Fattahi	Johnson

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

Several years ago, as I was conducting research for a paper that I was writing for an SPE conference, I ran into a very interesting piece of statistical information. It claimed that a daily edition of The New York Times contains more information than an average person was exposed to in a lifetime in 17th-century Europe. This is more than a 20,000-fold increase in the rate of our exposure to information just by reading a newspaper daily. We live in a rapidly changing world. Every aspect of our lives is changing at a faster pace than ever before, and technology obviously plays an important role in fueling this revolution; it enables us to respond to the complexities of our lives. But then, what fuels the advancing technology? A few years ago, I wrote a short commentary for the publications section of the SPE website, which I repeat here:

“With the swift pace of advancing technology, a critical driver for the success of our industry is the rapid movement of emerging technologies from development to application. Assuming an active role in this transfer, and in satisfying its mission 'to provide the means to collect, disseminate, and exchange technical information...,' SPE provides the fundamental ingredient for subscribing to the knowledge network through publication of its technical journals. Based on an elaborate process, papers that are deemed to have a dramatic impact on the future of our industry are selected for publication. By contributing and subscribing to the journals, we place ourselves on the critical path of transforming information into useful knowledge and then on to realization in the field.”

In this age of transition, the demand for new technology requires our increasing efforts to further accelerate the flow of information, transform this information into technology, and rapidly move the emerging or “young” technology from concept and development to realization and application in the field. Collectively, all of us who are in the business of writing, presenting, or reviewing technical papers are at the heart of this transformation process. The roles of the people on the Editorial Review Committee and those of the SPE staff working on the journals is vital to the flow of this process. Although we suffer from a shortage of Technical Editors, we are striving to conduct quality technical reviews and deliver in a timely fashion. The chart on this page shows that we are improving vs. our benchmark (please note that the 2006 data will not be complete until mid-year 2008).

On the other side of the equation, however, are those of us who write papers and offer them for peer review and inclusion in the journal. This group should keep in mind that their papers will be permanently saved in the SPE archives and will be available to readers, even without peer review. They also should remember that not only are we limited by the number of volunteer reviewers, we are also limited by the print space in the journal. The space constraint obviously will be alleviated somewhat when we completely migrate to electronic journals. However, the selection of papers for publication is recognition of technical excellence by peers, and the importance of this recognition is in its being selective to preserve the standard of excellence. I encourage you to join the peer-review process and volunteer some of your time to this important SPE function by sending your CV and qualifications to peer@speservicecorp.com.

This issue of the journal brings you 11 excellent papers:

• The first paper, by Cinar, Marquez, and Orr, presents the results of an experimental investigation of the effects of variations in interfacial tension between one pair of three phases and the wettability of the porous medium on three-phase relative permeability. The experiment shows that as IFT for the analog gas/oil phases decreases, relative permeabilities for these phases increase, while the relative permeability for the analog water phase remains nearly constant for water-wet porous systems.

• In the second paper, by Jimenez, Sabir, Datta-Gupta, and King, the authors examine errors resulting from the number or placement of streamlines and provide analytical proof of the order of spatial convergence of the mass-balance error. Their analysis provides “a simple and exact means of calculating the time of flight for arbitrary corner-point cells or unstructured grids.”

• In the third paper, Cominelli, Ferdinandi, de Montleau, and Rossi propose an approach aimed at identifying effective parameterization in history matching in numerical-simulation models. The methodology has been validated on a synthetic case and applied to a North Sea oil reservoir.

• The fourth paper, by Elshahawi, Hashem, McKinney, Ardila, and Ayan, describes the advantages of real-time monitoring and interpretation in wireline formation testing. Application of this technology enables real-time decision making and procedural modifications such as acquiring more pressure data, extension of sampling tests, and varying sampling times.

• The subject of the fifth paper, by Kabir, Gorell, Portillo, and Cullick, is a discussion of decision making when uncertainties present a significant challenge in developing multiple fields. They describe a probabilistic production forecasting by a network model for nine reservoirs in Nigeria.

• The sixth paper, by Robertson and Christiansen, discusses modeling permeability in coal using sorption-induced strain data. The authors propose the application of an experimentally derived expression to enhance the accuracy of the available models.

• In the seventh paper, Sutton examines the current procedures to generate gas PVT properties and identifies problems that cause large calculation errors if associated gas and gas/condensate properties are not distinguished and defined separately. His proposed methodology alleviates such problems.

• The eighth paper of this issue is authored by Tomutsa, Silin, and Radmilovic. The paper discusses a new 3D imaging method that uses focused ion beam (FIB) technology. FIB technology allows for resolving the 3D pore structure in chalk, diatomite, shale, tight gas sands, and coal.

• The ninth paper, by Izgec, Kabir, Zhu, and Hasan, presents a transient wellbore simulator coupled with a semianalytical temperature model that allows for computing the wellbore fluid temperature profile in both flowing and shut-in wells. The simulator is capable of analyzing surface shut-in after flow.

• In the 10th paper, authors Raghuraman, O’Keefe, Eriksen, Tau, Vikane, Gustavson, and Indo describe the development of a new downhole pH sensor that performs in-situ pH measurement of formation water at reservoir conditions. The measurements are compared with numerical simulations using a multiphase chemical-equilibrium model that uses laboratory analysis of collected water samples as input.

• The 11th and final paper of this issue, by Clarkson, Bustin, and Seidle, illustrates how traditional single-well analysis, such as type curves and pressure-transient techniques, may be modified to analyze the performance of single-phase coalbed-methane wells.