There is an ongoing effort to research different forms of green energy to facilitate the energy transition. In the northern part of Bornea, solar energy is currently an attractive renewable energy option. However, the site is located in a tropical environment with limited access to floor space. This limits the spread of solar energy generation, which justifies the need to search for an alternative green way to generate electricity.
Reusing existing oil and gas facilities rather than decommissioning them to generate electricity as an additional source of revenue is an attractive option. This could unleash an important source of green energy to generate another stream of value by maintaining the same skilled workforce in the fossil fuel industry using oil and gas facilities.
The northern part of Borneo is mainly controlled by a complex interaction between Southeast Asian tectonics and delta systems, resulting in basin-wide high-pressure formation waters. The pore pressure profile of some wells drilled in the area reveals a slope in the pore pressure profile after which the pore pressure magnitude approaches the rock pressure, which means there is high pressure in the brine. Overpressure formation is basinwide, but the depth at which overpressure formation exists varies geographically.
Drilling in such formations has always been disappointing from a hydrocarbon exploration point of view, because it involves vulnerable traps. However, if we change our perspective, and do not necessarily look at the hydrocarbon as the only source of energy, these formations could have the potential to provide a new source of green energy by extracting the kinetic and thermal energy of the pressurized brine.
This paper presents the efforts and details of a pilot that was planned and implemented to illustrate the concept of reusing existing wells for electricity generators rather than abandoning them. The paper shares a workflow that can be added to an existing abandonment workflow to reuse wells and generate electricity. The demonstrated concept can be used in industry to enable simultaneous electricity generation during hydrocarbon production from existing or newly completed wells.
SPE members can download the full paper from SPE’s HSE and Sustainability Technical Discipline page for free from 23 May to 5 June.
Find paper SPE 215966 on OnePetro here.
