Journal of Petroleum Technology

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Featured this monthDigital Standards Collaboration: Unlocking Intelligent Energy’s PotentialThe Standards Leadership Council’s nine member organizations are encouraging collaboration on open digital standards for the benefit of the upstream oil and gas industry.

Features

Discussion/Reply: “Downhole Steam Generation Pushes Recovery Beyond Conventional Limits” The authors of paper SPE 150515, "Downhole Steam Generation Pushes Recovery Beyond Conventional Limits," respond to questions about their findings.

Reviewing the Five R&D Grand Challenges Plus One Arnis Judzis of Schlumberger and Anoop Poddar of Energy Ventures sum up the yearlong R&D Grand Challenges series.

Alternative Oil Spill Response Technology: Results from the Deepwater Horizon Response Oil spill response technology progressed significantly as a result of innovations and experience gained during the Deepwater Horizon response, particularly in areas related to surveillance, controlled in-situ burning, booming, skimming, mechanical oil/water separation, and sand cleaning. Here are the best ideas submitted by the public after the accident.

Oil Sands Get Wired Two projects in Canada are out to show that oil sands production need not remain in the steam age. Both projects are powered by electricity, though they use it differently, and hold the promise of reducing water and energy usage and cutting emissions.

Q&A With 2013 SPE President Egbert Imomoh The incoming SPE president lays out his ideas about innovation, SPE, and the oil and gas industry’s future.

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Guest Editorial The future will take place on a new playing field, fueled by continuous research and development, informed investment, job creation, and energy security—without sacrificing the environment—writes consultant Joseph A. Stanislaw. The most extraordinary aspect of the technology-driven energy revolution is that corporations and individuals will be empowered to make a radical difference in their own consumption.

Technology Focus

Drilling Management

J.C. Cunha, SPE, Drilling Manager, Ecopetrol America

At the very beginning of my career, as a young drilling engineer in South America, I used to work in a company where, as far as drilling activity was concerned, we would do (almost) everything by ourselves. We had our own rig and everybody on the location was a company employee. We had our own mud technician, who would, with the help of almost everybody on site, mix the chemicals and prepare our own drilling fluid...

Narrow-Margin Drilling and Operational Geosciences in Egypt and Syria The ability to drill exploration objectives safely and efficiently requires knowledge of the available drilling margin. Operational geosciences were applied in two recent exploration wells in Egypt and Syria where predrilling pore-fluid-pressure and fracture-pressure models were built to enable well design. While drilling the well, these models were updated continuously in real time to make [...]

Well Planning: A Risk-Management Process Technology limits are pushed to meet the challenge of the ever-increasing demand to drill deeper wells in deeper water. Drilling professionals have a wealth of experience in deep water and in the more-traditional depths that provides an intuitive framework and a rich data set for probability assessment of what might be encountered. By tapping this [...]

Multidisciplinary Collaborative Concept Aids Challenging Deepwater Operations in Brazil In Brazil, deepwater well-construction activity has increased significantly since the first major presalt discovery in the Santos basin in 2006. The creation of a multidisciplinary drilling-optimization group, integrated with the operator’s drilling team in 2008, and the introduction of a highly specialized downhole-drilling-dynamics measurement-while-drilling (MWD) tool changed the drilling-optimization concept in Brazil. This new optimization [...]

Automated Managed-Pressure Drilling Helps Find Reserves Near Failed Exploration Well The SB field in Block PM on the west side of the Malay basin, Malaysia, is notorious for its steeply rising pressure ramp, narrow drilling operation window, and interbedded sand, coal, and shale formations. Well SBD-2 was the second attempt to reach and cross the F and H sands of this basin. Despite using managed-pressure drilling [...]

Completions Today

Paul Cameron, SPE, Senior Well-Engineering Advisor, Global Wells Organization, BP

We are living in exciting and challenging times. A recent report* projected that world demand for energy is set to increase by almost 40% in the next 20 years—that is approximately equivalent to adding twice the current energy consumption of the United States. Petroleum-based fuels are expected to play a leading role in the world’s energy mix, accounting for 53% of energy consumption in 2030.

Autonomous Perforating Tool Works Without Umbilicals and Self-Destructs During Process Autonomous downhole tools offer a range of advantages over conventional tools controlled manually through umbilicals. For instance, perforating guns or bridge plugs could be dropped or pumped downhole without the use of wireline, coiled tubing, or tractors. Because umbilical intervention is no longer required, the tools may perform an action automatically (e.g., perforate a desired [...]

Radio-Frequency-Identification Technique Opens and Closes Sliding Sleeves Remotely To simplify the process of multiple fracturing operations, a new approach has been designed that uses radio-frequency-identification (RFID) techniques to operate sliding sleeves remotely. The number of sleeves that can be run in a well using this technology is essentially unlimited, each having the same identification and a unique electronic address that allows it to [...]

Downhole Visualization Software Brings Sandface Completions Into Real-Time Age The operation of downhole sandface tools has relied upon depth measurements, downhole indicators that use applied tension or compression noted on a surface weight indicator, and hydraulic pressure to verify service-tool positions in relation to the sandface assembly. The introduction of multiple-zone one-trip sandface completion systems led to the development of a visualization tool that [...]

Next-Generation Production Control Aids Multiple Dipping Sandstone Reservoirs A next-generation intelligent-completions system was implemented successfully in a complicated, highly dipping, multilayered sandstone reservoir with commingled production. In this multizonal production solution, the conventional surface-controllable downhole zonal flow-control valves are now integrated with data-surveillance gauges, intelligent sensors, and isolation packers into one completion joint, compared with the previous multijoints system (i.e., splicing of up [...]

Reservoir Performance and Monitoring

Erik Vikane, SPE, Manager of Petroleum Technology, Statoil

To balance short-term production and long-term recovery is a key reservoir-engineering challenge in many fields. Optimizing, and even maximizing, short-term production is very important and has high focus in many organizations. The "maximum efficient rate" often is the compromise—a higher short-term, or plateau, rate than this would damage the reservoir irreversibly and a lower ultimate recovery would be the result.

Virtual-Measurement Value During Startup of Major Offshore Projects How can wells be managed optimally if one does not know continuously what they are producing? This problem is more critical at initial startup of the wells. Shell uses a real-time well virtual-flow-measurement tool, running on 60% of Shell’s global production, which has enabled significant added value in the areas of real-time surveillance and optimization. [...]

Transformation and Change to Sustain Production Intelligent energy (IE) describes a new way of monitoring and performing production operations. Even though substantial gains are possible, the pace of innovation associated with these initiatives seems inconsistent. This paper examines the key contributing factor of manpower availability and its effect on the industry, and assesses the readiness for transformation within the exploration and [...]

Intelligent-Field Management: Monitoring and Optimization of the Greater Ekofisk Area An online real-time production-optimization and monitoring system for the greater Ekofisk area (GEA) of Norway was installed in 2006. The system has evolved significantly since installation, with changes driven by multidisciplinary teams in coordination with the operator’s Production Optimization Centre (POC). This online system integrates data from the complete production system—reservoir to export meters. The [...]

Intelligent-Well-Monitoring Systems: Review and Comparison Despite the maturity of intelligent-well (IW) equipment, the concept of an integrated IW as a key element in the "digital oil field" is still not developed fully. Current practice is to evaluate the IW value chain in a fit-for-purpose manner rather than by an integrated-modeling workflow. An increasing variety of real-time downhole monitoring and measurement [...]