Old – the word used to define a mature oil and gas field. Webster’s dictionary defines the term ‘old’ as persisting from an earlier time or long standing. At Global Oil and Gas LLC however, our definition of a mature field is not defined by age but rather by where the field is with respect to its peak production. In other words, a mature field is one where production has reached its peak and has started to decline.
The graph below is a production curve over time for an actual field in North America. The y-axis represents the daily production level. You can see that production started in the mid 1950s and steadily increased until it hit its peak in 1968. At this point, production started to decline and moved this field into the category of a mature field
location of Mature Oil Fields