Journal of Petroleum Technology

Home / Issues / 2012-06

Featured this monthIlluminating the ReservoirSaudi Aramco is supporting the development of new technologies to measure the effectiveness of waterfloods to maintain output and spot oil reserves that have been missed.

Features

Guest Editorial The idea of doing more with less is at the heart of advances in downhole fiber-optic technology, writes Greg Powers, Halliburton’s vice president of technology, and its application is not far removed from doing nearly everything with almost nothing.

R&D Grand Challenges An assessment of the biggest challenges faced by Earth resources engineers.

Young Technology Showcase A new section highlighting the best in "young" technology.

Management Knowledge management can help the digitally immersed, socially networked, information overloaded, smartphone obsessed, and busy knowledge worker of today.

A Tricky Tradeoff: Can Adding a Little Solvent Yield a Lot More Heavy Crude? Solvents are cutting emissions and costs in the Canadian oil sands and other heavy oil regions.

Technology Focus

Coiled Tubing Application

John Misselbrook, SPE, Senior Advisor Global Coiled Tubing, Baker Hughes

The coiled-tubing (CT) industry has experience unparalleled growth in the past year, driven directly by the massive expansion in multistage-fracturing operations in North America. Various sources estimate that the US consumed 50% of the world’s CT in the past 12 months, helping to contribute to a massive 80% growth in product coming off the CT production lines.

Coiled Tubing Reduces Stimulation Cycle Time by More Than 50% in Multilayer Wells in Russia Traditionally, coiled tubing (CT) has had very limited service diversity in Russia. Its use has been mostly limited to wellbore cleanouts and nitrogen kickoffs after fracturing treatments. CT equipment and technologies were used to supplement stimulation operations in one of the world’s largest oil fields, Priobskoye, which has up to five separate layers per well. [...]

Downhole Mixing Technique Facilitates Pinpoint Fracturing in Eagle Ford Shale The increased demand for natural gas from shale plays in the United States has forced the industry to be more efficient and develop innovative methods for fracture-stimulation optimization. Pinpoint-fracturing methods represent a divergence from the conventional methods, with minimal optimization needed to help maximize reservoir volume. Multiple-interval completions can be performed efficiently so that all [...]

Targeted Fracturing Using Coiled-Tubing-Enabled Fracture Sleeves Unconventional reservoirs are an increasingly important part of the hydrocarbon production pool in North America. Because reservoir conditions typically require hydraulic fracturing for economical production, a significant amount of resources are focused on making the fracturing process faster and more efficient and on lowering its environmental impact. A novel technique to create targeted annular hydraulic [...]

Well Stimulation

Gerald R. Coulter, SPE, Consulting Petroleum Engineer and President, Coulter Energy International

Well stimulation continues to be a hot topic in our industry, particularly with hydraulic fracturing of shales. Having been in the industry since the Dark Ages, (at least, it seems like it at times), it is interesting to see the technology changes over time and what areas are currently in the spotlight. Certainly, hydraulic fracturing continues to lead the industry interest; however, we do pump a lot of acid, and we have not forgotten its importance.

DTS Technology: Improving Acid Placement Distributed-temperature sensing (DTS) is used in wells to determine the effectiveness of acid treatments. Concerns include where the acid was placed in the well, if the acid went where it was supposed to go, and if the acid went into the first least-resistive zone while subsequent zones went untreated. By use of DTS, it was [...]

Phosphonic/Hydrofluoric Acid: Tortuosity Remediation for Fracturing Treatments Tortuosity is one of the biggest challenges for shale and tight gas hydraulic-fracturing treatments, leading to high near-wellbore frictional pressure loss, premature screenouts, reduced treating rates, and poor production results. A new solution demonstrated substantial success in overcoming particularly stubborn tortuosity problems. The method builds on the use of a nondamaging, single-stage phosphonic-/hydrofluoric-acid system (SAS) [...]

Combined Smart-Chemical System and Real-Time Temperature Sensing: A Case Study A case study is presented of a matrix-acidizing treatment whereby the combination of a "smart fluid" in a stimulation treatment pumped through coiled-tubing (CT) with real-time distributed-temperature-sensing (DTS) technology helped improve the real-time decision process of fluid placement, temporary-plugging placement, and treatment-efficiency evaluation. To facilitate on-site decision making, a temperature-inversion technique was used to translate [...]

Wellbore Tubulars

Casey McDonough, SPE, Drilling Engineer, Chesapeake Operating

I have always been inspired by a tradition that many Canadian engineers have of wearing an iron ring. The ring is worn on the little finger of the engineer’s dominant hand so that, when writing or tasking with the dominant hand, the engineer is reminded of his or her obligations. The tradition holds that the iron in the ring came from a bridge that failed and cost many lives.

Safe Drillpipe Connections During Managed-Pressure-Drilling Operations Managed-pressure drilling (MPD) is effective for controlling equivalent circulating density (ECD). However, making a drillpipe connection with MPD is more challenging than with conventional drilling. A method was developed for smoothly diverting rig-pump flow during connections from the standpipe to the MPD pressure-control equipment at the annulus by use of a valve manifold with an [...]

Expansion-Cone Material: Heat-Treatment Effects To withstand repeated high-level thermomechanical stresses, expansion-cone material must have specific properties. This work covered heat treatment and mechanical testing of tensile and impact specimens of American Iron and Steel Institute (AISI) D6 (DIN 1.2436) tool steel. The heat-treatment process comprises annealing, hardening/austenitizing, air or oil quenching, and single or double tempering. Mechanical testing includes [...]

Damages and Repairs on Drillpipe Connections The drilling industry has experienced major changes in both drillpipe connections and related inspection criteria. Many operators and contractors regularly use premium drillpipe connections to drill all sections of their wells. There are few or no established statistical data available to budget repairs in any given well program. This study reviewed data from two inspection [...]

Enhanced Oil Recovery

Luciane Bonet-Cunha, SPE, Senior Reservoir Engineer, Petrobras America

Enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) operations are what moves EOR processes from the laboratory to the field. They involve a series of activities, from a detailed planning stage to efficient application, consistent monitoring, and results analysis.

Comparative Analysis of Electromagnetic Heating Methods for Heavy-Oil Recovery Thermal methods are well-known for enhancing oil recovery by decreasing reservoir-oil viscosity substantially by raising the temperature. Although it is one of the more popular thermal methods, steam injection is not always applicable successfully in real reservoir conditions because of prohibitive heat losses from injection wells and reservoirs, low reservoir injectivity (especially for bitumen deposits), [...]

Production Optimization in the Campos Basin: A Case for Robustness in Waterflooding A successful cross-discipline workflow used in a Campos basin multiproducer-system waterflood program encompassed subsurface characterization, well planning, data acquisition, well controls, and surveillance to support efficient oil recovery. Drilling from a central platform, extended-reach wells were necessary to access a structured series of near-shore, laterally amalgamated channel sands separated by variable barriers posing significant subsurface-modeling, [...]

Downhole Steam Generation Pushes Recovery Beyond Conventional Limits Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) is a general term used for processes that seek to improve recovery of hydrocarbons from a reservoir after the primary production phase. EOR is designed to increase the mobility of the oil, with an objective of improving oil sweep efficiency or enabling lower residual-oil saturation. Downhole steam generation (DHSG), which combines [...]