Journal of Petroleum Technology

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Featured this monthFiber Optic Sensing – Learning How It Really Feels DownholeInterest is growing in using fiber optic cable to listen to what is going on inside wells beyond pressure and temperature measurements.

Features

Guest Editorial The good news is that there is plenty of innovation to talk about regarding step-change advances in horizontal multistage fracturing in many of the existing and emerging resource plays. The bad news is that you will not find these being applied in the legacy or high-profile shale plays.

R&D Grand Challenges: Higher Resolution Subsurface Imaging An overview of the challenges of getting higher resolution subsurface images of hydrocarbons, and emerging research trends and technologies aimed at delivering a more accurate reservoir picture.

Talent & Technology Three new awards are designed to help reverse a growing shortage of petroleum engineering faculty.

Distinguished Author Series Hydraulic stimulation has advanced the development of lower-permeability resources, but the corresponding challenges have not been addressed fully. Here is a perspective on future opportunities for improving recovery of hydrocarbons from tight reservoirs.

OTC 2012: The Wide World of Offshore Technology A preview of the 2012 Offshore Technology Conference.

Technology Focus

Hydraulic Fracturing

Karen Olsen, SPE, Completion Expert for Southwestern Energy

It is a good time to be in the oil industry. The rig count, drilling activity, and oil prices are high, and shale plays are a significant reason for each. And, because it is shale, it is an especially good time to be a completion engineer!

Fracturing-Fluid Effects on Shale and Proppant Embedment Development of shale reservoirs has grown significantly during the past few decades, driven by evolving technologies in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. The productivity of shale reservoirs depends highly on the design of the hydraulic-fracturing treatment. To design a successful treatment, a good understanding of the shale mechanical properties is necessary. The results of this [...]

Stimulation Influence on Production in the Haynesville Shale: A Playwide Examination In most developing shale plays, there is a learning curve for determining which factors affect well production positively and are economical. Evaluating the reservoir on a playwide basis can expedite the ability to determine the optimal treatment method. By use of public production data with a database of stimulation treatments for several hundred wells in [...]

Distributed Acoustic Sensing for Hydraulic-Fracturing Monitoring and Diagnostics Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a fiber-optic technology that enables detecting, discriminating, and locating acoustic events with a standard telecom single-mode fiber several kilometers in length. Use of a combination of the measurement of backscattered light and advanced signal processing enables the DAS interrogator system to segregate the fiber into an array of individual "microphones." [...]

Production Operations

Francisco J.S. Alhanati, SPE, Director of Exploration & Production, C-FER Technologies

At the 2011 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in Denver, there were many interesting discussions on shale-gas (and/or liquid-rich) resources. While already an important part of the industry, we are just beginning to identify some of the challenges with these resources and how best to deal with them.

Evaluating Production-Log Data From Horizontal Organic-Shale Wells Production logs from more than 100 horizontal shale wells in multiple basins were interpreted. The evaluation confirmed that production is highly variable along the length of the wellbores. In some basins, two-thirds of gas production comes from only one-third of the perforation clusters. Further, when looking at all basins, almost one-third of all perforation clusters [...]

Very-High-Volume ESP-Lift Systems For Shale-Gas Fracture-Water Supply One challenge of the Horn River shale play in British Columbia, Canada, has been the increasing number of fracture stimulations required per horizontal wellbore. Critically important is the massive volume of water required to supply the continuous fracturing operations in the development. To eliminate reliance on surface water, it was decided to produce high volumes [...]

Factors Affecting Downhole Scale Deposition: North Dakota Bakken Formation Oil recovery from the North Dakota Bakken formation has increased nearly 100-fold over the last 5 years. For one North Dakota operator with 150 Bakken producing wells, 22 of the wells have experienced at least one event of severe calcium carbonate scaling in the pump and production tubing, leading to well failure. A study showed [...]

Heavy Oil

Cam Matthews, SPE, Director - New Technology Ventures, C-FER Technologies

The rapid growth in interest and in development activities related to unconventional oil and gas resources, including heavy oil, is clearly evident throughout the industry. One outcome has been a tremendous increase in the number of SPE papers written this past year on various topics associated with development and recovery optimization of heavy-oil reservoirs.

Technology Development For Solvent-Based Recovery Of Heavy Oil ExxonMobil and its Canadian affiliate Imperial Oil Resources are pursuing an integrated research program to develop the next-generation heavy-oil recovery processes that use hydrocarbon solvents as a mobilizing agent. Key benefits of solvent-based processes are improved environmental performance, improved economics, and recovery of a resource that is not achievable with thermal processes. Introduction As used [...]

Heavy-Oil Well Testing With An ESP, Offshore UK Production from heavy-oil fields in the UK continental shelf (UKCS) has become possible over the past 10 years. Despite substantial reserves in the UKCS of crudes with gravitiy of 20°API and lower, most of the activity has been exploration and appraisal drilling. The main reason for restricted activity has been high uncertainty of reservoir and [...]

Full-Field Heavy-Oil Conversion From Cold To Hot Production With an increasing interest in extra-heavy-oil (EHO) extraction, several heavy-oil fields will be produced initially by a cold production scheme, and, at a later stage, thermal production in the form of steam injection can be used to enhance the recovery. In an EHO cold-to-hot conversion scheme, several choices must be made with respect to well [...]

Seismic Applications

Gerd Kleemeyer, SPE, Shell – Global Solutions Upstream

Following an increased investment in advanced seismic solutions, we have experienced some remarkable boundary shifts in seismic-data quality in recent years. Significant improvements have been achieved in densely sampled wide-azimuth seismic acquisition and in wave-equation-based imaging techniques, such as full-waveform inversion and reverse time-migration, in processing.

Interpreting Microseismic Measurements: Practical Guide Thousands of hydraulic-fracture treatments have been monitored in the past 10 years with microseismic mapping, providing measurements that show a surprising degree of diversity in event patterns. Interpretation of the microseismic data to determine the geometry and complexity of hydraulic fractures continues to focus on visualization of event patterns and on qualitative estimates of the [...]

4D Seismic for Reservoir Management in Carbonates: Does It Work? In the past 10 years, time-lapse (4D) seismic has evolved from an academic research topic to a typical method of monitoring reservoir performance. The method is used to provide evidence of saturation changes within the reservoir at field scale. 4D seismic provides data that describe the dynamic behavior of reservoir fluid between wells that otherwise [...]

Forties Infill Drilling 8 Years Later: Development Driven by 4D Seismic In the 8 years since Apache purchased the Forties field, more than 100 in-field targets have been drilled, with an overall success rate of 74%. The campaign resulted in a shortage of sidetrack-donor wells, with a return to surface drilling on all five platforms. To enable full exploitation of the target portfolio, Apache is installing [...]