Reservoir Characterization and Engineering Project Experience

Michael J. Uland

Director of Reservoir Technologies

    Improved Oil Recovery

      Water Floods

      • Identify, Design and Implement small (100 to 500 acre) waterfloods
      • Infill pattern waterflood projects, Design, Startup, and Monitoring:

      Polymer Floods

      • DOE-M1 project : Optimize polymer quality control for Injection Facility and Wells
      • DOE-M2 project : Oil field polymerization plant installation and startup
      • Design and implementation of Waterflood-to-Polymer Flood conversions
      • Polymer 'vertical flow-profile' conformance modification program
      • X-linked Polymer 'Skin Damage Removal' using H2O2 treatments:

      Surfactant Floods

      • DOE-219R project: Post-flood reservoir coring to evaluate vertical recovery efficiency
      • DOE-M1 project: EOR fluid injection pattern-conformance remediation
      • DOE-M2 project : Project Optimization, Injectivity, Sor, Slug size, Surface facilities
      • EOR Pilot Project Operation: Injection Plant, and Observation Well Program
      • EOR Project Supervision, Design and Implementation: Robins 102B, Illinois Basin
      • Designed novel dilute-surfactant "recycle-flood" , Illinois Basin

      Heavy Oil Floods

      • "Cold Flow" Production: SOZ project, San Joaquin Basin
      • Fireflood, reservoir monitoring and air injector ignition: Fry Project, Illinois Basin
      • Steam Huff-and-Puff pilot well testing, Illinois Basin

      CO2 Floods

      • Immiscible CO2 Huff-and-Puff Well Stimulation, Pilot testing: Illinois Basin

    Integrated Reservoir Characterization

      Petrophysics

      • Low Resistivity (bypassed pay) identification using pulsed-neutron tools. (GOM)
      • Waterflood Infill Wells (bypassed pay) using SP, Sw, and detailed offset wells Rw-meas.
      • Conventional Log Analysis, Error Minimization (Multimin), Neural Nets for Log Estimation
      • Calibration of Petrophysical models to predict Permeability (flow calibrated with PLT logs)

      Geophysics

      • Acoustic Impedance for use in 3-D property models and constrained fluid identification.

      Geostatistics

      • Geostatistical Reservoir Model Construction: Indonesia, North Sea, Irish Sea, Cook Inlet, East Texas, West Texas, Gulf of Mexico.
      • Geostatistical Models to quantify Top-of-Structure and Net Pay risk for proposed wells

      3-D Modeling

      • Deterministic 3-D Reservoir Model Construction: Indonesia, Egypt, North Sea, Irish Sea, Cook Inlet, East Texas, West Texas, Gulf of Mexico, Illinois, Michigan, Oklahoma, Wyoming, and F.S.U.
      • Data Quality Control for 3-D Models: Insure that the Seismic, Logs, Maps, Geology, GeoChem, and Engineering Data fit within a consistent geo-model.
      • Experimental Work to add Dual Porosity and Perm data to static 3-D geo-models prior to upscaling. (MI., WY. and West TX.)
      • Approximations for 'fault modeling problems' and custom solutions for 3-D fault modeling.

      Reservoir Engineering

      • Eclipse Fluid Flow Models (Black Oil); Primary and Secondary Projects
      • Gas cross-flow modeling between co-mingled zones, Optimum completion
      • Identify Flow-Units; optimize Geo-model upscaling for fit-for-purpose fluid flow models.

    Reservoir Management

      Acquisition, Divestiture and Unitization

      • Acquisition Team: Illinois and Michigan Basin.
      • Waterflood Unitization Design and expert witness for contested hearings: Illinois Basin
      • Primary Unitization Design and expert witness for contested hearings: Michigan Basin
      • Partner's Re-Determination of net revenue: North Sea
      • Asset Evaluation Team, North Africa Project, and Offshore India Project.

      Reservoir Monitoring

      • Reservoir surveillance techniques; primary and secondary recovery process: (USA)
      • Fiberglass Observation well program; Time-lapse Induction logging: Illinois basin
      • Cross-Well Electromagnetic Fluid-Front Imaging: Lawrence Co, IL. (w/Sandia)
      • Production logging for multi-zoned, cased-hole, rod-pumped active wells: San Joaquin
      • PLT and Pulsed-Neutron logging for cased hole liquids production: North Sea
      • Transient Test analysis: pre and post workovers: San Joaquin, Michigan, Illinois Basins

    Operations and Drilling

      Operations

      • New Well Completions, individual zone testing: MI, IL, San Joaquin Basins
      • Workover candidate identification, AFEs, workover procedures: MI, IL, San Joaquin
      • Plug and abandon procedures, site reclamation, MI, IL, San Joaquin Basins
      • Matrix acid, acid frac, and propped hydraulic fracture design, and implementation. MI, IL.
      • Experimental polymer -gel casing sqz to repair casing damage (passes EPA-MIT testing)
      • Rod-Pumping Unit Design and Installation: Michigan, Illinois, San Joaquin Basins
      • Gravel Packed 'screen recovery' and re-install liner and screens: San Joaquin Basin

      Facilities

      • Correct fluid emulsion problems from Surfactant-Polymer and Fire floods, Illinois Basin
      • Design and Startup for 100,000 bwpd waterflood Injection Facilities, Illinois Basin
      • Oil field Waste Handling Fac., deep disposal well design, startup, Illinois Basin
      • Open-earth pit abandonment and site remediation (drilling and production) , Illinois Basin
      • Production Facility Design, Replacements, Upgrades: Illinois Basin
      • Remote Instrumentation (via phone line) and Injection Plant automation.

      Drilling

      • DOE-M2 Project: 105 well drilling program: AFE, wells specs, project implementation
      • Under-balanced short-radius horizontal well program (foam drilling): Michigan Basin
      • Fishing jobs, both logging tools and downhole drilling assembly's: Michigan, Illinois
      • Locate and properly re-abandon old improperly plugged cable-tool wells.
      • Rig Foreman, onsite responsibility; Drilling and Workover rigs: Illinois Basin.

Return to "Meet the Staff"