Rapid assessment of development-planning options

The west Kuwait development consists of four fields (Umm Gudair, Minagish, Abduliyah, and Dharif) and five major producing horizons (Minagish oolite, Najma, Sargelu, Marrat, Wara, and Burgan). A production target of 500,000 BOPD from these fields by mid-1999 was set in 1994 and planned to be sustained for a minimum of 5 years. Total combined production in 1998 was approximately 200,000 BOPD, It became apparent that a tool to describe and integrate all the west Kuwait production, from reservoirs, through gathering centers, to export, was required to address the complex range of subsurface, drilling, and facilities-implementation outcomes. A system-dynamics model was developed to investigate the bottlenecks in the system design and delivery program.