Journal of Petroleum Technology

Home / Issues / 2012-02

Featured this monthNiobrara Ramps Up To Hot Play For LiquidsThe Niobrara Shale in Colorado and Wyoming is turning into a hot play that could bring an explosion of horizontal drilling, while offering additional targets in stacked formations above and below it.

Features

Guest Editorial Moving forward in any industry requires innovation and creativity—and risk taking. Some of the ways to accomplish this may lie in lessons learned from other sectors. Andrea Feunekes of Remsoft and Kevin O’Marah of Stanford University explain what the forestry industry can offer.

Water & Data & Well: Three Keys to E&P’s Future SPE’s six technical directors are focusing on speeding the adoption of new technology needed to overcome three key challenges facing the upstream sector: water, well integrity, and data-driven improvement.

Making Sense of the ‘Overnight’ Shale Gas Revolution The worldwide shale gas revolution is gradually taking shape. But the shale gas story in North America took 30 years to develop, and each country that is a prospective for shale gas is following its unique revolution trajectory.

Management Energy Equity Resources CEO Satinder Purewal explains how the SPE’s Oil and Gas Reserves Committee’s new guidelines bring clarity to the classification of oil and gas reserves and resources.

Technology Today Series Pore-pressure prediction must be accurate for drilling exploratory wells in weaker rocks or subsalt formations. This workflow helps maintain wellbore stability.

Technology Focus

Drilling Technology

Stéphane Menand, SPE, Managing Director, DrillScan US

Since the first downhole electric measurement was made in 1927 by the Schlumberger brothers (first electrical-resistivity well log), the oil/gas industry has been striving to develop and improve new tools and sensors for downhole measurements. Indeed, these sensors aim at measuring many parameters, such as physical properties of rocks and fluids (formation evaluation), wellbore position (inclination and azimuth), or downhole drilling-mechanics conditions.

Hydraulic Effect of Tool Joints on Annular-Pressure Loss For a successful drilling operation, downhole-pressure, or equivalent-circulating-density (ECD), control is critical. Conventional drilling techniques require maintaining the bottomhole pressure (BHP) at a level between the pore and fracture pressures. In deepwater wells, the margin between these pressures is very narrow; therefore, the BHP and ECD must be predicted accurately and be maintained within that narrow [...]

Drillpipe-Dynamics Measurements—Insight Into Drillstring Dysfunctions The drilling industry has become increasingly interested in drilling dynamics and in vibration as a cause of reduced drilling performance and downhole-tool and drillstring failures. Vibration data have been captured with measurement-while-drilling (MWD) tools in the lower bottomhole assembly (BHA). However, this approach is not always sufficient to understand the drillstring dynamics of more-complex applications. [...]

Automated Alarms for Managing Drilling Pressure and Maintaining Wellbore Stability With the increased complexity of wells being drilled, significant geologic uncertainty may be encountered during wellbore construction. Uncertainty can take the form of unplanned drilling events such as kicks, lost circulation, and borehole-stability problems. A more proactive effort to predict and identify trouble zones in real time could lead to a substantial reduction in nonproductive [...]

Quantifying Drillstring-Integrity-Failure Risk: Real-Time Vibration Measurements Traditional vibration measurements target improving downhole-tool reliability. This effort targeted the effects of vibration on the complete drillstring. Failures associated with drillstring vibration continue despite current measurement sophistication. These failures represent a very significant amount of lost time and are targeted with a proposed solution that is based on real-time measurements of drillstring vibration to [...]

Offshore Facilities

Ian G. Ball, SPE, Technology Director, Intecsea (UK)

Last year, we reviewed some of the more-prominent examples of how the industry continues to respond to the need for safe and cost-effective production facilities in ever-more-challenging environments. We also highlighted the increasingly important role that constructive collaboration can play in facilitating the desired outcomes for all parties.

Performance, Operability, and Risk Assessment of the Shtokman Floating Platform in Ice The Shtokman gas/condensate field (SGCF) is 610 km from Murmansk, Russia, in the Barents Sea. The water depth is approximately 340 m. The offshore facilities of the SGCF Phase-1 development will include an ice-resistant ship-shaped disconnectable-turret-moored floating platform (FP). Significant sea-ice invasions occur at Shtokman approximately 3 out of every 10 years. Icebergs also may [...]

Offshore Oil and Gas Installation–Aging and Life Extension More than half of the offshore oil and gas installations in the UK Sector of the North Sea have been operating for at least 20 years. Most assets are approaching or operating beyond their original design intent. With the rise in oil and gas prices and advances in technology, there is an increasing requirement to [...]

Frigg Cessation Project The Frigg Cessation Project included the removal of six topsides, three steel jackets, and sealines with an estimated weight of 87 000 t. The project is unique because the field straddles the border between Norway and the UK. Both Norwegian and British statutes apply, depending on the location of the platforms. The main execution phases [...]

Renzo Angeles, SPE, Senior Engineering Specialist, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company

The value of information has a ubiquitous and sometimes pervasive role in modern well testing. From exploration to field management to surveillance, well-test practitioners deal with a wide array of measurements (e.g., pressure, flow rates, temperature, and fluid analysis) that, more often than not, encompass large amounts of data.

Spatial-Feature Identification and Parameter Estimation From Pressure-Transient Tests Three grid-based inversion methods for estimating formation parameters and for spatial geological-feature identification based on pressure-transient-test (PTT) data from multiple-well locations were investigated. The first two methods use efficient adjoint schemes to determine the gradient of the objective functions. The third method uses ensemble Kalman filtering (EnKF) for data assimilation. With these methods, the existence [...]

Pressure-Transient and Production-Data Analysis of an Unconsolidated Formation Frade Asset is a medium-heavy-oil field in the northern Campos basin, approximately 75 miles offshore Rio de Janeiro in 3,500-ft water depth. The structure is a low-relief anticline with two main fault blocks consisting of four stacked unconsolidated reservoirs. The field produces from nine horizontal oil wells with three vertical water-injection wells to maintain reservoir [...]

Analyzing Variable-Rate/-Pressure Data in Unconventional Gas Reservoirs Often, wells in unconventional gas reservoirs exhibit linear flow during their transient period, and this transient behavior can last for several years. Currently, industry uses the type-curve-matching technique to analyze this linear flow. The common type curves assume that wells produce at constant rate. However, the production rate usually is variable and, in fact, is closer to a constant-pressure [...]