More bang for your buck: optimising CSG extraction to achieve increased project value

Abstract

Recent challenges within Australia’s oil and gas market have placed increased pressure on Australia’s CSG industry to reel-in burgeoning project costs. In a tight commodity price environment, developments need to extract greater value from projects. This paper outlines an innovative approach to CSG gathering system design by leveraging the digital oil field approach, utilising technology to rapidly optimise design, reduce design costs and optimise the development processes behind economic resource extraction aimed at ultimately delivering increased project value. In the past few years a step-change has been made in the optimisation of the engineering design model, with expanded concept level design, FEED-less design, and partially automated detailed design being executed on gathering system projects now being adopted. This was a step towards a fully integrated approach of the digital oil field. Through this process, it has become apparent that this methodology can be extended further through the targeted optimisation of the production model used in the establishment of CSG projects. This will enable increased revenue for a project. Field production profiles for both gas and water can be developed from preliminary reservoir assessment data. Using cost data for materials and installation, various scenarios can be assessed to optimise production volumes, surface infrastructure configuration, and total volume extracted on a dollar margin per unit energy basis. The optimisation measures explored in this paper are most critical to reservoir locations with a low drainage area per well, where reservoir drainage is maximised by refinement of the configuration of above-ground infrastructure. This has the potential to translate to a more optimised network, and greater profitability in the development of large-scale CSG fields.