Exploration to Abandonment | Japan Oil Engineering

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Exploration to Abandonment

JOE provides consulting and engineering services for oil and gas development in wide range of areas.

This page introduces oil and gas development flow from exploration to abandonment and JOE’s experiences at each phase.

Lease Acquisition

Japan, which hasn’t abundant natural oil and gas resources, should acquire mining area from other countries or region those of which field are under development or production, and receive allocated produced oil. It is necessary to investigate the expected area in advance to judge whether oil and gas reserves exist or not, and we offer evaluation report for judgement.

Exploration

At the exploration stage, drilling test is conducted after defining the expected area to develop in the allocated field for the purpose of oil and gas field discovery and reserves evaluation. We analyze a plenty of data acquired by using seismic exploration and well logging technologies.

Development

When oil and gas is judged as commercially producible based on oil and gas reserves evaluation, drilling of production wells is started to extract crude oil and natural gas from underground. Besides that, the operators design and construct onshore and offshore structures, crude oil and natural gas production processing facilities, storage facilities, and shipping facilities. Moreover, pipeline laying, drilling of the injectors and so forth required for actual operation are conducted.

Production

After the commissioning of the production processing facilities, oil and gas are produced based on production plan and, new wells are drilled to increase ultimate recovery amount and IOR/EOR (Improved Oil Recovery and Enhanced Oil Recovery) method is applied to improve the recovery rate. When commercial production is not expected and then abandonment is required, an appropriate approach is applied under regulations in individual countries for environmentally sound decommissioning.

JOE’s Experiences

■Experiences on Lease Acquisition
We conducted potential evaluation in the Southeast Asia, Oceania, Latin America and Mediterranean Sea for lease acquisition.

■Experiences on Exploration
JOE experienced in‒place estimation related projects in the North Sea, Middle East, Southeast Asia and South America. We conduct oil and gas reserve simulation making full use of data acquired during this stage by applying not only deterministic approach but also stochastic techniques.

■Experiences on Development and Production
JOE supported purchase and revamping of the all-mounted offshore platform which was on sale at that time, and supported revamping of a used tanker to the Floating Storage and Offloading Unit (FSOU) to export produced oil through pipeline.