Recent discoveries (and additional prospects) in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GoM) offer tremendous potential, but present huge challenges to the industry. This same combination of potential and challenge is emerging or expected in other regions throughout the world, a situation that opens opportunity for innovative floating production systems.

Winds, waves, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures complicate Arctic operations, but forward-thinking designs are paving the way into the frontier.

New concepts and designs have pushed class societies to anticipate and develop rules for the next generation of offshore installations. Floating production advances are calling for class design review to be conducted in a truly holistic manner.

Winds, waves, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures complicate Arctic operations, but forward-thinking designs are paving the way into the frontier.

A common challenge for designers of turret moored FPSOs is ensuring alignment of the FPSO to the predominant environmental loading in extreme conditions. Use of thrusters to assist turret moorings under specific operating conditions to secure this alignment improves FPSO response, increases safety, and expands production windows. It is then necessary to carefully engineer the interaction between the thruster and mooring systems so that, should the thruster system fail, its consequences can be safely managed.

Fast and cost-effective, multizone stimulation using coiled tubing (CT) offers several advantages in a South Texas well.

Fracturing has a major impact on well productivity and ultimate recovery, and the current methods used to determine propped fracture geometry are not providing the information necessary for engineers to substantially improve fracturing results. A new alternative offers a better solution.

Monitoring microseismicity during reservoir production and injection is an area of growing interest.

A new frac technique combines a concentrated proppant slurry and energized fluids for optimal stimulation with minimal fluid to flow back.

A new liquid resin system added on-the-fly kept proppant in its place in more than 2,000 wells.

A new water-based drilling fluid has been developed specifically to contend with the unique challenges of onshore ultra-deep HP/HT wells in sensitive ecosystems.

A newly introduced wellbore stimulation tool increases the chance of fracturing success.

High density frac fluids enable hydraulic stimulation of ultra-deep reservoirs by reducing surface pressure for topside equipment.

Testing subsea actuators with live condensate fluids from actual field developments may become a new industry standard.

Applying integrated operations concepts extends field life and increases recovery.

The emergence and increasing adoption of Web services, based on standard Internet protocols, is beginning to transform E&P data management, reducing entrenched costs and facilitating faster, tighter integration of disparate systems.

With over a decade of use and nearly 700 completions worldwide, intelligent completion technology has made a mark in today’s upstream oil industry. Yet statistics surprisingly demonstrate that the technology is still being deployed mostly in regional hotspots by relatively few key players.

Deepwater production is challenged by well underperformance issues that are hard to diagnose early on and expensive to deal with later. Problems are amplified by reliance on few complex wells with sophisticated sand control media. A new non-intrusive surveillance method uses acoustic signals sent via the fluid column to identify impairment in sand-screened completions in real time.

A “numerical laboratory” can do the work of a core laboratory in a fraction of the time.

3-D numerical simulations provide realistic input for predictions of fracture gradient and wellbore stability for subsalt wells.

A calibrated pressure model offers pressure attributes for a holistic solution.

A training program aims to reduce the time it takes to educate new talent.

Will future exploratoin and appraisal wells be drilled without a rig?

Some of the biggest finds in decades lie offshore Brazil. National oil company, Petrobras, is delineating the fields and making plans to bring these enormous reserves into production.

More than US $34 billion in capex is expected to go to the floating production market over the next five years.

A new generation of fiber-optic technology will pay dividends in thermal recovery operations.

September tech trend briefs

You have already heard much more than you would like about the presidential campaign in the United States. Believe me, we Americans have, too.

September exploration, drilling, and production news.

Monitoring driving habits can save companies a substantial amount of revenue.

A group of young engineers who expanded the physical and technological boundaries of Gulf of Mexico (GoM) production became future leaders in Shell’s push into the ultra deep.

It is common knowledge the oil and gas business is losing many of its best people. The industry’s most experienced professionals are retiring — or are they?

“The Irish Rockall Basin, with its proven petroleum systems, is one of the few remaining lightly explored regions in NW Europe offering first class frontier exploration opportunities.” Minister of the Department of Communication, Energy, and Natural Resources, Ireland.

Who's going where in the upstream sector.

Companies can capitalize on a fast-changing job market because “Goodbye” may not be forever.