Most of the Oil Left in the World Is in Fields Somebody Already Developed
Mature Field Development and Management
Redevelopment screening, remaining potential identification, infill and recompletion, improved and enhanced recovery, water management, cost reduction, life extension and abandonment deferral.
Mature Field Development and Management
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Mature Field Development and Management - RE-MFD-PEA27
| Code | Date | Time | Duration | Location | Currency | Early Bird Fee Per Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RE-MFD-PEA27 | 12 - 16 Jul 2027 | 10 AM CST | 4 Hours Per Day |
Online |
USD |
4000 |
Boost your team's skills and your budget! Enjoy group discounts for collaborative learning. Send an inquiry to info@peassociations.com.
Mature Field Development and Management
A course on extracting value from mature and declining fields. It covers reviewing a mature asset, identifying remaining potential and bypassed oil, infill drilling and recompletion, improved and enhanced recovery screening, water and gas management, well and facility integrity in ageing assets, operating cost reduction, economic limit management, life extension and the decisions around divestment and abandonment.
Description
A mature field is a different engineering problem from a new development. The reservoir is partly depleted and its behaviour is partly known, which removes some uncertainty and creates others. The wells are old, some are damaged and some are producing from zones nobody has verified in twenty years. The facilities were sized for a production profile that has long since passed and are now handling far more water than oil. The cost base was set when production was several times higher, and the economic limit is approaching. Against that, the remaining oil in place is usually large, the infrastructure is in place and paid for, and the subsurface is better understood than it will ever be in a new field.
This course covers how to find and realise that remaining value. It addresses the structured review of a mature asset, reconstruction of field history and performance, identification of remaining oil and bypassed pay, surveillance and data acquisition in old wells, infill drilling and target selection, recompletion, sidetrack and zone access options, well integrity and the constraints it imposes, improved and enhanced recovery screening and pilot design, water management and conformance, gas and pressure management, facility debottlenecking and rationalisation, operating cost reduction and its risks, economic limit management and life extension, and the decisions around divestment, transfer to a smaller operator and eventual abandonment. The emphasis is on realistic incremental gains rather than transformation.
Global average recovery factor remains close to a third of oil in place. The volume left behind in fields that have already been developed exceeds the volume in fields yet to be found, and it sits under existing infrastructure with known geology and established production history. It is, in principle, the cheapest oil available. In practice it is difficult to access because the reasons it was left behind are structural: it is in poorly swept regions, in layers that were never perforated, behind pipe in wells with integrity problems, or in a part of the field where the economics never justified a well.
Mature field work therefore has a distinctive character. The technical questions are about heterogeneity, sweep and access rather than about whether hydrocarbons are present. The engineering is constrained by what the existing wells and facilities can accommodate. The economics are marginal by definition, which makes cost discipline decisive and makes the difference between a viable and a non-viable project a matter of a few dollars per barrel. And the timeline is finite: once a facility is decommissioned, the remaining oil is effectively lost, so the option to act expires.
The organisational dimension matters as much as the technical one. Mature assets attract less attention, less capital and less experienced staff than new developments. Surveillance data may not have been acquired for years, well records may be incomplete, and institutional knowledge may have left with people who retired. A structured review of a neglected asset frequently identifies opportunities that were visible in the data all along. This course covers both the technical methods and the review discipline that surfaces them.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Conduct a structured technical review of a mature asset and reconstruct its production history
- Identify remaining oil in place, bypassed pay and under-swept regions from available evidence
- Design surveillance and data acquisition programmes appropriate to old wells and limited budgets
- Evaluate infill drilling opportunities and select targets on evidence rather than pattern geometry
- Assess recompletion, sidetrack and zone access options against well integrity constraints
- Screen improved and enhanced recovery options for technical and economic viability
- Develop water management, conformance and produced water handling strategies
- Evaluate facility debottlenecking, rationalisation and life extension options
- Manage operating cost and economic limit to extend field life without compromising integrity
- Assess divestment, transfer and abandonment decisions and their timing
Organisations sending participants to this training will:
- Identify and realise remaining potential in assets currently in managed decline
- Extend economic field life and defer decommissioning cost
- Improve the return on limited capital allocated to mature assets
- Reduce operating cost without creating integrity or reliability exposure
- Make better decisions on continued investment, divestment or abandonment
- Preserve access to remaining volumes before infrastructure is lost
Participants will:
- Review a mature asset systematically and identify what has been missed
- Find remaining oil from production, log and pressure evidence
- Evaluate infill, recompletion and recovery improvement options realistically
- Work effectively within the constraints ageing wells and facilities impose
- Build economically viable proposals in a marginal cost environment
- Take technical ownership of a mature asset and its future
- Reservoir and production engineers working on mature assets
- Field development engineers evaluating redevelopment opportunities
- Petroleum engineers in late-life and brownfield operations
- Asset and subsurface managers responsible for declining fields
- Engineers in companies acquiring mature assets from major operators
- Well intervention and workover engineers in mature field operations
- Reserves and evaluation staff assessing mature asset potential
Module 1 — Mature Asset Review
- Characteristics and challenges of mature
field operations
- Structured review methodology for a mature
asset
- Reconstructing field history, well records
and completion status
- Data inventory: what exists, what is missing
and what can be recovered
- Production and pressure history
reconstruction and validation
- Reviewing the existing reservoir description
against production evidence
- Identifying gaps between the model and
observed behaviour
- Benchmarking recovery against analogue
fields
Module 2 — Finding the Remaining Oil
- Remaining oil in place estimation and its
distribution
- Bypassed pay identification from logs and
production history
- Attic, cellar and flank oil accumulations
- Under-swept regions and poorly drained
compartments
- Unperforated and inadequately completed
intervals
- Behind-pipe opportunity screening
- Cased hole logging and saturation monitoring
options
- Time-lapse seismic and other monitoring in
mature fields
- Ranking opportunities by volume, confidence
and accessibility
Module 3 — Surveillance and Data Acquisition in Mature Assets
- Designing surveillance under budget and
access constraints
- Pressure surveillance in old wells and
shut-in limitations
- Production logging and zonal allocation in
mature completions
- Well testing feasibility and alternatives
- Cased hole saturation logging applications
- Tracer and interference testing for
connectivity
- Data acquisition justified by the decisions
it supports
- Rebuilding a surveillance programme in a
neglected asset
Module 4 — Infill Drilling and Well Placement
- Infill drilling rationale: incremental
recovery versus acceleration
- Target identification from remaining oil
mapping
- Well spacing reassessment in a depleted
reservoir
- Horizontal and multilateral applications in
mature fields
- Drilling in depleted zones and differential
depletion problems
- Interference with existing producers and
injectors
- Infill well performance expectation and its
uncertainty
- Economic evaluation and ranking of infill
candidates
- Learning from infill performance and
updating the model
Module 5 — Recompletion, Sidetracks and Well Integrity
- Recompletion candidate screening and zone
selection
- Adding perforations, isolating zones and
commingling decisions
- Sidetrack and re-entry evaluation against
new well cost
- Well integrity assessment in ageing wells
- Casing condition, cement quality and annulus
pressure issues
- Wells that constrain what can be attempted
- Well abandonment candidates and slot
recovery
- Intervention cost, rig availability and
campaign planning
Module 6 — Improved and Enhanced Recovery in Mature Fields
- Screening improved and enhanced recovery
options for a mature asset
- Waterflood initiation, expansion or
optimisation
- Gas injection and pressure maintenance in
late life
- Chemical flooding applicability and
screening criteria
- Thermal methods and their infrastructure
requirements
- Pilot design, surveillance and scale-up
decisions
- Realistic incremental recovery expectation
- Infrastructure and facility implications of
a recovery project
- Economic viability under mature field cost
structures
Module 7 — Water, Gas and Pressure Management
- Water production forecasting and handling
capacity
- Water shutoff and conformance option selection
- Injection conformance and profile
modification
- Pattern rebalancing in mature waterfloods
- Produced water treatment, reinjection and
disposal cost
- Gas management: lift, sales, reinjection and
flare reduction
- Reservoir pressure management in late life
- Managing rising water cut against facility
limits
Module 8 — Facilities, Integrity and Life Extension
- Facility capacity mismatch in declining
fields
- Debottlenecking for water rather than oil
handling
- Rationalisation, decommissioning of
redundant equipment and simplification
- Ageing plant integrity and inspection
requirements
- Corrosion, erosion and equipment
obsolescence
- Life extension assessment and its
documentation
- Energy efficiency and utility cost in
oversized facilities
- Third party tie-ins and infrastructure
hosting opportunities
Module 9 — Cost, Economics and Field Life
- Operating cost structure in mature assets
- Cost reduction opportunities and their
integrity risks
- Fixed versus variable cost and the economic
limit
- Economic limit calculation and its
sensitivity
- Extending economic life through cost and
revenue measures
- Incremental project economics under marginal
conditions
- Capital allocation between mature and growth
assets
- Fiscal incentives and late-life tax treatment
Module 10 — Divestment, Transfer and Abandonment
- Why mature assets change hands and what
changes afterwards
- Asset valuation and due diligence for mature
field transactions
- Operator transition and the retention of
technical knowledge
- Decommissioning liability, provisioning and
transfer
- Abandonment timing and the option value of
deferral
- Well plugging and abandonment planning and
cost
- Facility decommissioning scope and sequence
- Building a life-of-field plan for a mature
asset
- Preserving the option to recover remaining
volumes
Upon successful completion of this training course, delegates will be awarded an official Certificate of Completion issued by the Petroleum Engineers Association (PEA), an ISO 9001:2015 certified training organization. The certificate carries 10 Credits and formally records the total learning hours completed.
Each certificate is signed by the Course Facilitator and the CEO of the Petroleum Engineers Association, and serves as verifiable proof of professional training that delegates can present to employers and professional bodies worldwide.
Frequently Asked Questions
All course bookings made through PEA are strictly non-refundable. By registering for a course, you acknowledge and accept that all fees are payable in full and are not subject to refund under any circumstances, including changes in personal or professional commitments or partial attendance.
PEA reserves the right to make reasonable adjustments to course content, trainers, or schedules where necessary, without entitling delegates to a refund. Comprehensive details of each course — including objectives, target audience, and content — are clearly outlined before enrolment, and it is the responsibility of the delegate to ensure the course's suitability prior to booking.
For any inquiries related to cancellations or bookings, please contact our support team, who will be happy to assist you.
