Publications

The Banyu Urip field is the crown jewel of the Cepu Block onshore East Java, Indonesia. ExxonMobil Cepu Limited (EMCL) along with partners, Pertamina Exploration and Production Cepu (PEPC) and 4 Regional Owned Enterprises (BKS) have reached the end of the journey from exploration to appraisal drilling into early production and now full development. The Banyu Urip development has presented EMCL with a unique set of drilling challenges. This paper will outline how the challenges have been overcome to safely deliver 40 wells with two locally manufactured rigs 750 days ahead of schedule and more than $100 million USD below plan. On ExxonMobil operated projects, safety is always the primary objective as exhibited in our credo “Nobody Gets Hurt.” The EMCL operations team enhanced the behavior based safety toolkit to successfully address the safety challenges associated with a large, unskilled local workforce at the rig site. It has been ExxonMobil’s experience that teams with strong safety culture also exhibit high efficiency and low levels of Non-Productive Time (NPT). In Banyu Urip, the NPT rate has been 40% lower than typical land operations. Strong performance can be attributed to a few key factors: Experienced team focused on National Development, Adequate planning time, Dedicated Drilling Quality team and Relentless pursuit of optimizations using ExxonMobil’s Limiter Redesign ProcessTM. The Banyu Urip reservoir presents a number of drilling challenges. The reservoir section is a vugular carbonate formation with a significant gas cap containing high concentrations of H2S and CO2. The operations team must be prepared to respond quickly to total lost returns caused by the vugular formation to avoid any potential influx. The EMCL team has optimized a process of curing losses in the carbonate structure using a downhole treatment called DOB2C. Perfecting this process has saved significant rig time, reduced well control risk and resulted in wells with good zonal isolation and additional production capacity versus prediction. Combined with the strong safety culture, the final results of the Banyu Urip drilling campaign have been excellent, making the program a great success for EMCL, our partners and the Republic of Indonesia.