New Partnership Targets Brownfields

Production sites with over 7 years’ operating history that have often plateaued, or even entered a declining production level, are referred to as brownfields.

Brownfields are typically areas of very little development or improvement – only receiving basic monitoring and maintenance to function. However, this could be set for change as brownfields are being targeted in a recent partnership agreement between Deloitte and Foroil SAS to stimulate production.

Utilising historic data, “breakthrough mathematical modelling”, and high-performance computing, Deloitte and Foroil SAS are taking strides to increase production and better tap into these reserves. The project aims to combine the best parts of the two companies’ expertise: Foroil’s numerical skills of analysing past data, such as rates, pressure, and phase to predict the reservoirs’ future behaviour and Deloitte’s analysis of previous success in the field. According to them, in the past there have been multiple cases of production and reserve increases with very little capital expenditure, which is where they plan on capitalising and encouraging companies to be more active regarding the brownfields.

The approach is to create individual plans for client firms to explore their brownfields and how to best extract value from them. These plans can then be used as platforms for speed and quality of decision-making. In Deloitte’s own words, they aim “to create incremental production, reserves and shareholder value for our mutual clients around the world.”

Seeing as an approximate of 65% of the world’s oil production comes from these very brownfields, it is important that companies in charge pay more attention to them. Because of this, Deloitte, for example, believes “the financial implications of this capability are staggering” and will play a big role in getting more from less, contributing to the oil industry’s sustainability.

Dashboard believes in both the economic and sustainable values of this project. Brownfields are often ignored and overlooked in terms of investment or basic quarterly strategic re-evaluation, which can automatically lead to their decline. Now, having dedicated tools for them instead can revive these sites and provide owner companies with a much higher production rate whilst extending the sites’ lifetimes.