Journal of Petroleum Technology

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Featured this monthMaking Unconventional Resources Less SoSPE’s technology directors offer their thoughts on the challenges of making unconventional resource plays a more conventional part of the oil and gas business.

Features

Young Technology Showcase The Containment of Undersea Blowout Events system, or CUBE, can be applied where a conventional capping stack cannot.

Natural Gas: A Rich Resource for Technological Challenges Though natural gas production has been around for a long time, Shell’s Chief Technology Officer Gerald Schotman sees many areas where the E&P technology is young, with plenty of room for improvement.

Artificial Intelligence Comes of Age in Oil and Gas Once the stuff of science fiction, artificial intelligence has become ubiquitous in daily life, and the modern oil and gas industry is no exception.

Sustainable Energy Growth Tops Middle East Conference Agenda This year’s theme at the largest oil and gas conference in the Middle East and North Africa was Sustainable Energy Growth: People, Responsibility, and Innovation.

Talent & Technology Well-designed mentoring programs enable organizations to align and seamlessly integrate training, coaching, and mentoring initiatives into holistic, personalized offerings.

Drilling Conference Is Keen on Deepwater and Onshore Unconventional Activities Arctic and ultradeepwater exploration, complex onshore unconventional projects, and heightened industry activity are among the topics of focus at the 2013 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Charles Frederic Rand and Robert Earll McConnell: The Men Behind the Awards Learn about these prestigious annual awards—and the men behind them.

Guest Editorial In our changing world, corporations find themselves continually adapting to new trends and technologies and often reinventing themselves to remain relevant.

Technology Focus

EOR Performance and Modeling

Baojun Bai, SPE, Associate Professor of Petroleum Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology

Enhanced oil recovery (EOR) targets the approximately two-thirds of oil remaining in reservoirs after conventional recovery methods have been exhausted. More than 350 EOR papers were published from October 2011 to September 2012 because two major EOR meetings were held in Tulsa and Oman and a few international meetings had EOR sections as a primary topic...

Progress and Effects of ASP Flooding Alkali/surfactant/polymer (ASP) flooding is one of the main chemical-enhanced-oil-recovery techniques for increasing crude-oil recovery used by PetroChina. Field tests have been performed in China since 1994, including six pilot tests in sandstone and in conglomerate reservoirs and three industrial tests. Incremental oil recoveries of those tests were greater than 19–20%. Three factors were found to [...]

CO2-EOR Mobility and Conformance Control: 40 Years of Research and Pilot Tests Carbon dioxide (CO2) has been used commercially for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) for more than 40 years. The CO2-EOR process could be improved if the high mobility of CO2 relative to reservoir oil and water could be reduced effectively and affordably. The water-alternating-with-gas (WAG) technology is the prefered method to control CO2 mobility, along with the [...]

New Correlation for Optimizing the Surfactant Structure for EOR The oil-recovery efficiency of chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) depends on the phase behavior of the microemulsion and on interfacial tension (IFT). The surfactants needed to obtain good phase behavior and ultralow IFT vary greatly, depending on oil characteristics and reservoir conditions. Many new surfactants have been introduced with widely different structures and formulations for [...]

Polymer Flooding in a Large Field in South Oman – Results and Plans In heavy-oil reservoirs, waterflooding leaves unswept-hydrocarbon volumes behind because of unfavorable mobility ratios, resulting in low ultimate recoveries. Increasing the viscosity of the injected water with polymer improves the water/oil mobility ratio, resulting in improved recovery factors. Following field trials and laboratory studies, a full-field polymer project was implemented in 2010. A key risk was [...]

Mature Fields and Well Revitalization

Jesse Lee, SPE, Chemistry Technology Manager, Schlumberger

Revitalization of mature fields holds the promise of lengthening the economic life of an asset years into the future. It has been demonstrated that significant value can be found in extensively produced mature fields. The characteristics of successful projects typically begin with a coherent exploration and production strategy that integrates elements of technology, personnel, and process.

Case Studies Examine Exploitation Strategies for Development of Mature Gas and Oil Fields Two case studies examine the creation of strategies for the development of mature gas/condensate and oil fields. For the gas/condensate field, the integration of geologic, seismic, production, and reservoir data identified new opportunities for drilling. For the oilfield case study, it is clear that the strategy of exploitation can be improved. According to study results, [...]

Light-Workover Cementing Technique Extends Life of Mature Indonesian Field Light-workover operations (LWOs) are well interventions performed without pulling out or replacing the completion of the well. Extensive LWOs are required to maintain satisfactory production at the mature Handil field in Indonesia. Among the LWOs executed in the field, a wide squeeze-cementing campaign was applied. These LWOs are used to isolate water-producing zones and target [...]

Surveillance and Complex Well Work Combine To Extend Life of Mature Field Ravenspurn North is a mature gas field forming part of BP’s United Kingdom Continental Shelf portfolio. The field commenced production in 1990 through 42 wells and three platforms; but, by 2006, half of the wells had ceased to flow. A surveillance campaign suggested a common failure mode for many wells, a postulation that large amounts [...]

Well Integrity

Otto Luiz Alcantara Santos, SPE, Coordinator, Well Control Training and Certification Program, Petrobras

The importance of well integrity has been recognized by the oil industry for a long time, and great effort has been made to improve the design and operational procedures during the well design and construction processes and throughout the entire well life cycle. Despite these efforts, many well integrity related problems still occur.

Dynamic Well-Control Response to Gas Influx in Managed-Pressure Drilling Managed-pressure drilling (MPD) offers the capability to control an influx dynamically, without shutting the well in conventionally. Some current methods use applied backpressure (ABP) to restrict the flow exiting the annulus to equal the flow entering the drillpipe, which is interpreted as influx cessation. However, ensuring only flow continuity does not imply influx cessation, unless [...]

Casing Drilling Manages Shallow-Gas Risk in Brownfield Redevelopment Casing drilling was used to optimize drilling of the tophole section in the Phase-1 wells of the mature Samarang field redevelopment campaign. Lost-circulation and stuck-casing incidents in the surface section had occurred in previous campaigns, and casing drilling was identified as a solution to mitigate these problems. This study focused on the casing-drilling application to [...]

Wellbore-Stability Assessment for Self-Killing Blowouts An analysis approach was developed to assess borehole stability following a hypothetical blowout from representative deepwater scenarios. It addresses whether imposed underbalanced conditions cause sufficient instability that the borehole bridges over and the well kills itself. Analyses applied to a typical deepwater blowout scenario suggest that bridging leading to self-killing can occur only in a [...]

Decommissioning

Win Thornton, SPE, Vice President of Decommissioning, Global Projects Organization, BP

Industry is now beginning to see decommissioning projects occur, probably too quickly for the owner and not quickly enough for the expectant supply chain. Decommissioning, however, is not just an end-of-life phenomenon. Here are three key decommissioning touch points that can be influenced successfully before the end of an asset’s life.

Benefits of Single Platform Lifting Lead to Design, Construction of New Giant Ship The ship described here was designed and is being built for single lifting of topsides of offshore platforms up to 53,000 short tons and jackets up to 27,500 short tons. The vessel will have a wide slot at the bow that fits around platform substructures and will be equipped with a hydraulically operated topside-lifting system. [...]

North West Hutton Decommissioning – Major Challenge Turns to Major Success Excellent health, safety, and environment (HSE) performance was maintained throughout the decommissioning and removal of the first major offshore UK installation of the North Sea, the North West Hutton (NWH) installation. The NWH installation was composed of an 18 000-t steel jacket support structure and 20 000 t of topside modules. The total offshore removal program was executed [...]

Environmental Consideration Leads to Successful Decommissioning of FSO Ship dismantling issues have never been as sensitive as they are now. In this context, the Rio del Rey partnership, represented by Total E&P Cameroun, planned the Serepca-1 (SR1) tanker’s end of life. SR1 was a Suezmax type oil tanker moored off the coast of Cameroon. The ship was a significant source of raw material [...]