A Comparison of Optimal Production of NIOC under Neutral State and IOC's Optimal Production Profile under IPC Limitations by Emphasizing on EOR/IOR Methods - Dorood Oil Field Development Case Study

Optimum depletion of oil reservoirs has been emphasized many times by Iranian supreme laws. To promote the effectiveness of the older version of Iranian Petroleum Contract (Buyback), Islamic Republic of Iran's Petroleum Ministry is allowed by law to design a new type of petroleum contract. Recently, new contract, so called IPC, is unveiled. Dorood oil field is one of the field which has been developed under Buyback contract. Many experts believe that, in this case, Buyback could not fulfill field's optimum production targets planned by NIOC. According to this claims and to evaluate how effective is IPC regarding to fulfilling optimum production, here, we tried to compare optimum production in neutral state (NIOC view) and what is expected to come out under IPC contractual limitations (IOC view). In the first step, optimum production paths were modeled and calculated using Dynamic Optimization Method under three different scenarios (reference, attractive and strict) and later data were analyzed. Results clearly show IPC's distortionary effect which means there is separation between NIOC and IOC's optimal production paths. So as a result, under IPC limitations contractor could not meet the production profile which NIOC targeted. IPC could not motivate the contractor to use EOR method in the field to promote the production as well. In all scenarios, contractor prefer to choose no injection or injection of a limited level of fluid into the reservoir as the optimum scenario.