Mason

While the world at large is coming to terms with high oil prices with the recent spike of more than U.S. $75/bbl, there is another oil-industry milestone you may not have seen in the media: Our industry has just passed 100,000 SPE papers! It began with paper SPE 001: Earl Nichols’ “Reserve Evaluation and the Independent Oilman,” in 1961, all the way to paper SPE 99999: “Optimized Workflow for Designing Complex Wells” by Moreno et al. in June 2006. This volume of papers has captured an almost unimaginable breadth and depth of oilfield technology, field histories, research, and development. But there is a sobering question here, like searching for a tree in a forest: How do we extract value from this vast collection of papers with its estimated 100,000,000 words of wisdom?

There are numerous valuable nuggets of information in many of the older papers, even if a large number of these are now considered by some to be obsolete. But there is real danger that the value in these papers will remain inaccessible because of the effort required to extract the relevant details. An often-cited comment is that 90% of our oilfield problems have already been solved by someone else, and every lesson is learned many times over. These 100,000 papers may have helped in solving the problem of inaccessible information, but they have not eliminated it. Some time ago, an effort to make the solutions more accessible was attempted. Systems were designed to capture learning and make it accessible under the general description of “organizational learning.”

My lasting memory of an organizational-learning system was a fruitless search through a huge lessons-learned database for the simple phrase, “coiled tubing.” I found that there were some very interesting lessons filed under that title. Search the 100,000 SPE papers on www.spe.org/elibrary for “openhole gravel packing,” and you will see 815 papers; search for “open hole gravel packing,” and you will see 2,245 papers. What a difference a space makes! I would like to imagine a search engine on the eLibrary for “openhole gravel packing + horizontal wells + reactive mudstones + water-based mud + poor packing efficiency + early sand failure” and get a response along the lines of, “Your search gave a loose match with 612 papers, a close match with 20 papers, and an excellent match with 3 papers.” I suspect that this type of intelligent search engine is available and might prove to add a lot of value in our overly busy industry.

While cash flows are riding high on the crest of high oil prices, they are leading to rapid oilfield inflation, personnel shortages, manufacturing plants running at capacity, drilling-efficiency trends going in the wrong direction, and a focus on delivering the basics of safety, compliance, and finishing well programs within budget. Long lead times mean scoping and committing to next year’s well designs today. This sort of harried environment squeezes out space for accessing or implementing new technology. When a productive well delivered within budget gives rapid payback, there is less reason for operators to chase innovative technology—it can seem too much like inviting unnecessary risk—and leaves little space for these new technologies. This issue has eight diverse papers. I urge you to pick one, tear it out, and make the space to digest it.

Viscosities for Completion Fluids at Temperature and Density presents laboratory data on brine viscosities—important parameters in any brine-pumping operation, such as gravel packing. It is worthwhile to check that this new data is being used in your company’s hydraulics program for planning and diagnosis.

The Effect of the Synthetic- and Oil-Based Drilling Fluid’s Internal Water-Phase Composition on Barite Sag looks at barite sag in oil-based mud, specifically how the internal phase affects sag. Understanding sag means increased mud weight and fewer well-control incidents.

Cuttings Transport With Aqueous Foam at Intermediate Inclined Wells reports on detailed laboratory work looking at cuttings transport in aqueous-foam-drilling fluids. This type of work underpins our understanding of this drilling environment and allows us to focus more on planning for success rather than diagnosing what went wrong.

Helical Buckling of Pipe With Connectors and Torque advances the theories of pipe buckling with the influences of connections and torque. This paper gives insight into some of the complexities behind “turning to the right.” Building these better methods into our software will improve our well engineering and reduce failures.

Evaluation, Impact, and Management of Casing Deformation Caused by Tectonic Forces in the Andean Foothills, Colombia presents a field history of casing deformation, showing how the operator has come to live with the problem and manage the consequences.

Basis of Design for Coiled-Tubing Underbalanced Through-Tubing Drilling in the Sajaa Field takes a detailed look at engineering an underbalanced coiled-tubing drilling campaign. This type of paper has real potential to transfer knowledge and advance the industry’s performance in coiled-tubing drilling.

Controlled Mud-Cap Drilling for Subsea Applictions: Well-Control Challenges in Deep Waters looks at well-control challenges in deepwater drilling and presents a new concept of controlled mud-cap drilling by use of a new high-pressure riser and blowout-preventer arrangement.

The final paper, The Management of Drilling-Engineering and Well-Services Software as Safety-Critical Systems, looks at the importance of well-engineering software and recognizes the criticality of these programs in directing key design and wellsite decisions. 

It has been pointed out that quite a few of this issue’s papers come from employees of BP. I can assure you that this is just the way the cookie has crumbled—life is far too busy to plan anything like that.  

Happy reading,

John Mason

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SPE Note:

Over the years, SPE practices in numbering papers have varied. At times, SPE paper numbers have been assigned to items that did not result in an addition to the SPE eLibrary. For example, for several years an SPE paper number was assigned to every paper proposal submitted for consideration by conference program committees, but approximately only ⅓ of those were accepted into the conference and became an SPE paper. The result is that SPE paper numbers do not correspond to the total number of papers in the eLibrary. While it is true that SPE paper numbers passed 100,000, the actual number of papers in the elibrary is slightly more than 43,000, with more being added daily.

In addition, SPE continues to improve the eLibrary. In February 2005, intelligent search capabilities were added. The more specific the information entered into a search field, the better the search results. By providing more information, the search engine finds those papers that focus on the concepts entered—resulting in those papers most likely to have the solutions needed.  Search results are sorted by relevance, with a relevance percentage listed on the left side of the search results.