BPMIGAS says reserve to production ratio remains unhealthy
Tuesday, July 24 2012 - 04:38 AM WIB
The increase of oil and gas reserve compared to production or reserve to production ratio (R/P ratio) remains unhealthy. The ideal ratio is difficult to be met if Indonesia only relies on finding new reserves from exploration activities, expert staff of upstream authority BPMIGAS, Haposan Napitupulu, said.
?The replacement of reserves can be undertaken by way of increasing recovery from existing oil fields through applying water flooding or enhanced oil recovery (EOR) method as implemented by Chevron at its Duri field through steam flooding technology,? Haposan, who is also former deputy for planning of BPMIGAs, told Petromindo.com.
He said given the average daily oil production of 930,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd), the total reserves that are exploited every year reach 340 million barrels of oil (mmbo) per year.
?If Recovery Factor of existing fields stands at only 30 percent per year, then, every year Indonesia must discover new reserves of 1.1 billion barrels of oil or equal to twice of Banyu Urip field in Cepu, East Java,? he said.
In other words, assuming that the discovery of oil per field reach about 10-20 mmbo, then, every year Indonesia must discover between 55 to 110 new fields. And, asuming that the Success Ratio of exploration is about 20 percent, then Indonesia must conduct drilling of exploration wells of between 275-500 wells per year, said Haposan.
Haposan noted that based on world statistic, the increase of reserves from exploration activities contribute about 20-25 percent of reserves rise, while the major part of reserves rise is contributed by the Recovery Factor of existing fields.
He said the volume of oil reserves that can be exploited (mineable) reaches about 3.7 billion barrels of oil, while the potential volume of hidden oil reserves that need to be recovered reaches about 43.7 billion barrels of oil. If Recovery Factor ratio is set at about 6 percent per year, there would be additional reserve of about 2.6 bbo per year, that can be translated into oil production of 700,000 bopd within 10 years through the implementation of EOR method.
Editing by Roffie Kurniawan