Miskimins

I have just returned from the annual conference and exhibition in Florence, Italy. What a wonderful and historic city! As with every annual conference, the Executive Editors from the seven SPE peer-reviewed journals meet with the SPE editorial staff and the editor-in-chief to discuss the current status of the journals and the plans for the coming year. During this meeting, we always review a variety of statistics and I thought that as readers of this journal (and possible paper authors), you might be interested in a few of them.

One question that is frequently asked of peer-reviewed journals is the acceptance rate. For the last 12 months of available data, SPEPO accepted 23% of the papers that were submitted. This is compared to an average of 26% for all SPE journals. I would like to stress that neither SPE nor the SPEPO journal have any quotas or limits on accepted papers - if a paper is accepted through peer review, it is published. Regarding reviews: During this same 12-month period, 1,072 reviewers submitted a total of 2,929 reviews across the seven journals. As you can see, there is a great deal of work put in by numerous volunteers to bring the journals to your doorstep.

The last statistic that I will share with you is time to publication. One of the goals for the SPE journals is not only to bring new technology to our readers, but also to do it in a timely fashion. It is true that SPE has not always met this second component and up until around 2 or 3 years ago, the journals were all averaging 200 to 250 days from time of paper submittal to publish (this was in part because of a large backlog of papers that needed to be reviewed). At that time, the SPE Board of Directors set a goal of 112 days for time to publication. I am happy to report that in 2009, SPEPO averaged 108 days to publish and in 2010, we are currently around 115 days. This is not always easy because all of our technical editors are volunteers and everyone is busy, but I hope that the efforts of those involved are bringing the technology to you in a timely fashion. I would like to take this opportunity to once again thank them all for their efforts in this area.

In this edition of SPEPO, we provide 13 papers. The first category is coiled tubing. It includes Spoolable Connector Allows Coiled-Tubing Operations Offshore India, which discusses the development of a connector used to connect two coiled-tubing sizes under difficult circumstances and provides several associated case studies. The second paper category includes two papers about formation damage. In A New Methodology To Safely Produce Sand-Controlled Wells With Increasing Skin, the authors discuss perforation plugging because of fines migration and the associated possibility of sand-control failures. Fracture-face-damage experiments and the effects on relative permeabilities is the subject of In-Situ Water-Blocking Measurements and Interpretation Related to Fracturing Operations in Tight Gas Reservoirs.

The largest category we have this edition is in the area of hydraulic fracturing with six papers. The Relationship Between Fracture Complexity, Reservoir Properties, and Fracture-Treatment Design discusses designing hydraulic-fracture treatments where complex growth is expected and provides guidelines for designs. A new model that predicts well productivity from hydraulic fracturing and compares the results of this new model to previous models such as Prats and McGuire is the subject of A Simple and Accurate Model for Well Productivity for Hydraulically Fractured Wells. The paper titled Stress Amplification and Arch Dimensions in Proppant Beds Deposited by Waterfracs provides equations and the procedure for calculating stress on a proppant dune deposited by a waterfrac system. Analytical and numerical solutions for after-closure analysis of heterogeneous formations such as coalbed methane, naturally fractured, and fractured horizontal wells are discussed in Application of After-Closure Analysis to a Dual-Porosity Formation, to CBM, and to a Fractured Horizontal Well. The risks associated with flowing at high rates in hydraulically fractured wells and associated field examples are evaluated in Comprehensive Model for Flow Behavior of High-Performance-Fracture Completions. Finally, from the microseismic front, An Evaluation of Microseismic Monitoring of Lenticular Tight-Sandstone Stimulations discusses the geometry of hydraulic-fracture treatments generally seen in these types of depositional environments.

The fourth category in this edition is injection control and contains one paper called A Dynamic Simulation Study of Water Hammer for Offshore Injection Wells To Provide Operation Guidelines, which as the title implies, discusses water-hammer effects in injection wells and provides guidelines for evaluating associated impacts. The last category for the November SPEPO is the area of scale inhibition with three papers. Mechanical Alteration of Near-Wellbore Mineralogy for Improved Squeeze Performance reviews the use of laboratory experiments to show that injection of kaolinite and other substances enhances squeeze performance by providing additional sites for inhibitor adsorption. A range of analytical approaches used to improve-scale inhibitor assays are reviewed in New Developments in the Analysis of Scale Inhibitors. Finally, Inhibition of Calcium Sulfate and Strontium Sulfate Scale in Waterflood discusses new techniques for the inhibition of these scale types.

This is also an appropriate time to mention an important milestone for SPEPO: its 25th anniversary! In 1986, SPE launched the journal SPE Production Engineering, the first iteration of a journal specifically geared for an important market and readership. In 1993, the title was changed to SPE Production & Facilities, and after a decade of strong performance, the name was changed again in 2006 to the current SPE Production & Operations. These changes, while requiring major adjustments for SPE staff and reviewers, reflect how flexibly and effectively the technical journals have adjusted to the needs of the Society's members. I'd like you to join me in wishing SPEPO another 25 years of success!