Find the Value Left in Fields Everyone Has Stopped Looking At
New Opportunities in Old Fields
Applied mature field redevelopment, covering remaining oil identification, data reprocessing and reinterpretation, opportunity generation across wells reservoir and facilities, screening and ranking, low cost intervention, infill and recompletion, improved recovery options, facility debottlenecking and the economics of late life investment.
New Opportunities in Old Fields
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New Opportunities in Old Fields - RE-NOOF-PEA27
| Code | Date | Time | Duration | Location | Currency | Early Bird Fee Per Person |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RE-NOOF-PEA27 | 11 - 15 Oct 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.
New Opportunities in Old Fields
This training covers the systematic search for value in mature producing fields. It works through remaining oil identification, reinterpretation of existing data, structured opportunity generation across the well reservoir and facility domains, screening and ranking methods, low cost intervention options, infill and recompletion, improved recovery screening, facility debottlenecking and the economic framing that governs investment in fields approaching the end of their planned life.
Description
Mature fields hold most of the world's remaining developed reserves and receive the least technical attention. Staff move to new developments, surveillance budgets fall, models go unused and the field runs on operating routine until decline reaches the economic limit. Yet the data set is large, the infrastructure is paid for, the subsurface is better understood than at any earlier point, and the incremental cost of an additional barrel is often lower than anywhere in the portfolio. This training covers how to find and capture that value systematically.
The training begins with remaining oil: where it is, why it was not produced and how to identify it using production history, pressure data, saturation logging, tracers, streamline analysis and reinterpretation of legacy data. Data reprocessing and reinterpretation follow, since old seismic, logs and cores frequently yield more when reprocessed with current methods than new acquisition would. Opportunity generation is then developed as a structured process across the well, reservoir and facility domains, deliberately generating a long list before screening. Screening and ranking follow. The opportunity types are then covered in turn: low cost interventions, water shut-off, recompletion, artificial lift changes, infill drilling, sidetracks, waterflood optimisation, improved and enhanced recovery, facility debottlenecking and operating cost reduction. Late life economics and the decision to invest or to plan for cessation close the training.
Most remaining oil in a mature field is not where the model says it is. Models built early in field life carried assumptions that production has since disproved, and models built later were frequently history matched by adjusting parameters until the curves fitted rather than by correcting the description. Reconciling the model against actual well performance, pressure behaviour and water production usually reveals regions where the model and the field disagree, and those regions are where unswept oil is most likely to be.
Legacy data is undervalued. A field with thirty years of production has hundreds of well tests, thousands of pressure points, extensive log suites, core from the appraisal wells and possibly seismic acquired before modern processing existed. Reprocessing that seismic, reinterpreting the logs with current petrophysical methods, and assembling the pressure and production history into a coherent picture frequently produces more insight per unit of cost than any new acquisition. It also requires someone to do it, which is what mature fields most often lack.
The opportunity set is broader than infill drilling. Drilling attracts attention because it is large and visible, but the return on a well shut-off treatment, a recompletion, a lift change, a choke optimisation, a produced water debottleneck or an operating cost reduction is frequently higher per unit of capital and available far sooner. Generating a genuinely broad opportunity list before screening is what prevents a redevelopment study becoming a drilling study.
Finally, late life economics are unforgiving in a specific way. Abandonment liability sits at the end of field life and is not deferred by additional investment; it is deferred by additional production, which changes the calculation. An investment that extends field life defers abandonment cost, and that deferral has present value. Conversely, an investment made too late in life may not recover before the economic limit arrives. Framing late life investment correctly requires including abandonment timing in the analysis.
By the end of this training, participants will be able to:
- Identify remaining oil location and volume using production, pressure, logging and tracer evidence
- Reconcile reservoir models against actual field performance and identify where they disagree
- Assess the value of reprocessing and reinterpreting legacy seismic, log and core data
- Generate opportunity lists systematically across well, reservoir and facility domains
- Screen and rank opportunities on value, cost, risk and time to production
- Evaluate low cost intervention options including water shut-off, recompletion and lift changes
- Identify infill drilling and sidetrack candidates from remaining oil evidence
- Screen improved and enhanced recovery options for a mature field
- Identify facility and operating cost opportunities that improve economic limit
- Frame late life investment economics including abandonment timing and deferral value
Organisations sending participants to this training will:
- Extend field life and increase recovery from producing assets
- Capture value at capital efficiency substantially better than new developments
- Identify opportunities across the full domain rather than defaulting to drilling
- Extract more value from legacy data already held
- Improve the technical basis of late life investment and cessation decisions
- Build a repeatable redevelopment process applicable across a mature portfolio
Participants will:
- Find remaining oil using the evidence a mature field already contains
- Generate opportunity lists that go beyond the obvious
- Evaluate and rank opportunities quickly and defensibly
- Assess late life economics correctly including abandonment effects
- Build a case for investment in an asset the organisation has stopped investing in
- Build a capability applicable to the majority of producing assets
- Reservoir and production engineers on mature assets
- Development engineers evaluating redevelopment options
- Asset managers and technical supervisors of late life fields
- Geoscientists working on mature field reinterpretation
- Facilities engineers supporting mature field operations
- Technical staff evaluating mature field acquisitions
- Consultants and evaluators conducting field reviews
Module 1 - Mature Fields and Their Value
- Characteristics of a mature producing field
- Why mature fields receive less technical attention
- Remaining reserves in developed fields
- Capital efficiency of mature field investment against new development
- Field life stages and the transition to late life
- Organisational and staffing realities in mature assets
- Redevelopment study scope and resourcing
- Setting realistic expectations for a redevelopment study
- Examples of mature field value capture
Module 2 - Data Assembly and Reinterpretation
- Auditing what data the field holds
- Production and injection history assembly and quality control
- Pressure data compilation and its reconciliation
- Well test history and its reinterpretation
- Log reinterpretation with current petrophysical methods
- Core data recovery and reanalysis
- Seismic reprocessing and its value in mature fields
- 4D seismic where baseline data exists
- Well file review: completions, interventions, workovers, failures
- Building a single coherent field data set
- Value of reinterpretation against new acquisition
Module 3 - Remaining Oil Identification
- Where remaining oil is: unswept, bypassed, attic, cellar, poorly completed
- Material balance by region and compartment
- Reconciling model predictions against actual well performance
- Identifying regions where the model and the field disagree
- Saturation logging in existing wells
- Single well chemical tracer tests
- Interwell tracer evidence
- Streamline analysis for swept and unswept regions
- Pressure mapping and depletion identification
- Water and gas production patterns as evidence
- Building a remaining oil map with confidence levels
Module 4 - Opportunity Generation
- Structured opportunity generation process
- Generating a long list before screening
- Well domain opportunities: interventions, recompletions, lift, stimulation
- Reservoir domain opportunities: infill, sidetracks, injection changes, improved recovery
- Facility domain opportunities: debottlenecking, pressure reduction, water handling
- Operating cost and uptime opportunities
- Commercial opportunities: tie-backs, third party processing, contract changes
- Cross-domain opportunities and their identification
- Workshop methods for opportunity generation
- Including operations and field staff in the process
- Maintaining an opportunity register
Module 5 - Screening and Ranking
- Screening criteria and their application
- Rapid evaluation methods for large opportunity lists
- Value estimation at screening accuracy
- Cost estimation at screening accuracy
- Technical risk and chance of success assessment
- Time to production and its economic weight
- Ranking on value, capital efficiency and risk
- Distinguishing acceleration from incremental recovery
- Portfolio view across the opportunity set
- Selecting opportunities for detailed evaluation
- Avoiding premature elimination of unfamiliar options
Module 6 - Low Cost Well Opportunities
- Well performance benchmarking to identify underperformers
- Nodal analysis screening across the well stock
- Water shut-off candidate identification and treatment options
- Gas shut-off and coning management
- Recompletion to bypassed or uncompleted intervals
- Perforation addition and reperforation
- Stimulation and damage removal candidates
- Artificial lift installation, upgrade and optimisation
- Tubing and completion changes
- Choke and wellhead pressure optimisation
- Idle and shut-in well reactivation
- Ranking well opportunities across the field
Module 7 - Drilling and Major Subsurface Opportunities
- Infill well candidate identification and location selection
- Sidetrack and re-entry options
- Horizontal wells in mature fields
- Attic and cellar oil targeting
- Deeper and shallower pool potential
- Waterflood optimisation and pattern changes
- Injector conversion and pattern realignment
- Improved recovery screening for the field
- Enhanced recovery screening and pilot potential
- Evaluating major opportunities against remaining field life
- Sequencing subsurface investment
Module 8 - Facilities and Operating Cost Opportunities
- Facility constraint identification in a mature field
- Separator pressure reduction and its production benefit
- Compression addition and its economics
- Water handling debottlenecking
- Facility rationalisation and equipment decommissioning
- Uptime and reliability improvement
- Operating cost reduction and its effect on economic limit
- Energy efficiency and fuel cost reduction
- Manning, logistics and maintenance strategy in late life
- Third party processing and infrastructure sharing
- Facility investment against remaining field life
Module 9 - Late Life Economics and Decisions
- Economic limit calculation and its drivers
- Effect of operating cost reduction on economic limit
- Abandonment liability and its timing
- Present value of deferred abandonment
- Investment evaluation against remaining field life
- Cut-off for investment as cessation approaches
- Portfolio decisions: invest, divest, or cease
- Divestment and its evaluation from both sides
- Late life ownership models and their economics
- Cessation of production planning and its trigger
- Documenting a redevelopment case for approval
- Sustaining redevelopment as a repeated process rather than a one-off study
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.
