During the 3 weeks since hurricane Katrina ploughed across the passes of the Mississippi southeast of New Orleans, La., tentative damage assessments have evolved into a clearer picture of the... more

Through advancements in well control, the ability to more precisely control bottomhole circulation pressure (BHCP) and industry experience, underbalanced drilling (UBD) and its variations are gaining the industry's confidence and... more

Managed-pressure drilling (MPD) technology is a collection of techniques that has been evolving on land drilling programs over the past couple of decades. At the root of the technology is... more

Managed-pressure drilling (MPD) has long held the promise of improved safety and efficiency. By precisely controlling and monitoring the annular fluid pressure drillers can avoid unwanted formation fluid influx, drilling... more

Complex deepwater projects require planning and foresight that have not been required for shallowwater installations in the past. The deeper the water, the more the engineer is required to think... more

The low-hanging fruit in even the deepwater provinces of the world has been picked over to a large extent, leaving new discoveries that tend to be smaller and located at... more

High pressure/high temperature (HP/HT) production has always posed additional engineering challenges to subsea pipelines. As subsea pipeline use has become more widespread in shallower water such as the North Sea,... more

A new tool is taking the guesswork out of assessing drilling and completion hazards. A rapid geomechanics risk analysis tool is providing operators with risk assessments at the earliest stage of... more

The past 2 years have seen more than 30 new entrant companies from North America and the United Kingdom focusing on remaining exploration and appraisal potential in the UK Continental... more

Even before S.R. Rutherford and R.H. Williams proposed their three-fold classification of amplitude variation offset (AVO) types in 1989, the geophysical community has sought to extract value from the information... more

Inversion of the seismic amplitude into impedance is attractive because impedance is a layer property while amplitude is a property of the interface between layers. Impedance is directly measured during... more

A multipath screen system provides multiple benefits for an Egyptian deepwater sand control completion in the prolific deep offshore gas play of the Nile Delta. Egypt's Simian/Sienna deepwater development posed... more

Expandable multizone completions in unconsolidated strata help lock sand in place, and new swellable packer technology helps achieve zonal isolation. For many years, openhole completions consistently have delivered better performance than... more

Production improvement may be summarized as the delivering of incremental productivity by applying a systematic approach that turns problems into opportunities. The challenge of satisfying the constantly increasing demand for energy... more

While it should be lauded as an achievement, the reality of the recent US Energy Policy Act of 2005 is that it fails to adequately promote and expand the use... more

Geopressure- and wellbore stability-related issues cost the industry more than US $8 billion a year and impacts both environmental and individual health and safety. To help reduce cost and increase... more

The MonoDiameter System installs and expands similar sized liners in a well without a decrease in internal diameter (ID). With the system, both the expandable liner and the overlap in... more

Roger Abel joined Touchstone Resources USA, Inc. as chairman and chief executive officer. Premium Drilling appointed Robert W. Rose chief executive officer of the company. José Gabrielli was named chief executive officer... more

North America 1. Shell Offshore Inc., Houston, Texas, and The Hague, The Netherlands, received awards for 84 oil and gas leases among the 117 leases awarded in the Beaufort Sea offshore... more

Any geoscientist who's been asked to study a prospective area for farm-in or acquisition opportunities knows about the mountain of data he or she must sift through to find relevant... more

Tick tock. Tick tock. Your drillers are about to retire. Are you prepared? The core of the industry's drilling managers is approaching 50 years of age. What happens when they... more

This month, as thousands of Petroleum Engineers convene in Dallas at the Society of Petroleum Engineers' Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, one thing is painfully obvious. There are way, way... more

New waste injection service launched Because subsurface injection achieves zero discharge by returning drilled cuttings to their origin, it is becoming the preferred disposal solution in many areas as environmental regulations... more

Ester-based drilling fluids deliver outstanding performance, even under extreme borehole and formation conditions. Rising world energy demand has led to exploration for oil and gas in increasingly difficult environments. Exploration is... more

I can't really blame my fellow Houstonians for venting when they fill up their tanks. Gasoline prices in this country are certainly not as high as other industrialized countries, but... more

Trace to be bought Calgary-based Trace Energy Services Ltd. is being bought by Quantum Geophysical Inc., a subsidiary of Geokinetics Inc. Trace, with operations in the United States and Canada, performs... more

Every week people call wanting help with shale gas reservoirs. They might know a lot about conventional, tight-gas sands and coalbed methane reservoirs but don't yet understand shale. Some operators... more

Greece is a net energy importer. Hellenic Petroleum (HP), a partially state-owned company, conducts oil exploration, imports crude and products, operates two large refineries, and distributes and markets oil products.... more

Excitement is brewing among many long experienced hands in the offshore oilpatch when they see what is being found in the ultra deep in the Gulf of Mexico. They see... more