Recruiting and training issues are dimming technology's bright promise.

As 2001 begins, a spot survey of companies concerned with the big picture drew comments about applying the newest technologies to increase degree of recovery from reservoirs. At the working tool level, service companies are improving confidence in the tools they provide and extending their capabilities. And while all energy companies are involved in the search for new ways to do things, perhaps no technology holds brighter promise in that area than biotechnology.
Of course, innovation is not everything. Recruiting and training new blood, and fast, is imperative to ensure a next generation of technologists and avoid repeating mistakes.
Intelligent wells, fiber optics
As promising as any new methodology for the future of the oil field is that enabling intelligent wells. One technology fundamental to that is fiber optics.
Keith Morley, senior vice president and general manager for Cidra Optical Sensing Systems, said in-well fiber-optic systems give production and reservoir engineers reliable and accurate permanent monitoring options that did not exist a few years ago. "One area of high interest is determining inflow distributions in multizone and horizontal completions. We can now determine fluid production by individual zone or by section of a lateral. This enables a determination, for example, of the need for zonal flow control or isolation.
"We currently have a tubing-deployed, all-fiber-optic, in-well sensing system that measures pressure, temperature, flow rate and phase fraction. In development is an optical accelerometer for measuring the acoustic response of the reservoir to production using either active sources or microseismic events, enabling higher resolution seismic information. Additionally, we are testing software which combines flow measurements with other information to provide a fully distributed description of three-phase flow from the reservoir to the platform. The next generation of fiber-optic sensing systems will consist of multiple sensors performing multiple types of measurements, distributed along the path of the well on one or two fiber-optic cables."
Cidra has an alliance with BP that is allowing fast-track needs identification, piloting and deployment of fiber-optic sensing systems. In-well systems deployed for BP and Shell are measuring pressure, temperature, flow rate and oil fraction. A pressure and temperature system has been in operation in a beam-pumped California well more than 18 months, with no failures in the fiber-optic components over thousands of pressure cycles. The data from the optic gauge has shown excellent agreement with data from a quartz gauge also deployed in the well.
The reservoir
Peter Goode, president of Schlumberger Reservoir Management, said efforts are controlled by the fact that value in the oil field lies in the reservoir. "We have been building knowledge of the reservoir since the beginning of wireline services, but it has become more focused in the last 10 years," Goode said.
"Recoveries from reservoirs ran 2% to 3% at the turn of the century. Now they are up to between 30% and 35%. The aim in the next 10 years is to develop and distribute the technology and knowledge to increase that figure to 50%. Such capability would increase the world's oil in place by 15% and nearly double worldwide reserves." Already, in highly productive areas of Prudhoe Bay and Norway, recoveries have reached the 57% to 60% oil-in-place range, Goode said. The challenge is to adapt the technology from these regions and do it at lower cost.
"High volume of use enables low-cost mass application. The key is not to invent technology every time, but leverage technology globally to other operating environments and other engineers."
In the future, Goode said, engineers will assemble knowledge repositories. This will involve the sensor and mechanical capabilities at the well, telemetry systems at high bandwidth and the ability to analyze data from the well and send actions back to the sand face in real time.
To do this, engineers need faster reservoir models, automated data collection and faster processing. Data has to be picked up inside the reservoir with seismic and resistivity techniques that can, for example, detect the beginning of water intrusion so technicians can take action.
Confidence in coiled tubing
John Martin, senior vice president at Quality Tubing, said the growing capability of coiled tubing (CT) has created higher levels of exposure, resulting in a need for higher levels of nondestructive testing (NDT).
"Ten years ago 5,000 psi was a high working pressure to put on a coil of tubing. Today it is not unusual to see pressures above 10,000 psi. There are service companies now working in extended reach wells at 20,000ft (6,100m) with internal pressures in excess of 12,000 psi. For such use to continue and increase, levels of NDT must be raised," Martin said.
"Our newest alloy, QT 1200, has high potential for offshore subsea well intervention because of its ability to handle the higher pressures and depths. For this type of application to grow, customers will need higher inspection levels that can be used in real time."
Focus on training
C.O. "Doc" Stokley, chief technical officer at Tam International said, "Our major focuses are towards improving personnel competence through training, increasing the reliability of inflatable packers and devising tool designs to reduce the production company's cost to perform jobs that require inflatable packers.
"Operating and engineering personnel development is the major challenge facing the industry in the near future," Stokley said. "We must entice younger personnel into the industry and then commit to training them so that those of us who plan on retiring in the future are replaced without disruption.
"Learning by failure due to inexperience is too expensive in today's operations. We must transfer to them our failure (and success) experiences so they don't repeat the failures we once made."
The shortage of experienced personnel throughout the oil and gas industry leads Stokley to rank training as possibly the most important and cost-effective method of reducing operating costs.
"With deepwater rig costs in the (US) $200-per-minute range, mistakes due to inexperience quickly run into the millions of dollars on these wells. Reducing costs associated with training has been an easy way to control profits, but this is a short-term action that will severely damage profits in the long term."
One of the major service companies recently discontinued all training for 2000, thus reducing costs more than $200,000, which dropped to the line. "A mistake due to lack of personnel training on a deepwater rig causing a loss of 1 rig day's operating time can easily exceed $300,000. I do not think that we can afford these types of decisions just to appease today's stockholders."
Stokley said Tam will spend 500 man-hours preparing training programs this year and another 1,700 or more in presentation and attendance. For a company of less than 150 employees worldwide, this is a commitment of only 15 hours per year per employee.
"We will spend in the range of $250,000 on training this year, which is $1,700 per employee," Stokley said. "If our training eliminates just one mistake, worth 1 day's rig time on a deepwater rig, we make a profit out of this expenditure. We also eliminate the 'reputation reduction' factor, which results in additional, repeat business.
"Recently, on a deepwater rig in the Gulf of Mexico, we followed a competitor's 3-day 'wasted' rig operation and completed the job in less than 8 hours. The operator's total cost for the competitor operation was near $1 million with no success in the planned operations. The cost for our completed operation was $150,000 (including rig time). Guess who got the next job and which service specialist was requested by name?"
Tool development
"We are finding a considerable number of inflatable applications in deepwater drilling," Stokley said. "In particular, non-API casing sizes are being used for which there is no conventional packer available." Stokley said this has led Tam to begin work on a "storm packer" that would be inflated inside the casing, just below the blowout preventers (BOPs) to provide a secondary barrier for removal of the riser and departure of the drillship while the storm passes.
Advanced slickline systems include accurate depth control for placement of the plug, which had not been available on slickline prior to health, environment and safety developments. This system reduces recompletion costs and on small platforms in particular can be achieved with of the operating equipment delivered to the platform via helicopter and operated from the helideck.
"A large percentage of port collar (cementing sleeve) applications over the last 2 years has been in placing the port collar in the casing as a contingency. We thereby have the option to perform a second cement stage only if required due to poor displacement of the primary job," Stokley said. This has been effective in permafrost regions such as Alaska.
Intelligent intervention
Martin Perry, managing director of Sondex Ltd., feels many fields must be helped without extensive downhole instrumentation. "My opinion is that there is a lot of talk about the 'top end' of the business: deepwater, subsea, permanent instrumentation, prolific wells, etc., but the largest volume of oil and gas in coming years will still come from regular producing wells."
This means operators will try to get as much oil or gas as possible out of existing or marginal reservoirs where "getting the last few barrels without significant new investment becomes ever more important."
So intervention by wireline to measure and analyze what fluids are being produced from where, and measuring the effectiveness of horizontal wells in reaching parts of the reservoir hitherto untapped, will be critical, Perry said.
Intelligent intervention will be the way to cost-effectively maximize production from the vast majority of wells, Perry said. Doing it without huge capital outlay is vital.
"Downhole tractors have great potential for meeting this need." They can position and move things - sliding sleeves and valves, for example - by the millimeter if required.
The coming 'Fantastic Voyage'
Scientists at Micro-Bac International, who have been applying microorganisms to practical problems for the past 20 years, feel we're witnessing a biological revolution that will reshape the methods used in finding, producing and processing new and existing energy reserves.
Through their research, they have been able to develop several biological products that can, in most cases, double existing production and eliminate the need for dangerous chemicals.
"Our newest technology uses a biochemical product to repair costly frac jobs that have failed or had poor results, achieving higher production and even restoring blocked wells," said Micro-Bac marketing director Brian Cummins.
"For us, there is no end to what we can do with biotechnologies to change the methods and efficiencies of oil and gas E&P," said J.M. Morales, president of Micro-Bac. "Micro-Bac is researching whole new technologies that could apply to energy production."
"We are studying microbes as 'programmable' manufacturing factories to make chemicals, monomers and polymers from different nutrient feedstocks," Cummings said. "Feedstocks for many of these materials are petrochemicals from oil."
Biotechnology can create products with new or improved product functionality, Cummings said. One exciting area is the interface of biology and electronics.
"The application of these technologies to oil and gas will soon begin to permeate both upstream and downstream methodologies with everything from greater visualization of downhole problems to new, safer biochemicals to microscopic machinery that could customize exploration - much like a 'Fantastic Voyage,'" Cummings said.