Miskimins

Well, as in the oilfield, not everything goes as planned in publishing. Such was the case in last February's SPE Production & Operations Journal, where unfortunately the Executive Summary and associated paper introduction and descriptions were inadvertently deleted in the final publication. The Executive Summary was published in its entirety in the online version. If you have an interest, you can access it from SPE's Web page in the Peer Reviewed Journals section. I will not repeat everything mentioned in that article, but because I wanted to thank several people at the start of the year, I would like to make sure they get their well-deserved recognition.

First, I would like to thank the SPE editorial staff members who make life for us volunteers so much easier. Stacie Hughes, Jeff Andrews, Glenda Smith, and Chris Carpenter are tremendous assets for SPE, and we are lucky to have them. In addition to the SPE staff, the SPEPO associate editors (AEs) put in a lot of time with the editorial process. These AEs include John Bagzis, Harold Brannon, Craig Cipolla, Ian Collins, Joyce Holtzclaw, Shauna Noonan, Liang-Biao Ouyang, and Joseph Smith. Harold has stepped down from his AE role after numerous years in that capacity, and I would like to thank him for his service.

Finally, I would like to thank all of the technical editors (TEs) that contribute to the Journal's publication and make it possible to handle the large number of submissions we have each year. Seven of these TEs were chosen as 2009 Outstanding Technical Editors,including Olivia O. Bommarito, Frank F. Chang, Gerald R. Coulter, E. Dwyann Dalrymple,Michael J. Mayerhofer, Kenneth J. Saveth, and Michael L. Wiggins.

Ironically, this mix-up gives me the opportunity to point out an important option for SPE Prod & Oper Journal readers--the online and "Online First" publication options for subscribers. Personally, I am a hard copy person, but if you are not or want immediate access to the PDF files of the published papers, the SPE Prod & Oper Journal is published online, hot off the presses, and gives the subscription holder immediate access to the journal's information. Additionally, the "Online First" option allows the reader to see papers that have been fully peer-reviewed and edited but have not yet made it into the hard copy version of the journal. This is an excellent way to get access to the most recent advancements in the production and operations area. The online journal also gives you access to linked references, a search for other papers by the authors, and more. I encourage you to check it out.

This issue of SPE Prod & Oper contains 12 papers. As usual, the papers in the journal can be found listed according to paper number, however, I've attempted to group them together by topic in the following discussion.

Starting off with a couple of case studies, A Successful Application of Fiber-Optic-Enabled Coiled Tubing With Distributed-Temperature Sensing Along With Pressures To Diagnose Production Decline in an Offshore Oil Well discusses the use of pressure and distributed temperature measurements to diagnose insufficient pressure support in an offshore horizontal well in the South China Sea. A second case study, Advanced Technology To Reduce Water Cut: Case Studies From the Pemex Southern Region, reports on the use of a new polymeric relative-permeability modifier that uses hydrophobically-modified water-soluble polymers to selectively control water production. Relative permeability modification is also the subject of How To Apply the Flow Velocity as a Design Criterion in RPM Treatments, which as the title implies, discusses how velocity-dependent permeability reduction can be accounted for in designing water-control treatments.

Polymer Flooding in Unconsolidated-Sand Formations: Fracturing and Geomechanical Considerations uses laboratory testing to determine the geomechanical effects of polymer flooding in unconsolidated formations. These polyaxial tests indicate that fracturing and permeability increases occur at very low net injection pressures. In another near-wellbore scenario, the paper titled Analysis of Deposition Mechanism of Mineral Scales Precipitating in the Sandface and Production Strings of Gas-Condensate Wells discusses a comprehensive study carried out when mineral scales started to form in the tubulars and formation of gas producers drilled in various Saudi Arabian carbonate reservoirs.

Liquid loading is the common thread between the next two papers. A New Model for Predicting Gas-Well Liquid Loading shows where, in addition to gas velocity, the liquid amount in a gas stream is also a major factor for liquid loading and presents a new model that accounts for this additional component. In Guidelines for the Proper Application of Critical Velocity Calculations, the authors provide recommendations on when to use surface or downhole evaluation points to determine the minimum critical gas velocity for a well.

The last five papers all surround very unique topics. Controlling Bacteria in Recycled Production Water for Completion and Workover Operations discusses the need to recycle fracturing and completion water and reviews a variety of methods to do so including aeration, chlorine-based approaches, and biocide application. A model formulation that provides a rigorous approach to handling the mechanisms of fluid expansion and influx/efflux in annular pressure-buildup situations is the subject of Sustaining Production by Managing Annular-Pressure Buildup. Laboratory work and successful field trials using emulsified acids prepared with xylene are the subjects of Acid Emulsified in Xylene: A Cost-Effective Treatment To Remove Asphaltene Deposition and Enhance Well Productivity.

Multiphase Well-Rate Measurements Applied to Reservoir Analysis discusses how the industry does not fully use the potential of continuous online measurements and how additional useful results can be acquired. Finally, the paper entitled Well-Integrity Issues Offshore Norway discusses a pilot well-integrity survey that resulted in better technical understandings, as well as a better understanding of barrier regulations, standards, and implementation.

I hope you enjoy this very exceptional set of papers brought to you in this issue of the SPE Production & Operations Journal!