Oil recovery project underway on Pemex's Cantarell Field

Netherland, Sewell & Associates, Inc. (NSAI) is serving as advisors for Mexico's national oil company, Pemex Exploración y Producción (Pemex), on the nitrogen injection pressure maintenance crude oil recovery project at the Cantarell Field in the Mexican sector of the Gulf of Mexico. The company is also providing petroleum reservoir engineering, simulation, geological, geophysical, petrophysical, operational, and technical services.

In 1996, NSAI was selected by Pemex, the sixth largest oil company in the world, to work with their staff and other companies in identifying, planning, and implementing the Cantarell enhanced development project when production was at 1.074 million b/d of oil. Pemex's announced development plans anticipate daily oil production capacity to be 1.467 million b/d for the year 2000 and 2.223 million b/d by 2002 (equivalent to the combined oil production from the 25 largest fields in the USA). NSAI continues to work on the project in an advisory capacity. Additionally in 1996, NSAI was contracted by Pemex to begin a three-year program to evaluate and audit over 99% of Mexico's producing oil reserves.

"We feel privileged to have worked with Pemex for the last four years on these projects," said Frederic D. Sewell, president, Netherland, Sewell & Associates, Inc. "Together we recognized the need for a detailed implementation plan for pressure maintenance at Cantarell. We worked diligently with them to create a strategy that would add reserves and increase production. We look forward to our ongoing relationship."

Nitrogen injection project
The initiation of the world's largest nitrogen injection project began in June 2000 and is contracted to continue until 2015. The project is proceeding at Pemex's Akal Field of the Cantarell Complex, located in the Bay of Campeche, offshore Mexico. Pemex recently commissioned and brought on-line the first of four nitrogen generation modules. Each of the generation modules is designed to deliver 300 million cubic feet of nitrogen per day. The new nitrogen generation plant located in Atasta, near the Yucatan peninsula, will supply up to 1.2 billion cf/d of nitrogen for injection into the Akal Field to maintain reservoir pressure and production capacity, and to increase recovery by over 2 billion bbl of oil. The Akal Field contains over 30 billion bbl of oil in place, making it one of the largest super-giant oil fields in the world.

Edited by Dev George