Ozkan

The Executive Editors of SPE Reservoir Evaluation & Engineering alternate writing the Executive Summary. This issue's summary is by Erdal Ozkan.

Recently, I looked at the statistics of our graduating class at the Colorado School of Mines. The placement ratio is 100%, and the average starting salary is U.S. $69,000, with a generous sign-up bonus. None of our graduates is looking for a job; on the contrary, we are receiving an increasing number of requests from the industry for students who might be interested in their open positions. The situation seems to be the same for other university petroleum engineering departments.

For a long time, we have talked about the aging population of oil-industry professionals and a potential shortage of new hires. The dreaded problem seems to be confronting us now. We are required to fill the ranks of the workforce necessitated by the increased activity and the new horizons of the industry. To fill entry-level positions, petroleum engineering departments will have to graduate more engineers. Of course, there will be a time lag until the larger classes graduate, and the industry will have to deal with the shortage during this period.

What seems to be the more important problem is how to fill up the positions of the intermediate and highly experienced level of professionals who will have to retire soon. Based on the current picture, it is not difficult to predict a period of cross-company transfers and hiking salaries for those who qualify for more senior positions and will remain in the workforce for a reasonable period. We can even predict that the future mergers will look at the workforce as an important asset and, for a change, mergers will not mean layoffs.

In addition to the changing employment trends, the need for new technology is also becoming a more pressing issue. For some time, the new, cutting-edge technology development did not receive priority treatment from the industry. High oil prices and the apparent future challenges of exploring and exploiting oil and natural gas under more complex conditions are bringing back to the research its long lost glory. Those of us who remember the days when the petroleum technology research competed with the research on space and military technology should welcome this as a sign of a healthy industry that does not live for short-term goals but looks way into the future and plans to take on upcoming challenges.

The first paper of this issue, A Fast and Direct Method of Permeability Measurements on Drill Cuttings, presents a new method to measure the permeability of drill cuttings. The method does not require specific laboratory conditioning and takes only a few minutes to implement. The method provides another quick and inexpensive tool in addition to conventional core analysis for reservoir characterization.

The next paper, The Role of Cutoffs in Integrated Reservoir Studies, discusses the role of cutoffs in integrated reservoir studies. It emphasizes that the quantification of cutoffs should be compatible with the reservoir mechanism and the methodology used to estimate hydrocarbons in place.

A Model for Changes in Coalbed Permeability During Primary and Enhanced Methane Recovery describes the implementation of a bidisperse pore-diffusion model in a coalbed reservoir simulator. To demonstrate the use of the model, an application to the sub-bituminous Powder Basin coalbed is discussed.

The fourth paper, Modeling Coupled Fracture-Matrix Fluid Flow in Geomechanically Simulated Fracture Networks, is on the numerical investigation of the effects of coupled fracture-matrix fluid flow on equivalent permeability. Fracture patterns generated by a fracture-mechanics-based crack-growth simulator are used to simulate coupled fracture-matrix fluid flow by a finite-difference simulator.

Application of Stream-Conversion Methods To Generate Compositional Streams From the Results of a Multimillion-Cell Black-Oil-Simulation Study of the Shaybah Field illustrates that an EOS-based stream-conversion method used with detailed multimillion-cell black-oil simulators can be a feasible approach to generate the compositional rates for the giant Shaybah field.

The sixth paper of this issue, Effects of Formation Damage and High- Velocity Flow on the Productivity of Perforated Horizontal Wells, investigates the effects of formation damage and non-Darcy flow on the performance of perforated horizontal wells. A detailed semianalytical model is used to obtain the results presented in this paper.

The seventh paper, An Innovative Approach To Integrate Fracture, Well-Test, and Production Data Into Reservoir Models, presents an approach to integrate fracture, pressure-transient, and production data into reservoir description to be used in flow simulation. The utility of the approach is discussed in an example application to a giant carbonate reservoir in the Middle East.

Analysis of Interference Tests With Horizontal Wells presents practical correlations to simplify the analysis of interference tests between two horizontal wells. The limitations of some of the commonly used approaches are also documented.

Finally, A New Model To Obtain Representative Field Relative Permeability for Reservoirs Produced Under Solution-Gas Drive discusses a novel approach to calculate representative field relative permeabilities under solution-gas-drive conditions. The approach is based on a model that rigorously considers bubble nucleation, phase transfer, and gas displacement.

Overall, we have nine excellent papers in this issue. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did

Errata

“Pressure Transient and Decline Curve Behavior in Naturally Fractured Vuggy Carbonate Reservoirs,” by R. Camacho-Velázquez, M. Vásquez-Cruz, R. Castrejón-Aivar, and V. Arana-Ortiz, which appeared in the April 2005 issue of SPE Reservoir Evaluation and Engineering magazine, contained several misprints in Eqs. A-18, A-19, and A-20. The correct equations are printed here: Equations to come

We apologize for any inconvenience these errors may have caused.