Vol. 58 No. 7

July 2006

Distinguished Lecture Program

2006-07 Distinguished Lecture Program

Featuring 30 speakers from various disciplines and professions, the 2006–07 Distinguished Lecturer Program emphasizes current industry trends, challenges, and technology through diverse topics, from sand control and completions in ultradeep water and new developments in managed-pressure drilling to cold flow to critical success paths in openhole completions. Topics and speakers featured in this year’s Distinguished Lecturer Program include the following.

How Deep Can You Go and What Challenges Lie Ahead?

World deepwater basins contain vast hydrocarbon resources that await discovery and development. The experience of matching the field development scheme to reservoir uncertainties and site characteristics is a key to ensuring success. Execution capability is another critical area. Successful strategy for front-end scenario planning, concept ranking, and project execution will be presented along with insights into development economics.

Kadreya Abou-Sayed is the Early Production Project Leader for the BP Sakhalin Development Unit. She has spent 20 years advancing concepts and project development in the deepwater frontier, beginning with “deep water” defined as 1,500 ft to the current definition of greater than 10,000 ft. Abou-Sayed has made major contributions to efforts in appraisal excellence, standardization, project integration, and assurance.

Accurate Determination of Remaining Hydrocarbon: Art or Science?

This lecture reviews state-of-the-art saturation-monitoring technology, illustrates successes, and suggests reasons for the challenges facing this technology area. Reasons range from monitoring as an afterthought to “abuse” of techniques by practitioners. Steps required to mitigate challenges will be identified, and additional application of technology such as CO2 or sour-gas sequestration will be explored.

Ahmed Badruzzaman leads the R&D effort in advanced nuclear logging for Chevron Energy Technology Co. A Fellow of the American Nuclear Soc., he teaches a graduate course in subsurface nuclear technology at the U. of California at Berkeley. Badruzzaman earned a PhD in nuclear engineering and science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst.

Challenges on Sand Control and Completions for Productivity in Ultradeep Waters

The evolution of drilling technologies in recent years has allowed operators to explore for gas and high-viscosity oil in reservoirs at shallow burial depth and ultradeep water where reservoirs are usually formed by turbidites. This discussion includes well-construction issues and presents new approaches for sand-control-system selection for gas and heavy-oil exploitation, minimization of pressure drop, well segmentation, and selective control of water production.

Luis C.B. Bianco is a Senior Petroleum Engineer for Petrobras in the Well Engineering Technical Support Team at the Rio de Janeiro Business Unit in Brazil. A sand-control specialist with 20 years of experience, he has been involved in advanced completion techniques and well design for deepwater wells.

Implementing Underbalanced Operations (UBOs): Challenges, Solutions, and Operational Experience

In addition to recalling the introduction of UBOs offshore Norway, this lecture reviews challenges encountered and solutions identified to implement UBOs, and it illustrates how managed-pressure-drilling (MPD) ideas can be used when cementing casing in a well with very narrow pressure margins, a world first for this type of operation and a first step toward managing casing-cementing operations following on MPD.

Johan Eck-Olsen has 28 years of petroleum industry experience, earning an MS degree in petroleum engineering from the Norwegian Inst. of Technology. Having worked for Shell Brunei, Mobil in Norway, and now Statoil ASA, he has been involved in introducing new technology, specifically UBOs.

Managing Smart-Oilfield Assets and the Training Needs for Collaborative Decision Making

Technologies related to i-field, e-field, intelligent energy, or digital oil fields have the potential to boost ultimate-recovery factors to well above 50 to 60%. This presentation examines evolving technologies and offers a roadmap for metamorphosis of asset managers and personnel resources. It will demonstrate ways to facilitate the education and training of a new generation of high-tech geoscientists.

Iraj Ershaghi is the Omar B. Milligan Professor and Director of Petroleum Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering at the U. of Southern California (USC). He also serves as Executive Director of CiSoft, a USC-Chevron Center of Excellence for Interactive Smart Oilfield Technologies. Ershaghi earned a BS degree with honors from the U. of Tehran and MS and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering from USC.

The End of Stranded Gas: The Emergence of the Gas-to-Products (GTP) Option

GTP technologies, including the well-known gas-to-liquids process, finally emerge as options to efficiently convert this resource into clean, high-value fuels and chemicals. Less known are rapid advances in gas-to-chemicals (such as methanol) conversion technologies and increases in plant scales that significantly reduce manufacturing costs. There is great promise for dimethyl-ether, among other derivatives. This lecture will address the role of GTP in the context of existing gas-monetization businesses.

Theo Fleisch is a distinguished adviser for BP’s new Global Gas-To-Products Group. An expert in GTP, he earned MS and PhD degrees in physical chemistry from the U. of Innsbruck, Austria, and has worked for 27 years in technical and managerial roles for Amoco and BP.

Managing Uncertainty in the Reservoir Model

The past 15 years have seen the role of geostatistics grow from an unused technology to a key application for estimating uncertainty in the volume of oil and gas reserves. Despite significant advances, current geostatistical reservoir modeling still has areas in which the technology and user understanding is weak. Areas highlighted in this presentation will be impact on scale-up volumes, volumetric bias, porosity/permeability-transform strategies, and gross-rock-volume uncertainty.

Ashley Francis, a geophysicist and geostatistician, is Managing Director of Earthworks. He lectures in graduate-level geostatistics at Imperial College, London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Soc. Francis has more than 20 years of worldwide industry experience in exploration, development, and production.

Managed-Pressure-Drilling (MPD) Technology: Applications, Variations, and Case Histories

This talk will address the background of MPD, provide recent case examples in which specific drilling-related barriers were overcome, and illustrate equipment layouts required to practice each variation of MPD from all types of rigs. The desire to reduce drilling nonproductive time and costs associated with lost circulation, narrow pressure windows, slow rate of penetration, and other factors is the key incentive to practice MPD. The two categories of MPD (reactive and proactive), along with four variations, will be presented and discussed.

Don Hannegan is a recognized expert in development of MPD technology and is a functional director for Weatherford Intl. He invented several offshore designs of rotating control devices and fit-for-purpose elastomers for rotating annulus-seal elements. Hannegan is also the primary content provider for the MPD chapter in SPE’s new textbook-in-progress, Advanced Drilling Technology and Well Construction.

Reserves Management and Auditability—Critical Requirements in Today’s Oil and Gas Industry

Increased sensitivity of senior oil company executives, board members, and investors centers around the requirements for reserves booking and reporting, including exploration potential and subcommercial resources. Discussion will focus on the need for a reserves system that captures the total resource portfolio, the critical decision points within that system (focal points for corporate governance), and a process that provides quality control and an audit trail to ensure that reporting requirements are met.

Anthony Harrison is Reserves Manager for Santos Ltd. He has spent more than 30 years in the oil and gas industry and has served in a number of technical and supervisory roles in the geoscience area and in reservoir engineering.

What Defines Critical-Application Cementing, and Do We Really Know How To Do It?

While even the most benign wellbore conditions can be challenging under the right circumstances, this talk will concentrate on those that are challenging to even the subject-matter experts, but also will point out the issues that must be addressed and are often either overlooked, oversimplified, or not considered as significant to the task at hand.

James Heathman is a global technical adviser for the Halliburton Fluids Div., specializing in cementing and conformance technology. He earned BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering from Louisiana Tech U. and an MBA degree from Oklahoma State U.

Viscous Oil Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) by Viscosity-Reducing Immiscible Water-Alternating-Gas (WAG) Process

This lecture presents development application of gas-injection EOR technology to such viscous-oil reservoirs where gas resource is available and the reservoir has a large development target with many high-rate wells. Miscible-gas EOR technology is rarely applied to viscous-oil reservoirs. The presentation will show that for viscous oils, it is still possible to significantly increase oil recovery above waterflood by injecting the enriched gas in a WAG process, even if classical miscibility is not achieved.

Bharat Jhaveri is a reservoir engineering adviser at BP Exploration with more than 24 years of experience that includes expertise in phase behavior and compositional modeling in addition to design, engineering, and evaluation of large-scale gas EOR projects. His work was instrumental in design of the Prudhoe Bay Miscible and Vaporization Projects. Jhaveri earned a BS degree in chemical engineering from Indian Inst. of Technology, Kanpur, India, an MS degree in chemical engineering from the Illinois Inst. of Technology, Chicago, and a PhD degree in chemical engineering from Stanford U.

Engineer Your Gas/Condensate Systems, Reservoir to Sales Meter

In addition to addressing well-productivity issues and considering various completion options to modeling the coupled reservoir/wellbore/surface-network system, this talk explores how uncertainties in volumetrics and capital-and-operating expenses may influence designing the total system to meet delivery targets. Several useful phenomenological correlations shed light on understanding various issues surrounding management of gas/condensate systems. It also introduces a simple screening tool to check whether cycling of lean gas is feasible.

C. Shah Kabir has more than 28 years of experience in the oil industry, with the past 15 years at Chevron. His experiences include transient testing, wellbore-fluid and heat-flow modeling, and reservoir engineering. Kabir earned an MS degree in chemical engineering from the U. of Calgary.

Cementing—Planning for Success for the Life of Well

The cost of unsuccessful first-time cementing operations, while thought to be huge, is rarely measured by operators because of a technical disconnect that can occur between drilling and production staff. This lecture details some of the generally agreed-upon best practices for prevention of drilling nonproductive time related to setting cement plugs and fluid migration after cementing. Issues impacting long-term zonal isolation, minimum engineering design requirements, and balance between good drilling-fluid performance and successful primary cementing will be presented.

Daryl S. Kellingray is a drilling specialist in the drilling technology unit of BP E&P Technology Group. He is BP’s Global Cementing Specialist. Kellingray’s career began in the BP Research Center in London in the area of gas migration/cement shrinkage and mixing energy effects on cement slurries. He later became involved in cementing operations in the U.K. sector of the North Sea.

Crude Quality and Value Enhancement: An Opportunity for Innovation

Achieving a reduction in sulfur, accomplished by various upgrading processes, can have a profound impact in terms of crude price. Conversion of high-sulfur crude is becoming increasingly more attractive. This presentation offers an overview of crude-quality issues and heavy-oil upgrading technologies to improve crude quality. Discussion will cover compelling and innovative options and examples of opportunities, some of which can possibly be applied within E&P, to improve crude quality while addressing traditional production issues.

Rashid Khan is an intellectual property specialist and energy technologist for Saudi Aramco, providing leadership to capture, develop, and commercialize intellectual properties upstream and downstream. Considered an international expert in hydrocarbon processing, he has served as a technical adviser to the U.S. White House. Khan earned an MS degree in energy and fuels engineering from Pennsylvania State U. and an MS degree in environmental engineering from Oregon State U. He also earned a PhD degree in energy and fuels engineering from Pennsylvania State U.

Upgridding and Upscaling: Current Trends and Future Directions

Upscaling describes the range of techniques used to develop coarser, simpler models. Current best practice has moved away from “local” calculations to “extended-local” and “global” techniques that take advantage of the adjacent portions of the detailed reservoir description to develop more-robust effective properties. Upgridding describes techniques used to design the spatial resolution of the coarser model. Examples from North America and the North Sea will be used to demonstrate the power of combining these approaches.

Michael J. King, a senior reservoir engineer for BP, has shaped the company’s global reservoir modeling strategy as a technology network leader, technology adviser, and R&D project manager with expertise in heterogeneity modeling and upscaling of geologic models. He continues active research in modeling strategy. King earned a PhD degree from Syracuse U. with post-doctoral studies in nuclear and particle physics.

Tail-End Production, a Challenge to Sustainable Operating Strategy

During the remaining lifetime of an oil field, the application of economical methods is a prerequisite for ensuring compliance with specifications on the treatment of produced fluids, mainly for oil and water phases. A new feature in this context is the concept of sustainability, which can be redefined simply as a permanent, robust improvement. Two crucial factors have proved to be decisive for the sustainability of operational measures—ineffective treatment of produced fluids and injectivity problems caused by formation damage.

Wolfram Kleinitz is head of the Production Chemistry Dept. of Gaz de France Produktion Exploration Deutschland GmbH. He joined Preussag Energie, now Gaz de France, in 1971 and worked as a chemical engineer before becoming responsible for all chemical aspects of oil and gas production and storage in 1978.

Heavy-Oil Reservoir—Recent Developments and Challenges

Heavy oil is commercially produced by primary recovery (solution-gas drive and cold production), improved recovery (water injection), and enhanced recovery (thermal methods). Novel methods such as solvent injection and hybrid methods are being tested for heavy-oil recovery where steam may not be the best option. These are in the experimental stage, and their commerciality is being demonstrated. This talk highlights recent developments and advances in heavy-oil recovery and challenges in each of the heavy-oil-recovery methods.

Mridul Kumar is a team leader of the Heavy Oil and Unconventional Reservoirs team for Chevron Energy Technology Co. He also leads Chevron’s Heavy Oil Network. Kumar earned a BTech degree with distinction from the Indian Inst. of Technology, Kanpur, and MS and PhD degrees from Pennsylvania State U., all in mechanical engineering.

Cold Flow: A Method To End Pipeline Blockages?

This lecture introduces a novel technique to use a recirculation scheme to seed and control crystallization phenomena, especially gas hydrate and paraffin wax. Wall deposition is avoided, and a transportable slurry with solid particles of gas hydrates and wax is produced. Years of laboratory testing have yielded excellent slurry-formation and -transport results for a wide variety of crude oils.

Roar Larsen is Chief Scientist at SINTEF Petroleum Research and serves as Adjunct Professor of natural gas hydrates at the Norwegian U. of Science and Technology. At SINTEF, he leads research activities on gas hydrates and is responsible for a large flow-assurance laboratory. Larsen teaches the only university course in gas hydrates.

Innovative Integrated Modeling Technology

Innovative integrated-reservoir modeling technology based on latest achievements in seismic processing, rock physics, integrated reservoir/facility modeling, and production optimization is presented. Significant business value has been added with the new technology applications for the optimization of infill drilling, waterflood, and facility-modification programs that are supported by reservoir studies in the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and North Sea oil/gas fields.

Michael L. Litvak, a reservoir engineering adviser for BP, has 34 years of petroleum industry experience. He has developed innovative technology for integrated reservoir/facility modeling and production optimization in commercial reservoir simulators. Litvak earned an MS degree from Moscow Oil and Gas U. and a PhD degree in applied mathematics from the Acadamy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.

A Cementing Paradigm Shift and Design Innovation Saves Time and Money

Using knowledge of available cements and compressive-strength enhancing agents, a new cement blend was developed that could get higher compressive strengths and better acoustical impedance in a shorter time frame while maintaining the cement density at 12 lbm/gal and meeting slurry-process economics. Examples of pre- and post-solution cement-bond logs and economics related to nonproductive time over a large drilling program will be presented.

David Mack is an advanced senior production engineer in the Reservoir and Well Performance Group with Marathon Oil. Having received a petroleum engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines, he has held various research and operational positions with pressure-pumping companies in north Texas, the Rocky Mountains, Mid-Continent region, and Appalachian basin.

Wellbore-Quality Characterization for Drilling and Casing Running in Challenging Wells

The recent maturing of 3D rotary-steerable systems has generated renewed interest in understanding wellbore quality and its impact. The term “wellbore quality” is not particularly well defined; its context is often misunderstood, and it is usually considered too complex to quantify. This talk will offer an overview of issues relating to wellbore quality, explain the issues involved in quantifying it, and discuss the implications of having a common industry definition.

Colin Mason, a senior drilling engineering specialist based in BP’s E&P Technology Group, began his career as an academic at the U. of Southampton and later became a network analyst for a major oil and gas distribution company and a pipeline design engineer for an international engineering consultancy. He joined BP’s Technology Center in 1997, providing engineering support to extended-reach-drilling operations at Wytch Farm.

Recent Advances in Complex Well Design

Batch drilling, in combination with high spread rates, dictates that well failures be kept to a minimum. This goal is reinforced by the extreme consequences of a hydrocarbon release at the mudline. The current presentation reviews the context, success, and developmental failures of a variety of recently introduced design advances, using specific well examples to reinforce key points.

Phillip D. Pattillo is a distinguished adviser with BP America in E&P technology. Since 1972, he has worked in the areas of multiphase flow and tubular and rock mechanics. Pattillo earned a BS degree in mechanical engineering and an MS degree in engineering science from Louisiana State U. and MS and PhD degrees in engineering science from the U. of Notre Dame.

Frac Pack in Ultradeep Water: Lessons Learned in 100 Successful Well Operations

Sand control is mandatory in most Campos basin reservoirs. Since the first frac-pack job was performed in 1996, many challenges related to three areas have been overcome—best practices, unconsolidated high-permeability rock fracturing, and design and pumping questions posed because of ultrahigh permeability. This presentation poses both answers and questions about frac packs in soft rocks in deep water.

Carlos A. Pedroso, a completion engineer for Petrobras, is a technical adviser in sand control and stimulation. He earned a degree in chemical engineering and petroleum engineering from Federal U. of Paraná and an MS degree in petroleum engineering from Campinas U.

Formation Testing in the Dynamic Drilling Environment

The most recent form of testing, formation testing while drilling (FTWD), introduces new capabilities to the drilling environment. While still in its infancy, FTWD enables new pressure-transient analysis techniques to determine properties of interest to drilling, such as filtrate-loss rate and depth of invasion. This talk highlights applications that have been developed, applied, and successfully demonstrated.

Mark A. Proett is a senior scientific adviser for Halliburton Energy Services in the Strategic Research group. He earned a BSME degree from the U. of Maryland and an MS degree from Johns Hopkins U. Proett has published extensively in the area of well-testing and fluid-flow-analysis methods.

Is Underbalanced Drilling the Right Answer for Your Reservoir?

Underbalanced drilling (UBD) has evolved from a drilling technique into a reservoir-exploitation tool. While primary benefits that motivate the increasing consideration of this form of drilling include enhanced productivity and reservoir characterization, candidate selection and valuation remains a largely arbitrary and heuristic process. This lecture will provide broad coverage of recent developments and new challenges in reservoir application of UBD.

P.V. Suryanarayana is a founding partner and Executive Vice President of Blade Energy Partners. Having earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Rice U., he was a Senior Technologist for Mobil’s E&P technical center and North Sea operations before starting Blade in 2000. Suryanarayana’s contributions include advanced mechanics, well-construction engineering, quantitative risk analysis, stochastic design, coiled tubing, UBD, and reservoir engineering.

The Critical Path to Success for Openhole Completions—Fluid Design and Execution

Openhole completions have become a key component to efficient field development. Given the large number of fluid options to drill and complete these wells, careful testing and planning become paramount. Problems that can arise include invasion of solids, creation of scales or emulsions, plugging of completion assemblies, or incompatibilities of sequential fluid treatments.

Charles Svoboda, the Reservoir Drill-In Fluid Technical Manager at M-I Swaco, has 23 years of experience in drilling, reservoir drill-in, and completion fluids. He earned a BS degree in civil engineering from the U. of Illinois. Svoboda’s operational and technical positions have included Technical Manager for M-I Swaco’s European Technical Center in Stavanger.

Challenges and Opportunities for Operating in Environmentally Sensitive Basins: Learning from the California Experience

Smaller operators, who serve as stewards of resources in environmentally sensitive areas, have profited greatly from the benefits of advanced technologies in managing oil fields in sensitive environments. Using new technology from existing infrastructure combined with cooperative efforts between government agencies and operators, it has been demonstrated that successful development can be achieved with no, or limitable, environmental impact.

Marina Voskanian, Chief of Planning and Development with the California State Lands Com-mis-sion, previously worked for Exxon, Southern Cali-fornia Gas Co., Aminoil, and Phillips Petroleum. She earned graduate degrees in petroleum engineering from the U. of Southern California.

Drilling With Casing—What It Can and Cannot Do for an Asset

Drilling with casing, an emerging technology for simultaneously drilling and casing a well, is gaining increasing acceptance in onshore applications where entire wells are drilled with casing and offshore applications where it is used to drill selected intervals. This talk reviews the current status and advantages/disadvantages in drilling more than 1,000 intervals ranging from shallow surface holes using 20-in. casing to holes greater than 15,000 ft with 3½-in. casing.

Tommy M. Warren is Director of Casing Drilling Research and Engineering for Tesco. He spent 26 years with Amoco serving in operations and drilling research. Warren earned BS and MS degrees in mineral engineering from the U. of Alabama and was selected as a U. of Alabama Distinguished Engineering Fellow in 1994.

Water-Injector Completion Design and Performance in Sand-Prone Formations

An increasing number of developments supported by waterflood and pressure maintenance are in sand-prone formations. In this challenging economic and operating environment, completion-design philosophy focuses on higher reliability and minimal well intervention. Yet sandface completion design for water injectors is recognized as a major technical issue. How do available design options meet these concerns, and what performance can be expected in the field?

Darrell Wood, a senior completions engineer for BP, has served in a number of engineering and operational assignments in the U.K. and Alaska. Responsible for developing BP’s completion-design guidelines for water injection into unconsolidated formations, he also works with development project teams on integrating downhole flow-control technology into water injectors.

Mechanical-Integrity Management: Putting and Keeping the Pieces Together

Concepts are described and examples provided to further clarify the integrated structure of a program designed to manage mechanical integrity of equipment subject to in-service degradation. A consistent framework on which to base a modern mechanical-integrity management program is presented. The framework integrates risk, deliberate management of risk reduction, and minimization of the likelihood of failure resulting from in-service degradation.

Richard C. Woollam, Adviser for Corrosion and Integrity Management in the BP E&P Technology Group, was previously the Integrity Manager for BP’s Alaska operation. He earned a BS degree with honors from the U. of Manchester Inst. of Science and Technology, U.K., and joined the BP Research Center at Sunbury in 1986.