On behalf of the programme committee I would like to invite you to “The 12th NPF Conference on Field Reservoir Management” at the Clarion Hotel, Stavanger, Norway.

The committee has chosen “Giants and Dwarfs – Reaching for Ultimate Recovery” as a topic for this year’s conference. As a result of long term high oil prices, marginal fields (the dwarfs) have been economically feasible, and the giants can afford investments on increased oil recovery projects which was not thinkable a few years ago. “The giants and dwarfs” model illustrates the comparison between the single well developments and the huge platforms, like Troll A as well as the emergence of the small new companies which can compete with the old giants.  In this diverse and competitive milieu the biggest restriction to the technological progress is a lack of human capital, both within the oil companies and suppliers, rather then lack of money, as at the turn of this century. Equally important to technology that improves oil recovery is technology that solves the environmental challenges before us.

The conference will start on Monday morning June 4 with a session on “Subsea Field Developments”. In addition to an overview of the new, giant subsea field developments on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS), a subsea development in the Gulf of Mexico will be discussed. In response to feedback from previous conferences the main focus in this and subsequent sessions will be on field cases.
The title of the second session is “Marginal fields”. In this session case histories will be presented, which address how re-development of abandoned fields and revitalisation of veterans can increase the oil production on the NCS.
After lunch we will have a session on “Reservoir surveillance & production optimisation”. While most of the presentations are based on field cases, the possible reservoir management effects of integrating different studies in reservoir models will also be addressed here.

In the evening we will set out on a boat trip to the little island of Sør-Hidle and the well-known restaurant “Flor and Fjære”, famous for its spectacular exotic garden and excellent food (www.florogfjare.no). This is an opportunity not to be missed!

Tuesday June 5, we will start with a session on “Enhanced oil recovery”, before we address some environmental aspects in a “Green technology” session. The two topics are often mutually dependent, as enhanced recovery processes often demand sustainable environmental solutions to prevent unnecessary discharge from operations, additives or naturally existing components in the reservoir fluid.
The icing on the cake is our last session: “Visions of future reservoirs”. The three speakers in this session will describe how we can improve our reservoir management by 1) making better reservoir models, 2) integrating work processes and 3) improved knowledge management – in other words, technology that may help us to overcome the lack of human capital and to improve the quality of our work.

I do hope you will find this conference interesting, take the opportunity to meet and network with your colleagues.

I am looking forward to seeing you in Stavanger in early June 2007.

Gro Aksnes
Statoil ASA
Chair, Programme Committee