Journal of Petroleum Technology

Home / Issues / 2013-05

Featured this monthDoing More With DataThe oil and gas industry is constantly looking for ways to more efficiently use the increasing amount of information it collects. Initiatives include mining data in well logs to make better maps showing underground stresses and doing quality control checks on data as it flows in.

Features

Guest Editorial – Satish Pai The long-term outlook for deepwater E&P is healthy, and improving success rates in deepwater operations will require a focus on three major elements: people, process, and technology.

Middle East Conference Focuses on Energy Future Key Enablers Energy executives assess the Middle East’s energy future, including what role the development of unconventional resources might play.

First IPTC in China Examines Future Upstream Opportunities The development of unconventional resources, China’s increasing importance on the global energy map, and turning E&P challenges into opportunities were among the topics discussed at the International Petroleum Technology Conference in Beijing.

Q&A – Phil Andrews, CEO, Getenergy An interview with the head of Getenergy, an independent, privately held organization that brings together providers of education and training with national and international upstream oil and gas companies, governments, and service providers.

SPE/IADC Drilling Conference Highlights Industry Challenges Technology advances and the improvements needed to meet growing global oil demand in a safe, environmentally sound manner were the center of attention at the 25th SPE/IADC Drilling Conference.

California’s Monterey Formation: Zeroing in on a New Shale Oil Play? Some say the Monterey holds a shale oil play rivaling the Bakken or Eagle Ford. Where did this news originate, what does it mean, and how is the Monterey’s future unfolding?

Talent & Technology The E&P industry will be tasked with accessing hydrocarbons in new, more challenging frontiers. This challenge will require increased skills, capabilities, and technologies across the world, and meeting it starts with a disciplined, methodical, and long-term learning and development plan.

Technology Focus

Deepwater Projects

Jacques Braile Saliés, SPE, Drilling Manager, Queiroz Galvão Exploration and Production

Last year, I wrote my Technology Focus on innovation and commented on all the wonders and innovations of the Cascade and Chinook fields in the Gulf of Mexico. One year later, I had the pleasure of seeing an announcement for the semisubmersible hull destined for the Jack/St. Malo project leaving a South Korean shipyard for another in Texas.

Liwan Gas Project: South China Sea Deepwater Case Study The Liwan gas reservoir was discovered in the South China Sea Block 29/26 in September 2006. A sixth-generation, deepwater semisubmersible platform was contracted that subsequently drilled 26 deepwater wells (700- to 1600-m water depth) between November 2008 and November 2011. During the 1,011 days of drilling and testing activity, the rig and onshore supporting teams [...]

Who Dat Project—Deepwater Subsea Production of Light and Heavy Oil Plans were developed to produce multiple deepwater reservoirs with vastly different fluid properties from a subsea development in 3,100 ft of water in the Gulf of Mexico. Diagnostic and flow-assurance (FA) testing of the different-density oils addressed viscosity including non-Newtonian, wax, asphaltene, and hydrate behavior; downhole and flowline commingling; and fluid-compatibility tests. Provisions for pigging [...]

Decade of Stimulation Experience in the Deepwater Gulf of Mexico The deepwater Gulf of Mexico is a technically and economically challenging production environment. High rates and ultimate recoveries are required per well to offset high development costs. Stimulation treatments maintain wells at peak production rates and accelerate reserves recovery. In these complex layered reservoirs, stimulation is necessary to ensure recovery volume. The primary objective of stimulation is to [...]

Mensa Field: Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Case Study The Mensa field is a deepwater Gulf of Mexico (GOM) geopressured-gas field, producing from Upper Miocene sand with faulted four-way closure. During the early life, pressures fell sharply, with the field performing as a dominantly depletion-drive reservoir. The trend indicated isolated compartments. After a few years of production, pressures leveled off significantly. This midlife trend [...]

Intelligent Fields Technology

John Hudson, SPE, Senior Production Engineer, Shell

I recently attended an internal conference in my company where one of the major topics was unconventionals, and I was shocked at how little I knew. Sure, I have followed at some distance the business and technical trends that have shaped this still-emerging opportunity set, but this was my first exposure to behind-the-scenes experiences with both the technical and nontechnical challenges.

Dynamic-Simulation Applications Support Challenging Offshore Operations The Kitan oil field consists of three subsea intelligent wells. The intelligent completions were modeled in detail using commercial dynamic-simulation software to establish a sound and safe operating procedure for the well cleanup and well test. The simulation results provided the petroleum engineer on the rig with key operational information, such as the time for [...]

Inflow-Control Device, Inflow-Control Valves Aid Kuwait’s First Smart Multilateral Well Kuwait’s first smart Level-4 multilateral well was completed in the Burgan reservoir by combining a Level-4 junction with stacked dual-lateral completion with a customized viscosity-independent inflow-control device (ICD), two customized inflow-control valves (ICVs), downhole gauges, a wide-operating-range electrical submersible pump (ESP), suitable wellheads, a tree, and integrated surface panels for real-time data monitoring. The smart [...]

Coupling Reservoir and Well-Completion Simulators for Intelligent Multilateral Wells To maximize well productivity and reservoir oil recovery in mature fields, advanced lateral designs with intelligent completions have been implemented during the last decade. This paper describes an all-in-one system that combines nodal-analysis and numerical-simulation models to calculate the effect of intelligent-completion components—such as swell packers, internal control valves (ICVs), and inflow-control devices (ICDs)—on lateral [...]

Multilateral / Extended Reach

Alvaro Felippe Negrão, SPE, Senior Advisor, Woodside Energy USA

The producing assets of unconventional shale-gas and shale-oil plays in North America are among the strategic alternatives for future growth of exploration-and-production companies. Although the economics of the unconventional plays was quite marginal at the beginning, further advancements in planning and operations have made feasible the exploitation of such assets with a reasonable return on investment.

Thin-Oil-Column Extended-Reach Drilling at Sakhalin ExxonMobil, operator for the Sakhalin-1 project, planned an additional drilling campaign at the Chayvo field, Sakhalin Island, Russia. The focus of this campaign was to develop a thin-oil-column reservoir by use of extended-reach drilling (ERD). This overview describes the planning of these wells at the edge of the ERD envelope, the associated technical and operational [...]

Unconventional Shale Play: Multilateral Technology and Selective Fracturing Drilling, completing, and fracturing of unconventional-formation wells in North America have become commonplace for producing natural gas. It is less common to drill, complete, and fracture treat multiple lateral branches from a single main wellbore. Augmenting a multilateral well with selective fracturing of each leg is as straightforward as fracturing a single-horizontal well. In this [...]

Setting the Bear Free: Challenges of the Deepwater Ursa A-10 ERD Well This case history presents the highly challenging extended-reach deepwater well, Ursa A-10, drilled in the Ursa (Latin for bear) prospect in the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM). This 30,000-ft well, drilled from the Ursa tension-leg platform (TLP) to a vertical depth of 18,000 ft and a horizontal displacement (HD) of 20,000 ft, targeted the Yellow [...]

Well Construction

Bob Carpenter, SPE, Research Consultant, Chevron Exploration and Technology Company

In 2012, the number of unconventional tight gas/shale and high-pressure/high- temperature (HP/HT) papers continued to grow. This year, we had some very interesting developments in these and other areas of well construction.

Drilling System With Built-In Kickoff Ramp Allows for Dependable Curve Building The Granite Wash formation presents several challenges in drilling the build section from a vertical open hole to form a lateral. The formation is hard and abrasive, and it is difficult to anticipate downhole rock properties. The erratic nature of the formation results in unpredictable performance by the steerable drilling assembly and drill bits. In [...]

Tests Detail Effects of Weighting Materials on Performance of Thermal Cements To maintain zonal isolation throughout the life of a high-pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) well, the cement sheath must perform reliably at temperatures that can exceed 315°C. Weighting materials have largely been assumed to be inert with respect to set Portland cement; however, the present study reveals that this assumption may be false in HP/HT environments in which [...]

Cemented-Multistage-Sleeve Completion Improves Efficiency of Fracture Stimulation The Eagle Ford shale in Zavala County, Texas, is similar to many high-carbonate-content oil-shale formations. As with other shale plays, the industry has preferred using cemented lateral sections as the primary means of fracture-stage isolation, coupled with the plug-and-perforate (PAP) horizontal-completion technique. An alternative completion method, cemented multistage sleeves (CMSSs), recently improved efficiency and reduced [...]