E&P Magazine - September 2008
As I See It
A good read
You have already heard much more than you would like about the presidential campaign in the United States. Believe me, we Americans have, too.
Exploration Technologies
Jumpstart for geoscientists
A training program aims to reduce the time it takes to educate new talent.
Drilling Technologies
Autonomous exploratory drilling
Will future exploratoin and appraisal wells be drilled without a rig?
Completions and Production
Brazil boosts deepwater production
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.
Offshore Operations: Investment in floaters is up
More than US $34 billion in capex is expected to go to the floating production market over the next five years.
Digital Solutions
Improving reliability, profitability with APM
Oil and gas companies can build incrementally toward improved availability of rotating assets through applied asset performance management.
Features
Abandonment Technology Issues: Lessons learned in cost estimating
Twenty years of decommissioning offshore oil and gas facilities creates a knowledgeable framework for estimating new projects.
Abandonment Technology Issues: New system resolves GoM abandonment issues
Hurricane Katrina created abandonment challenges in the form of complicated platform and well conditions that, in some cases, required a new way of tackling projects.
Floating Production Advances: Managing FPSOs in ice
The industry faces some interesting challenges as it prepares to move into Arctic areas in the years ahead, and there is no basis for complacency or over-confidence in thinking that tools are in place to contend adequately with the challenges this area poses.
Floating Production Advances: New spar design takes on the Arctic
Winds, waves, ice, and sub-freezing temperatures complicate Arctic operations, but forward-thinking designs are paving the way into the frontier.
Floating Production Advances: New thinking for deepwater challenges
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.
Floating Production Advances: Thrusters expand FPSO operating window
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.
Fracturing Technology: Faster time to market
Fast and cost-effective, multizone stimulation using coiled tubing (CT) offers several advantages in a South Texas well.
Fracturing Technology: Improving technology for fracture height
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.
Fracturing Technology: Microseismic mapping – the geological factor
Monitoring microseismicity during reservoir production and injection is an area of growing interest.
Fracturing Technology: Minimize fluid in energized fracs
A new frac technique combines a concentrated proppant slurry and energized fluids for optimal stimulation with minimal fluid to flow back.
Fracturing Technology: New propellant promises predictability
A newly introduced wellbore stimulation tool increases the chance of fracturing success.
Fracturing Technology: Operators control flowback
A new liquid resin system added on-the-fly kept proppant in its place in more than 2,000 wells.
High-Pressure/High-Temperature Operations: Aqueous drilling fluid contends with HP/HT 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.
High-Pressure/High-Temperature Operations: Real-world testing abates subsea risk
Testing subsea actuators with live condensate fluids from actual field developments may become a new industry standard.
High-Pressure/High-Temperature Operations: WFF reduces surface treating pressures
High density frac fluids enable hydraulic stimulation of ultra-deep reservoirs by reducing surface pressure for topside equipment.
Intelligent Developments: 4-D seismic ‘illuminates’ completions
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.
Intelligent Developments: Tail IO improves operations
Applying integrated operations concepts extends field life and increases recovery.
Intelligent Developments: Web Services transform E&P data management
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.
Intelligent wells: Who’s calling the shots?
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.
Rock Mechanics: A numerical approach to petrophysics
A “numerical laboratory” can do the work of a core laboratory in a fraction of the time.
Rock Mechanics: Pore pressure prediction sees improvements
A calibrated pressure model offers pressure attributes for a holistic solution.
Tech Trends
Tech Trend shorts
September tech trend briefs
Tech Trend: Unfogging the glass
A new generation of fiber-optic technology will pay dividends in thermal recovery operations.
On The Move
On the move
Who's going where in the upstream sector.
Last Word
Last Word: Keep your foot in the door
Companies can capitalize on a fast-changing job market because “Goodbye” may not be forever.
Activity Spotlight
Ireland opens Rockall frontier
“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.
Another Perspective
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?
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?
Management Report
Focusing on driver safety
Monitoring driving habits can save companies a substantial amount of revenue.
News & Analysis
News and Analysis
September exploration, drilling, and production news.
Oilfield History
Auger spawns ‘can do’ leaders
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.