Agua Fría Field Lab

Q: What have been the most important technological advances at your Agua Fría field laboratory?

A: We are very happy with what has been achieved at the Agua Fría field laboratory. Our focus there has been on reservoir management from the very beginning. A lot of our initial technological applications were focused on analyzing and characterizing the subsurface if the field. We used magnetic resonance imaging, resistivity imaging and other technologies to gain a better understanding of the reservoir.

Q: What increases in production have been registered as a result of these successes?

A: Gaining a clearer understanding of the reservoirs allowed us to decide where to focus on development and where to focus on enhanced oil recovery. We managed to increase production around threefold. Once we moved on to the production phase, we focused on optimizing the drilling process to make sure that each well improved its productivity. We also optimized the completion process to improve well productivity. Once we managed to increase production, our target became to maintain these new production levels instead of seeing a successful completion, increasing production, and then going through a rapid decline. The field lab looked at how to maintain production levels by stopping the decline by applying maintenance operations alongside our new completion strategies.

Q: Do you see any similarities between your work in Agua Fría and potential future shale gas activities?

A: The reservoir characterization technology is slightly different on the shale side. We might use similar technologies, but the characterization workflow is different. It is a different type of rock, so the findings are not similar to those made in other areas. There are more technological similarities on the completion side, but when coming into these shale projects, we take the use of new completion technologies a little bit further.