Development of Marginal/Mature Oil Fields:

A Case Study of the Sinclair Field

P. Resnyanskiy, T. Babadagli, University of Alberta

• Well production/injection data

Abstract • Standard suite of well logs for most of the vertical wells (GR,
Development of marginal/mature fields has become popular SP, resistivity, neutron, PE, caliper)
because of a significant decline in new field discoveries and • Core analysis – wettability/relative permeability study
high oil prices. In particular, small size fields of this kind are • PVT analysis
more challenging because of limited options for development. • Pressure data for most of the wells for the years 2006 and
This paper presents a study on the Sinclair field located in Al- 2007
berta, Canada. The field has 19 wells, six of which are horizontal, This study looks at the reservoir from a different angle and ana-
and have been in production for more than 20 years. Despite the lyzes the field behaviour and reason for low oil production before
quality of oil (40°API, 1.5 cp) and rock properties (20% average
and after the waterflood project, and proposes a development plan
porosity, water-wet sandstone), the current production is less
based on this analysis and numerical modelling study.
than 100 bbl/D for the whole field. The field is now undergoing
waterflooding. The main challenges are the thin pay zone (~4 m), Table 1: Development stages and properties of the
severe water production and a puzzling recovery factor of ap- field.
proximately 10%.
The current study consists of three phases: numerical reservoir Years Number of Wells Well Type
modelling and history match to understand the reasons for low 1984 – 1985 4 Producer
oil production and to analyze the hydrodynamic characteristics 1993 – 1995 11 Producer
of the field, characterization of reservoir and interwell connec- 2003 4 Injector
tivity using static and production data and proposing an enhanced Average porosity, % 20.5
oil recovery technique supported by field scale numerical sim- Average thickness, m 4.16
ulation. After modelling and history matching stages, potential Average initial water saturation, % 30
Length, km 4.6
reserves locations are estimated for possible dilute surfactant Width, km 1.9
injection. Based on interwell connectivity, different injection Reservoir Temperature, ˚C 29.5
schemes that use some producers as injectors are tested. The ob- Initial pressure, kPa 4,296
tained results are subject to further evaluation and analysis to de- Saturation pressure, kPa 4,192
rive the economic viability of the field. Reservoir fluid density @ Psat, kg/m3 709.9
Reservoir fluid viscosity, mPa*s 1.56
Solution gas/oil ratio, m3/m3 35.5
Formation volume factor, SCM/CM 1.088
Introduction Formation gas volume factor, SCM/CM 0.02518
Historical maximum well average daily oil, m3 22
The Sinclair field is a small mature Albertan oilfield operated Total cumulative oil production, m3 94,600
by Husky Energy. Table 1 shows the field event chronology, the
reservoir properties and production summary. The following three
stages can be clearly defined: exploratory, development, and major
development and secondary recovery. The field produced under
natural drive until the secondary recovery stage was initiated after
a reservoir simulation study. As a result, two pairs of horizontal in-
jectors were drilled through the assumed north and south bound-
aries of the reservoir, and water injection commenced in December
2003. The plan was to improve field recovery factor from 6 – 24%
within 20 years. In 1998, for a short term, Wells 08-11 and 06-10
were converted to water injectors. The general outlook of the field
is given in Figure 1.
Data to be used in the analysis of mature fields are usually lim-
ited to production data and well data (cores, logs and tests) are
rarely available (this is especially true for small fields and early
periods of development)(1-7). Acquiring additional data (cores, well
tests and well logs, etc.), in most situations, cannot be justified eco-
nomically. The field under consideration in this paper falls into this
category. Available for the study were: FIGURE 1: Areal view of the Sinclair field.
April 2010, Volume 49, No. 4 29
Table 2: Pressure history of the wells (unit: kPa). Table 3: Well correlation coefficient obtained from the
Well 1983 1984 1985 1986 1988 1990 1993 1995 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2006 2007
wavelet analysis.
16-02 4532 4389 4327 4222 3971
05-10 4532 3078
06-10 4532 3995 1973 2566 1967 3882 4892
02/06-10 4532 1639 4014
06-11 4532 2461
07-10 4532 2657 2276 1865 3065
07-11 4532 2683 1817
08-10 4532 4051 3296 2710 2375 3086
09-10 4532 1638 2930 3758
09-11 4532
10-10 4532 3104 1671 1773
11-10 4532 3443 2916 1629 1586
05-11 4532 3311 2900 3430
06-11 4532 4175 4037 3089 2228
07-11 4532 3184 2930
08-11 4532 4532 3309
09-11 4532 3555 3604 2946 2902
10-11 4532 3619
11-11 4532 2978 1828 1976
12-11 4532 2869 1972 1709
11-12 4532 3603
Pavq 4532 4532 4051 4389 4251 4016 4222 3459 2882 3149 2873 2710 2108 3237 2750

Data Analysis This behaviour can only be explained by the discontinuous

Well-Logs, Core Study
Well log analysis consistently showed very low scatter pay zone
porosity and water saturation values. Pay thickness at a particular
well location could also be clearly defined and varied slightly. The
AccuMap database was used to find existing well-log data for all
the surrounding wells licensed to different companies in an attempt
to define the reservoir boundaries. This demonstrated that there is
little uncertainty in the western boundary of the reservoir; there-
fore it can be easily mapped and fixed constant in the model.
The cored wells (08-10 and 08-11) exhibited high permeability
to air, ranging from 100 – 475 mD. Meanwhile, the pressure data
(Table 2) indicate that the pressures for most of the wells are close
to the initial pressure, even after the waterflooding over many
years of production. At first, this was attributed to the water injec-
tion strategy as discussed in the next section.
Water Injection Analysis
The comparison of injection/production data revealed that the
injected water has little effect on field pressure. As seen in Figure
2, the amount of water injected exceeds the field cumulative liquid
production 20 times for the same period. Almost all of the water
(510 × 103 SCM) was injected through the northern pair of wells.
Historical field cumulative liquid production over that period was
160 × 103 SCM. With the assumption of having no substantial
aquifer support, the only explanation is that the water moved in
different directions and only a small part of it fed the reservoir. Be-
cause of this, the water injectors could not easily be incorporated
into a simulation model.
Water Inj. vs. Oil Prod
700,000
Cum water inj (Dec. 2003)
600,000 Cum oil prod. since Dec. 2003
Cum liq prod since Dec. 2003
500,000
SCM
nature of the pay zone and compartmentalization because of its
severe thinness. Hence, building the static model of such a reservoir
turns out to be a very difficult task to accomplish. This analysis also
gave a good indication of the northern and the southern reservoir
boundaries and demonstrated that the only way to explain the field
production and pressure behaviour would be by introducing se-
rious permeability heterogeneity and minding the possible discon-
tinuities of the pay zone in the model. This requires a mapping of
discontinuity (or interrelationship) among the wells as explained
in the next section.
Wavelet Analysis of Production Data
Wavelet data analysis was found to be a powerful tool to account
for this interrelationship. During the screening of production data
analysis techniques(8-17), which can help derive useful information
(interwell connectivity in particular), this method was chosen be-
cause of its ability to manage non-stationarity issues. This ability is
very important in obtaining meaningful correlations for wells that
were started at different dates and have considerable production
and complex shut-in history.
We followed the variance analysis of details method as previ-
ously described and tested(17). The Db4 wavelet was used for de-
composition; base trends were not included in the calculations.
The first rates of the horizontal injectors were analyzed against
the liquid rates of producers. Figure 3 shows a typical plot of cor-
relation coefficient vs. time, which corroborates the conclusions
previously described. Table 3 shows the correlation coefficients
obtained by analyzing producers’ liquid rates against each other.
The values of the coefficients are not of a very high order (in-
cluding base trends boosts them significantly), but they lead to the
conclusion that is in agreement with other data available for the
study. This analysis showed that the reservoir could be divided into
35,000 two zones from an interwell relationship point of view (Figure 4).
30,000 15-10 vs. 10-10
0.00
25,000 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
-0.20

Correlation Coeff.

400,000 20,000
-0.40
300,000 15,000

-0.60
200,000 10,000

-0.80
100,000 5,000

-1.00
0 0
Dec-2002 Jan-2004 Feb-2005 Mar-2006 Apr-2007 Jun-2008
-1.20
Time Time, mo
FIGURE 2: Production and injection data (unit: scm). FIGURE 3: A typical example of correlation coefficient vs. time.
30 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
 Top

Lower quality sand

FIGURE 7: Representation of the discontinuity/poor permeability

pattern searched in I and J directions.

for each gridblock. Taking into consideration the small thickness

of the pay zone and the depositional process, it was possible to
FIGURE 4: Reservoir division from interwell connectivity point of view. obtain an indication of where we could expect low permeability/
high discontinuity areas. The representation of the grid formation
Plotting the water-cut values for the wells in blocks 10 and 11 top and thickness pattern for this type of discontinuous and com-
(Figures 5 and 6) on the basis of this approach reveals that the wells partmentalized system is shown in Figure 7.
in the zones obtained by the wavelet analysis exhibits a common
water production trend. The areas of possible low permeability zones or discontinuities
are given in Figs. 8 and 9. Note that this map was generated based
on the correlation coefficients obtained through the wavelet anal-
ysis. For example, the J direction map given in Figure 9 clearly
Reservoir Model and History Match shows a barrier explaining the northern and western boundaries of
Zone 1. The discontinuity because of the stratigraphic features of
After the data analyses previously summarized, it became clear
that the key to understanding and modelling the field would be
in the permeability distribution maps for I and J directions. After
entering all the formation tops and thickness data into the black-oil
option of a commercial reservoir simulator (CMG) and obtaining
extrapolated areal maps, the permeability values were generated
Block-10 WCT
100

90

80

70
WCT, %

60

50

40

30 w07-10 w08-10
20 w09-10 w10-10

10 w11-10
FIGURE 8: White space indicates the lower permeability zones in I
0
direction (red points represent the well locations).
Dec-2004 Jul-2005 Feb-2006 Aug-2006 Mar-2007 Sep-2007 Apr-2008

Time, mo
FIGURE 5: Block 10 water-cut values.

Block-11 WCT
100

90

80

70

60
WCT, %

50

40
w09-11 w08-11
30
w07-11 w06-11
20
w05-11 w11-11
10
w12-11
0
Dec-2004 Jul-2005 Feb-2006 Aug-2006 Mar-2007 Sep-2007 Apr-2008

Time, mo FIGURE 9: White space indicates lower permeability zones in J

direction (red points represent the wells locations). Figure 11.
FIGURE 6: Block 11 watercut values. Permeability map of the matched model in I direction.
April 2010, Volume 49, No. 4 31
 30

Oil Rate SC - Monthly, m3/day

20

10

0
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

FIGURE 10: Reservoir 3-D view. The top difference between the “two
parts” of the pay exceeds its average thickness.
the reservoir is not obvious in these 2D maps. Hence, the 3D view
of the reservoir compartmentalization is given in Figure 10.
Based on the information given in Figures 8 – 10, the perme-
ability maps were generated with a certain degree of tweaking
(Figure 11). The static model obtained yielded a decent history
match for rates and pressures (Figures 12 – 14). For most of the
wells, after a certain point the model failed to represent water
cuts accurately; hence, the growing difference in Figure 12 after
2004. There can be several reasons for this: inaccurately measured
values of water produced, a very minor part of the water injected
through the northern pair of horizontals flooded the pay zone or
water coning occurred and the strength of the aquifer is more than
the assumed amount. Another possible explanation of a sudden
jump in the water production at late stages with no oil production
is a “piston like” displacement that could possibly be caused by a
Time, date
FIGURE 13: Oil production match for well 07-10.
homogeneous sand layer and favourable mobility and wettability
characteristics.
It should be emphasized that the average permeability of the
field (as seen in Figure 11) at this scale (numerical grid scale) is
remarkably lower than the core permeability to air. This could be
attributed to the heterogeneity caused by discontinuity at the grid
scale. In other words, the permeability values obtained through the
analysis previously described represent field (grid) scale permea-
bility rather than the core scale. The core scale permeability values
(order of 100 mDs) were tested in the simulator and yielded unre-
alistic production values. Therefore, this approach was found to
be the only way to represent the geology of the reservoir, which is
20.0
Water Rate SC - Monthly, m3/day

50

0 1,000 2,000 3,000 15.0

45

40

35 10.0

30

25
5.0
20

15
0.0
10 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008

5 Time, date
0 FIGURE 14: Water production match for well 07-10.

FIGURE 11: Permeability map of the matched model in I direction. 1.00

0 1,000 2,000 3,000
0.90
Field History Match
Oil - real data 0.80
100,000 Oil - simulator output
0.70
Water - real data
Water - simulator output
80,000 0.60

0.50
SCM

60,000
0.40

0.30
40,000
0.20

20,000 0.10

0.00
0
Feb-82 Nov-84 Aug-87 May-90 Jan-93 Oct-95 Jul-98 Apr-01 Jan-04 Oct-06
FIGURE 15: Oil saturation as of today. Black colour indicates unswept
FIGURE 12: Field history match. areas with oil saturation close to initial.
32 Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology
 Relative Permeability Curves in the next 10 years, which would increase the recovery factor
1 by 2.1%.
krow - basecase krw - basecase
0.9 krow-surfactant krw-surfactant However, if the wells are left to produce by themselves without
any injector conversion, the cumulative production would have
Kr - Relative Permeability
0.8
been 22,000 SCM, yielding a 2.5% increase in the recovery factor.
0.7
This demonstrates that simple water injection through existing
0.6
wells is highly ineffective and a small amount of production from
0.5 a well may still be valuable to the total production.
0.5

0.4 Dilute Surfactant Injection

0.3
0.2
0.1
0 were ruled out because of the cost (and availability for CO2), be-
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
Sw
FIGURE 16: Change in relative permeabilties after addition of
surfactant into water.
deemed to be the main reason for the low oil production that makes
this field a marginal case.
According to the geological representation built in this study,
oil originally in place (OOIP) is very close to 1 × 106 SCM and
the current recovery factor is 10%. Previously unpublished works
reported different values of OOIP, mainly because of the differ-
ences in the assumptions and especially related to the definition of
the boundaries.
Further Development Strategy
Well Conversion
Because of the fact that all wells but one already watered out
(Figures 5 and 6), the model was tested first for optimized well
conversion schemes based on the obtained saturation maps be-
fore testing any enhanced oil recovery method (Figure 15). This
optimization exercise is based on converting relatively low pro-
duction wells to an injector if they have some degree of commu-
nication to producers around. After testing different options and
combinations in zone 1, it became apparent that the only well that
could be converted to an injector effectively was 08-11 because of
its smallest production contribution. Converting any other well(s)
would drop the production for the zone even more. In zone 2, sev-
eral options and combinations were tested and the optimal solution
was found to be the conversion of Wells 05-10 and 12-11 to an in-
jector. Thus, the maximum recovery was obtained when injecting
water through Wells 08-11, 05-10 and 12-11 at 300 SCM/month/
well. Increasing injection rates showed to be ineffective because of
excessive water production. This scheme resulted in 19,000 SCM
After a screening test, it was observed that only two enhanced
oil recovery methods could be applied in the field: Gas (miscible
hydrocarbon or CO2) or dilute surfactant. Hydrocarbon and CO2
0.7 0.8 0.9 1
cause the target oil was small in amount. There exists an infrastruc-
ture for waterflooding and dilute (low concentration) surfactant
injection was thought to be an efficient method because of low
cost of operating expenses and capital expenditure.
In light of the size and production rates of the field, diluted sur-
factant injection (0.1 wt%) is likely to be one of the very few options
to have incremental recovery in a cost-effective fashion, because
there exists a waterflooding infrastructure and it requires relatively
small volumes of water, and thereby low surfactant concentration
without any polymer addition owing to a favourable mobility ratio.
Also, low concentration surfactant injection (dilute surfactant) has
shown success in sandstone reservoirs in particular(18-22).
The difficulty faced in this study was the absence of interfacial
tension (IFT) data and, hence, a simplified forecast was attempted
based on industry experience(18-22). The following assumptions
were made in this exercise:
• Initial oil/water IFT of 25 dyne/cm
• Anionic surfactant
• Surfactant dissolves mainly in aqueous phase
• 0.1 pore volume (PV) of surfactant slug reduces oil/water
IFT 100 times
Figure 16 shows the relative permeability shift because of an
IFT reduction obtained from the residual oil saturation values
and measurement practices available in the literature(18-22) for
analogous sandstone reservoirs. Figure 17 illustrates the forecast
runs for both well conversion and different dilute surfactant in-
jection schemes. The surfactant injection of 0.1 PV at assumed
conditions yields a very slight improvement of around 3,000 SCM
for the next 10 years. Obviously, oil/water IFT could be decreased
even more with increasing surfactant concentration up to the crit-
ical micelle concentration, but this would increase the cost. There-
fore, considering the attributes of the field, the high concentration
(micellar) surfactant injection option was discarded because it was
potentially non-profitable.

Relative Permeability Curves

1 Conclusions
krow - basecase krw - basecase
0.9 krow-surfactant krw-surfactant
It is quite clear that small, mature/marginal fields have become
Kr - Relative Permeability

0.8
a point of interest, especially with increasing oil prices, and will
0.7 continue to be a point of interest in the near future. The Sinclair
0.6 field is a good example of this, with very favourable oil and rock
0.5
characteristics but extremely low production (the recovery factor
is found around 10% after ~24 years of production). Two issues
0.5
are critical in the development of marginal or mature fields: deter-
0.4 mining what are the main reasons for low production and high re-
0.3 sidual oil saturation and what is the most economical solution with
0.2
minimal risk. The former is sometimes more challenging than the
latter and was a concern in the Sinclair field.
0.1
Our simulation results based on the geological map gener-
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 ated and mainly considering the discontinuous and compartmen-
talized nature of the reservoir, suggested that there is still around
Sw
900x103SCM of oil in the reservoir and that dilute surfactant
FIGURE 17: Forecast scenarios to develop the Sinclair field. methods allow for up 50 – 80% recovery of the remaining oil. The
April 2010, Volume 49, No. 4 33
saturation maps of the runs give insight that the reason for such
low recovery and ineffectiveness of increased injection rates is
poor connection between wells because of permeability heteroge-
neity. Heterogeneity and low reservoir pressure result in very small
drainage areas and, paired with a small number of wells in each
zone, make it very difficult to recover any additional oil with the
investments that are already there.
In specific reference to the field considered in this study, one
may conclude that the results and conclusions arrived at in the
course of the production data analysis and numerical simulations
explain the low productivity of the field. This analysis also showed
that pressuring the field through injection is highly difficult be-
cause of the connectivity between the injectors and producers. The
optimal solution is to detect well-connected wells for small types
of pattern injection with the possible addition of an enhanced oil
recovery agent. Dilute surfactant injection was suggested to be a
profitable solution and was tested. Given the current trend of oil
prices, dilute surfactant injection is expected to possibly give a
new life to the Sinclair field.
Acknowledgements
This field case study and access to most materials were possible
with the permission of Husky Energy. Numerical simulation was
accomplished using IMEX option of the CMG simulation package.
We greatly appreciate these supports.
Nomenclature
GR = gamma ray
Pe = photoelectric
SP = spontaneous potential
SI Metric Conversion Factors
cp × 1.0* E − 03 = Pa∙s
dyne × 1.0* E − 02 = mN
*Conversion factor is exact.
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Provenance—Original Petroleum Society manuscript, Development
of Marginal/Mature Oil Fields: A Case Study of the Sinclair Field
(2008-093; SPE Paper 134227), first presented at the 9th Canadian In-
ternational Petroleum Conference (the 59th Annual Technical Meeting
of the Petroleum Society), June 17–19, 2008, in Calgary, Alberta. Ab-
stract submitted for review January 2, 2008; editorial comments sent to
the author(s); December 17, 2009; revised manuscript received December
30, 2009; paper approved for pre-press December 30, 2009; final approval
February 2, 2010. 
Authors’ Biographies
Pavel Resnyanskiy is a recent graduate of
the University of Alberta. His research in-
terest lies in reservoir characterization and
development of mature oil fields. Resnyan-
skiy holds a M.Eng. degree in petroleum
engineering and a B.Sc. degree in chem-
ical engineering from Astrakhan State
Technical University in Russia.
April 2010, Volume 49, No. 4 35
Tayfun Babadagli is a professor in the
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department, School of Mining and Pe-
troleum, at the University of Alberta. He
previously served on the faculty at Istanbul
Technical University in Turkey, and Sultan
Qaboos University in Oman. His areas of
interest include modelling fluid and heat
flow in heterogeneous and fractured res-
ervoirs, reservoir characterization through
stochastic and fractal methods, optimization of oil/heavy-oil re-
covery by conventional/unconventional EOR methods and CO2
sequestration. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Istanbul
Technical University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Uni-
versity of Southern California, all in petroleum engineering. Ba-
badagli is currently an associate editor for SPE Reservoir Eval.
and Eng. He previously served on SPE Education and Profession-
alism and the SPE Career Guidance and Student Development
Committees. He was also a member of the Steering Committee
for the 2003 SPE Forum Series in the Middle East, the Technical
Program Committees for the 2003 and 2005 SPE Asia Pacific
Improved Oil Recovery Conferences, 2005 SPE Asia Pacific Oil
& Gas Conferences, 2006 and 2010 SPE Int. Oil & Gas Confer-
ences in China, 2009 CIPC, and 2008 and 2009 Int. Petr. Tech.
Conferences (IPTC).