In contrast to oil field development, gas field development requires tight integration of subsurface, surface and economic issues due to the difficulty of storing surplus produced gas and the large effect of the back-pressures in a surface network on the individual well performance. As a major gas supplier the Shell Group, and in particular NAM, has extensive experience in this field.

The gas production from onshore fields in the North Friesland area is a recent NAM development. A 10 million cubic meter per day LTS gas treatment installation located near the village of Anjum came on stream in 1997. Production initially started from 3 wells in 2 fields to deliver gas to the Gasunie grid at Grijpskerk. The total area comprises 10 fields and 4 remaining prospects and is planned to be fully developed by the year 2001, using wet gas pipelines to route the production to either the Anjum LTS installation or the Grijpskerk SilicaGel installation.

The Rotliegend reservoirs in this part of the Netherlands are very heterogeneous and require a more detailed subsurface simulation than feasible with the standard NAM tool for gas field development (GENREM). In addition, the area is close to the Waddenzee and based on extensive ecological research, NAM uses a stringent, self-imposed ecological constraint, whilst evaluating the development plans for this area. Detailed subsidence studies have been run using subsidence-modeling tools, which run under a software user-interface called FrontEnd, an in-house development by the Shell Group. Also running under this interface is an application for gas field development called Gas Field Planning Tool (GFPT). GFPT combines a detailed subsurface simulator with a surface simulator using a development planning module, which handles economic and operational aspects of the integrated model. Lastly, the interface gives access to a powerful command language and a mathematical toolbox, which can be used to define almost any missing functionality.

Making use of the flexibility offered by the FrontEnd interface and with help from available expertise in RTS (Shell Rijswijk), an integrated GFPT model was built, which not only incorporates operational and economic constraints, but also does optimization and subsidence analysis. The model is used to evaluate all development options and scenarios for this area in a consistent manner. Therefore, all proposed development plans are optimized within all applied constraints whether they are related to surface, subsurface, economic, or environmental aspects.

Production history and well performance are very close to those predicted by these detailed models, which will allow accurate prediction of future field performance and subsidence.