September 2006

• Optimizing drilling programs using full-wave imaging

  In the late 1990s, the development and commercial availability of three-component (3-C) digital geophones ushered in a new era in seismic acquisition. Modern recording systems, along with the new 3-C digital sensors, made it possible to deploy and record large-scale multicomponent 3-D surveys.
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• New tool makes casing drilling faster

  New top drive casing running and drilling system removes personnel and equipment from the rig floor, gets through trouble zones and cuts time off casing jobs. Conventional casing jobs run up against two time-consuming issues: First, the hole must be cleaned (reamed and wiped) in order to obtain a good cement job. This costs rig time and exposes the well bore to damage.

• Predict viscosity effects

  A hydraulically valid model with the resultant viscosity predicting algorithms has been developed for lost circulation material (LCM) added to non-aqueous drilling fluids.
  
  Measuring drilling fluid rheology for fluids containing LCM is difficult or impossible with a standard bob and sleeve rheometer because of the interference of the particles with the rotation of the sleeve in the narrow annular gap.

• Water detection plays critical role

  An operator must measure water content to devise an effective flow maintenance plan.
  
  A crucial component of flow assurance today is the need to predict and measure the water production profile in the well.

• Analysis assures product flows

  Flow assurance is a critical issue in offshore wells, and it becomes more and more critical as tieback distances and water depths increase. The right decisions are imperative because an operator will have to live with them through the life of a well or field or submit to expensive new solutions for a project already in place.

• Update the intelligent model

  Reservoir models are run more frequently, and the day could be approaching when they are continuously updated with real-time production well data. One thing everyone agrees on is that the industry is not there yet. There is debate about whether it actually will get there or getting all the way there will be useful enough to justify the effort.

• Fields get smarter

  Intelligent operations in the oil and gas exploration and production industry is a concept that has been coming into reality during the past few years. While exploration programs to find new hydrocarbon reserves can and must continue, the intelligent operations idea centers on known reservoirs.

• Get news from downhole

  Well monitoring and surveillance is the process driver for most of what counts as intelligent operations. Permanent monitoring of the production well bore and closely associated processes and infrastructure provide fundamentally better understanding of the well and reservoir.

• Design the intelligent well

  Intelligent wells are about timely information and response. Designed to obtain real-time downhole data to gain critical wellbore and reservoir information, they are likewise equipped with the well completion and control technology to enable swift, responsive actions that minimize asset risk and optimize production.

• The intelligent field comes full circle

  The ultimate, perfected vision of intelligent operations is a closed loop with the reservoir simulation as the broad base of the system, ongoing operating parameters all captured in real time and fed into the simulation, and the continuously updated simulation becoming the driver for optimization decisions.

• E&P interviews Lukoil chairman

  Russia can offer huge oil and gas reserves matched by huge engineering challenges to recovery. Lukoil Chairman of the Board Valery Isaakovitch Graifer, general chairman of the
  
  2006 SPE Russian Oil and Gas Technical Conference and Exhibition, analyzed the Russian oil and gas industry during an interview.

• Drift-off path prediction

  With drilling operations moving to ever-harsher environments, there is an increased need to ensure drilling riser integrity in unplanned incidents such as loss of station keeping.
  
  Working with a major drilling contractor, MCS has developed an on-board vessel/riser drift-off simulator for use on the latest generation of dynamically positioned (DP) drilling rigs.

• Shear magic

  It is becoming easier to get the message across about the value of land multicomponent seismic surveys. In the United States and Canada alone more than 150 projects have been undertaken using multicomponent acquisition systems which offer excellent coverage with survey sensors recording in the region of 18,000 channels.

• Just scratching the surface

  The term "what the market will bear" ideally should not apply to research and development. Unfortunately, it often does. Thus it is that the Exploration Geophysics Lab (EGL) at the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas is studying gas hydrates.

• Pushing the limits in a fractured reservoir

  The Colorado School of Mines Reservoir Characterization Project (RCP) is conducting time-lapse multicomponent seismic surveys at Rulison field, Piceance Basin, Colorado, to identify and monitor fracture zones in tight gas sands. Multicom-ponent seismic monitoring is being conducted in a tight gas development project for the first time, as downspacing to 10 acres is occurring.

• On the Move

  Trygve Hagevik joined RigNet as vice president, Europe and Africa, and will be based in Stavanger, Norway. Alan Walker joined the company as general manager, United Kingdom. In his position, he will manage the day-to-day operations as well as capitalize on the region's growth opportunities.

• Tech Trends

  dGB has launched OpendTect SSIS, a sequence stratigraphic interpretation system. In SSIS, seismic interpreters have new ways to visualize and analyze seismic data, which leads to better insights of sediment deposition, erosion and timing. In combination with OpendTect's neural networks plug-in, users can follow up with seismic facies clustering and study the resulting patterns and bodies, and their spatial distribution, in relation to geologic timing and system tracts.
  
   

• Storm clouds brewing

  By now, you are probably getting as tired of the continual dialogue over impending disasters as I am. The doom and disaster scenarios are irritating, demoralizing and, in some cases, debilitating. So, let's add another, just to see if the system can accommodate it.

• Peerless prognostications

  One of our peerless prognosticators (to use an overused sports-writerism) foretells interesting developments in the drilling arena for the 2007 Edition, a few of which we present here. Dr. Leon Robinson has certainly seen and caused enough drilling developments in his illustrious career to have some good ideas about what's coming.

• News and Analysis

  Paradigm is buying Earth Decision (ED), a provider of fully integrated shared-earth modeling for asset teams. Paradigm's Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Gibson said that the "shared vision of model-centric workflows" will enable asset teams to explore "what if" scenarios on the fly and determine the best plan for developing their reservoirs.

• Managing logistics of CBM extraction

  A new approach is needed to streamline data collection and information flow in fast-paced CBM operations. Rising interest in coalbed methane (CBM) as a source of natural gas is posing new logistics management problems for companies involved in CBM extraction.

• Desperate customers wanted

  People who are in the business of developing new technology often bewail the reluctance of potential users to take advantage of their products. The failure of many technologies to gain a commercially viable position in the marketplace has led some people to label the transition from a research prototype to commerciality as "the valley of death."

• Find the cutoff to sustain gas drilling

  As gas prices drift lower and costs rise, some plays will finish out of the money.
  
  High natural gas prices drive more production and greater conservation, a combination that threatens the economic viability of some projects. Simmons & Co. International detailed the thresholds for sustainable drilling in select gas plays.

• Follow the lure of the Middle East

  It's not easy for an independent to get in on the ground floor of a Middle East oil play.
  
  Winning oil and gas prospectors go where the oil is, and no place on earth has as much oil as the Middle East. Most of it is tied up by national oil companies and alliances intertwined with rules that define the kinds of relationships possible among businesses.

• Intrigue on the high seas

  An engineering masterpiece built in complete secrecy to pluck a Soviet submarine from the ocean floor is one of the industry's most amazing stories. As this is written, the GSF Explorer, a drillship with the most colorful history of any vessel ever to work in the petroleum industry, is operating in the Gulf of Mexico.

• Get accurate, CBM reservoir data

  While conventional tools and analysis methods are used with varying success to describe coalbed methane (CBM) reservoirs, few technologies have been developed specifically to address the key challenges - namely, which seams contain the most gas and how much water must be removed to produce it.

• Gas hydrate E&P: Dispelling the myths

  Natural gas hydrate is a solid, crystalline material that forms when gases, such as methane, combine with water under conditions of relatively high pressure and low temperature. The hydrate structure consists of an open latticework of water molecules that is stabilized by the gas molecules residing within regularly located voids or "cages."

• Threading the North Slope needle

  Continual communication and precise control enabled a record-setting thin bed lateral well to be drilled in Alaska - more are planned. When it came time to develop the Kuparuk-C sand lying about 7,100 ft (2,164 m) deep in the Nanuq/Kuparuk Pool in the south part of the Colville River field on Alaska's North Slope, ConocoPhillips's engineers and geologists were in agreement.

• Define strategic basin development

  Operators can systematically create wells that achieve the objectives of the enterprise.
  
  There are dozens of companies drilling and completing wells in the Barnett Shale of the Fort Worth Basin. The Barnett Shale represents a strategic basin for a number of operators and an important one for other operators.

• Canada gets almost-free pumping

  Everyone favors recycling, but few applications offer a chance to recycle natural gas.
  
  Just about the time you think the world has run low on gee-whiz ideas, another one comes along to renew your faith in the ability of the oil patch to come up with innovative solutions.

• Watching technology emerge

  Within companies that make their living introducing new technology to the oil and gas industry, the frustration is often almost palpable. Oil companies love to talk about and read about new technology. They're just terrified to be the first to actually use it.

• Curvature attributes delineate subtleties

  Identification of subtle faults and predicting fractures associated with folds and fractures is one of the major goals of careful seismic interpretation. With the common use of 3-D surface seismic data since the early 1990s, dip magnitude and dip azimuth have been used for enhancing faults that are difficult to see.

• Change connections in the loop

  In the oil and gas field, data volume grows exponentially every year in an ongoing global effort to best determine subsurface opportunities for drilling and production. At the same time, a significant evolution continues in how the pieces of the "data puzzle" fit together to produce a coherent and accurate description of the subsurface.

• New basins eyed for CO2 injection

  With higher energy prices and concern over global climate change, much research is now focusing on clean use of coal such as coal gasification, use of coal for production of liquid fuels, and sequestration of the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by these new and current technologies. In the Michigan and northern Appalachian basins, one of seven regional partnerships sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE), has completed a 2-year phase I analysis of the geologic capacity of the region to store CO2 and is now beginning a 4-year Phase 2 set of tasks.

• Simulator workflows come of age

  Using seismic reservoir characterization outputs as inputs to high-resolution reservoir models is not a new or particularly difficult concept to understand. However, the application of this workflow is, unfortunately, underutilized in the industry by both exploration and development asset teams