Challenges and Opportunities - Mature Oil Fields

DOI

No DOI

Published In

Volume 3, Issue 2 (2023)

Published Online

March-April 2023

Pages

09-12

Article Type

Research Article

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Recent reports project that global population will increase by 2 billion and worldwide energy demand will increase 38% by 2040. Energy is very important to meet basic needs and to improve living standards of people. Increasing population, urbanization, and efforts to improve living standards worldwide are driving rising demand for energy. About 70% of the oil produced today comes from mature fields. The average recovery factor is 35% and some oil fields produce even less due to geological characteristics, fluid properties, resource constraints, or operational inefficiencies from old technology. Mature oil fields matter today more than ever because regulatory bodies are appearing more and more unreceptive toward abandoning producing wells too early so now, we need to look for new technologies to increase production from mature oil wells to sustain economic viability and minimize global warming challenges. Increasing recovery from mature oil fields by just percentage-point could add two years to the global hydrocarbon supply. Brief overviews of challenges and opportunities in mature oil fields are presented in this paper.