Miskimins

I hope this editorial finds you all making plans to attend the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Florence, Italy. What a wonderful opportunity to have the annual conference in such a beautiful and historic town. If you are lucky enough to be attending the conference and are a current or prospective SPE technical editor, I recommend that you attend the Technical Editor Workshop on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2010, in conjunction with the conference. SPE hosts these workshops at various times during the year. A variety of items are discussed, such as how to evaluate technical papers, the role and responsibilities of technical editors, and paper rating categories and what they mean. Excellent discussions are held at these workshops and numerous questions are answered. I promise it will be worth your time. If you are interested in attending this workshop, please contact the SPE editorial staff for additional information and registration.

In this edition of the SPE Production & Operations Journal, we are instituting new organization for the table of contents, which has already started to appear in some of the other SPE journals. Instead of listing the papers by number, we are going to group them by topics. Hopefully, this will help you, the reader, target the papers you are most interested in for your current work situation. However, please keep in mind that many papers cross topical boundaries, so definitely don’t limit yourself to our interpretation of subject matter. With that said, here are the 14 papers being brought to you in this edition of SPE Prod & Oper Journal.

In the area of case studies, two papers are provided. Incremental-Oil Success From Waterflood Sweep Improvement in Alaska discusses the use of a heat-activated polymer particulate that was used to improve injectivity. It resulted in significant additional reserve recovery. The use of a wireline tractor and new milling system to remove a permanent bridge plug in an offshore platform situation is the subject of Milling of Permanent Bridge Plug Performed Successfully on Wireline.

Turning to wellbore control systems and fluid-flow issues, this edition includes five papers. The use of distributed temperature surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of different diversion techniques is discussed in Fluid-Diversion Monitoring: The Key to Treatment Optimization. The paper titled Gas-Well Liquid-Loading-Field-Data Analysis and Multiphase-Flow Modeling analyzes the sensitivity of liquid-loading rates for various parameters using offshore field data. As the title implies, A Mechanistic Model for Gas/Liquid Flow in Upward Vertical Annuli discusses the development of a mechanistic model that can be used to predict flow patterns and liquid holdup in vertical annuli. The integration of a streamline reservoir flow model, a thermal model, and a horizontal well temperature model is outlined in Predicting Flow Profile of Horizontal Well by Downhole Pressure and Distributed-Temperature Data for Waterdrive Reservoir. A comparison study of passive inflow control devices and active interval control valves is outlined in Advanced Wells: A Comprehensive Approach to the Selection Between Passive and Active Inflow-Control Completions.

The majority of papers in this edition, seven total, come from the various areas of stimulation. The authors of Slickwater Fracturing: Food for Thought review the motivation for using this type of hydraulic-fracturing technique and provide a variety of resources including both laboratory testing and field results. How proppant crush tests are performed, how the results can be misapplied, and the correct use of crush tests are all subjects of the paper titled How To Use and Misuse Proppant Crush Tests: Exposing the Top 10 Myths.

Rheological Properties of a New Class of Viscoelastic Surfactant introduces a new type of viscoelastic amphoteric surfactant, amine oxide, and discusses its various properties. New Insights Into the Viscosity of Polymer-Based In-Situ-Gelled Acids discusses a study conducted to better understand the effectiveness of self-diverting or viscosity-controlled acid systems. A comparison of four flowback aids, including microemulsion, two water-wetting additives, and oil-wetting additives is the subject of Comparison of Flowback Aids: Understanding Their Capillary Pressure and Wetting Properties.

The development of an acid-placement model for acid injection that includes gravity segregation in the wellbore, viscosity contrasts, relative-permeability effects, and wormhole creation is outlined in A Placement Model for Matrix Acidizing of Vertically Extensive, Heterogeneous Gas Reservoirs . Finally, the last paper in this edition, titled A Novel α-Amylase Enzyme Stabilizer for Application at High Temperatures, discusses the experimental results of testing of a chemical that works as a stabilizer for enzymes up to 250°F.

I hope you enjoy this August edition of the SPE Production & Operations Journal and find the papers we have brought to you valuable in your everyday efforts!