van Batenburg

This issue of SPE Res Eval & Eng brings you 10 papers that reflect areas of current activity in the industry and cover a wide spectrum of subjects: from reservoir evaluation in early exploratory stages to microseismic monitoring in cyclic-steam-injection-enhanced oil recovery in the South Belridge Field in California. Rather than providing a short summary of each paper like you have seen in the Executive Summary for the last couple of years, I will briefly discuss the topics covered in the papers and also devote some words to the peer-review process used to select these papers.

The first paper discusses the inversion of marine controlled-source electromagnetic method data; the second paper describes how vertical seismic profiling at intermediate depth in an exploration well is used to look ahead and improve target-depth estimates and drilling-risk mitigation. Two papers cover the integration of well-test evaluations with other in-well measurements for exploration and appraisal wells. Four papers on unconventional tight/shale gas offer methods to analyze well and reservoir performance and connected volumes for such reservoirs. One paper covers an ensemble Kalman filter based on an automated history-matching method that uses phases streamlines. The final paper covers surveillance by means of microseismic monitoring in a cyclic-steam-injection project.

This brings me to the peer-review process, which is an essential part of SPE's mission to disseminate knowledge. SPE Res Eval & Eng has two Executive Editors (EEs), one for papers that can be categorized as formation-evaluation papers, and another EE for papers in the reservoir-engineering field of interest. Each EE has a group of Associate Editors that coordinate the assignment of papers to reviewers. To be able to guarantee the quality of the papers as well as a timely review of the papers, we need to have sufficiently knowledgeable reviewers that together can cover the wide spectrum of subjects covered in this journal. I would like to encourage you to contribute to the success of this journal by becoming a reviewer. Please have a look at: https://www.spe.org/forms/gen/volunteer_erc.htm and submit the form!

All papers in this issue were reviewed and ultimately approved in the peer-review process. However, the conclusions presented in these papers are not cast in stone. Because the sharing of knowledge and experiences is essential, SPE welcomes further discussion of any paper published in any SPE journal. Therefore, please feel free to submit a discussion of a paper to SPE: Send the discussion, indicate the paper to which it pertains, and provide your contact information to techpubs@spe.org or mail to: SPE Technical Publications, P.O. Box 833836, Richardson, TX 75083-3868. I look forward to receiving such discussion letters.

Diederik van Batenburg
Shell