Opening remarks by:
Moderator: Nasser Al-Jaidah, CEO, Qatar Petroleum International
Executive Speakers:
Moderator: Egbert Imomoh, 2013 SPE President; Chairman AFREN plc
Executive Speakers:
The recent evolution in oil prices and in worldwide geopolitics have nurtured a significant evolution in the relationship between national oil producers, international oil companies and service contractors, with roles being redefined as the respective power and levers have been redistributed. A panel of representatives of the different players in the industry will discuss how each one can handle the new challenges and benefit from the new opportunities generated by this new scene.
The petroleum industry is facing new challenges as the range of reservoir characteristics is expanding with more emphasis on tight gas, shale gas, and HPHT reservoirs. To address these new challenges, technology is evolving quickly and bringing a new dimension to overall drilling, completion, and stimulation strategies. Integration of multidisciplinary teams has been effective at leveraging technology, and lessons learned from basins around the world have accelerated the learning curve and allowed for fast tracking of field development. For example, the ~25 year learning curve in the Barnett shale was reduced to less than 4 years in the Haynesville shale. Techniques such as LWD, horizontal drilling, pad drilling, multistage completions, multistage stimulation, fracturing “factories”, simultaneous fracturing, microseismic monitoring, I-Field, and many other approaches have been key enablers. And, there is a clear trend of knowledge developed in multistage completions in shale gas expanding to other formations such as tight carbonates. But, one solution does not address all challenges. Local priorities and key market drivers will lead to a different local optimum solution. The challenge is to identify the strategies and technologies that bring value for the specific reservoir conditions and local market drivers. Integration of multidisciplinary teams is critical to success. And, continued advances in strategies and technologies in drilling, completion, and stimulation are needed to effectively develop unconventional reservoirs.
The oil and gas industry is characterized by unparalleled challenges at a time where the easy oil and gas era is rapidly coming to an end. Production in increasingly deep water, extreme environmental conditions, unconventional oil, shale gas, tight gas and many other techniques each pose their own challenges on developers, operators and service companies. The Operations and Maintenance strategies applied, need to be adapted to the challenges at hand and will be key levers in maximizing economic value of the assets. This involves technical solutions, but also has a particular impact on the maintenance and operations strategies applied over the production life cycle. Risk based techniques yield different outcomes depending on the intensity of the degradation processes and the margin impact of production losses for example. This panel session tries to solicit different approaches, techniques, tactics and strategies as applied by operators and service companies alike.
As world governments move ahead on efforts to set legally binding agreements on climate change mitigation, carbon management will likely be mandated. Industry must position itself to address the technical hurdles associated with carbon management to be able to progress continued growth under a carbon controlled business environment. The panel session will present current global and regional efforts towards regulating carbon emissions and will explore technologies being used for capture and storage of CO2, including: enhanced oil recovery and storage in depleted oil reservoirs, reduction to zero emissions from gas fired power plants, review of case studies in carbon sequestration, geophysical monitoring of the carbon dioxide plumes, zero emission power plants, stimulation of horizontal wells completed in carbonate formations using carbon dioxide foams, and enhanced natural gas production with displacement using carbon dioxide. The panel discussion would also like to invite papers on transportation of liquid carbon dioxide using LNG or LPG ships or of carbon dioxide gas hydrate using container ship and papers on oxygen based power plant combustion cycles for carbon dioxide capture.
The last ten years in the oil industry has seen the departure of experienced staff and replacement by less experienced staff and new graduates from College. There has been much discussion about the experience gap that exists and challenges faced by the industry. In addition, the inclusion of new generation tools, requirement of new skillsets multiple and limited number of graduates have compounded these challenges. The industry must develop strategies for attracting and retaining new talent and transferring knowledge in an efficient and timely manner. Both production and service companies need to collaborate with Universities and other educational institutions to attract new students for technical studies and further train and develop those who are already working in the industry. In addition, retention strategies for senior, experienced staff need to be reviewed and adjusted be correlated with performance goals to cope with the high demand for qualified people. Due to a broader international perspective and local content requirements, the industry faces further challenges in developing human capital. The industry is global so human resources need to be developed on a global basis.
The Panel session will cover: