Vol. 59 No. 8

August 2007

2007-08 SPE Distinguished Lecturer Program

Featuring 28 speakers from various disciplines and professions, the 2007–08 Distinguished Lecturer Program emphasizes current industry trends, challenges, and technology through diverse topics such as hydraulic fracturing, wellbore stability, oil recovery, and field performance. Topics and speakers featured in this year’s Distinguished Lecturer Program include the following.

Implementing a Well-Integrity-Management System

This lecture presents the framework used by BP to implement and manage well-integrity programs and discusses the Prudhoe Bay well-integrity-management system. Well integrity has received increasing attention from all aspects of the petroleum industry. Lessons learned from the Alaska implementation are discussed, including data-management systems and several case histories.

Joe Anders is a Senior Wells Project Engineer for BP in Alaska with more than 24 years of operational oilfield experience. He earned a BS degree in geological engineering and an MS degree in petroleum engineering. Anders also holds a patent for an enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) process.

New Trends and Challenges on Fluid Design for Well-Construction Optimization in Ultradeepwaters

In spite of the industry’s effort to develop high-performance water-based fluids, the use of synthetic fluids guarantees superior wellbore performance. Another challenge is to provide a reliable sand-control technique in the horizontal section with operational safety and minimum formation damage. This presentation shows a new approach in which a synthetic fluid is used for all steps of the well construction and completion.

Átila Fernando Lima Aragão is a senior adviser in drilling, completion, and stimulation fluids for Petrobras and works for the Well Engineering Team at the Exploration and Production Services Unit, in Brazil. He earned a BS degree in chemical engineering from the Universidade Federal da Bahia and a BS degree in mathematics sciences from the Universidad del Salvador.

Application of Low-Viscosity Fluids to Hydraulic Fracturing

In the last 50 years, more-viscous fluids gained in popularity as the application of low-viscosity fracturing fluids declined. Today, the application of low-viscosity fracturing fluids is seeing resurgence in the industry. This presentation focuses on why this resurgence is occurring, why to use water as a fracturing fluid, and why now.

Larry K. Britt has specialized in the development and application of solutions to hydraulic-fracturing problems throughout the world and manages NSI Technologies’ Rock Mechanics Laboratory at the University of Tulsa. His experience includes the design, optimization, and execution of fracture stimulations and integrated field studies. Britt is a graduate of the University of Missouri–Rolla.

Low-Cost, Noninvasive, Remote Pipeline, and Well-Inspection Techniques

The prevention and remediation of many flow-assurance problems require timely knowledge about the internal-deposition conditions of pipelines, sealines, and tubings. Techniques carried out by measuring and analyzing pressure signals induced by fast flow-rate changes constitute an extremely flexible, sensitive, and easily applied methodology. The basic principles of the method are illustrated, together with case histories of onshore and offshore applications.

Alberto Di Lullo leads several R&D flow-assurance projects in EniTecnologie, where he is responsible for the physical-chemistry laboratories applied to exploration, drilling, and production of hydrocarbons. Di Lullo is also coauthor of several patents and publications.

Wellbore Stability—Essentials in Well Planning and Well Optimization

With the increasing growth in operations, optimal wellbore-stability analysis is an integral part of well planning and well optimization. A holistic approach to wellbore stability that considers both the mechanical and chemical effects, along with probabilistic methods as tools for quantitative risk analysis of instability management and prediction, is presented in this study.

Adewale Dosunmu is a lecturer in the Department of Petroleum and Gas Engineering at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and also serves as a petroleum engineering consultant to several E&P companies. He holds BS, ME, and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering.

Predicting Field Performance—Thriving With Uncertainty

Widespread access to detailed physical models and to low-cost, high-speed computing makes it possible to harness measurements of uncertainty to the task of improving field-development decisions of all types. This lecture illustrates the difficulties and pitfalls that can arise when history matching and prediction are performed deterministically with practical examples.

Neil Dunlop is a Director at Energy Scitech, a member of the Roxar Group, and a consultant who conducts reservoir studies. He earned an MS degree in petroleum engineering from Imperial College, London, and an MA degree in chemical engineering from Cambridge University.

Wellbore-Stability Issues in Shales or Hydrate-Bearing Sediments

This presentation draws on the application of numerical modeling, laboratory rock testing, and knowledge of the processes critical to shales and hydrate-bearing sediments to provide predictive tools for the stability of wellbores drilled in challenging formations. The lecture also touches on the application of geomechanical modeling and testing to the problem of sand-production prediction, an area of major concern to the oil industry.

Reem Freij-Ayoub is a civil engineer with MS and PhD degrees in geomechanics and rock mechanics from the University of Western Australia. She joined the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization to develop reactive transport models then pursued her interests in problems in petroleum geomechanics.

New and Emerging Water and Gas Shutoff Techniques in Vertical and Horizontal Open Holes: Challenges and Opportunities

This presentation focuses on new and emerging solutions to challenging conformance problems using processes, chemical systems, techniques, tools, and real-time predictive methods and software to derive successful water and gas shutoff for both vertical and horizontal wells.

Naz H. Gazi is Senior Technical Adviser for Halliburton. He also worked for several operating companies and taught at the University of Oklahoma and Tinker US Air Force Base. Gazi earned an MS degree in petroleum engineering and an MBA degree from University of Oklahoma.

Petroleum Reserves Estimates—Where We Have Been, Where We Are, and Where We Appear To Be Headed

Recent global events have ignited worldwide interest in oil and gas reserves, which has led to wide misunderstanding and abuse of the term “reserves.” This presentation clarifies what the phrase “oil and gas reserves” means in several contexts and directs attention toward an analysis of the impact of the US Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Ron Harrell is Chairman of Ryder Scott Company. He has managed reservoir engineering and geological studies worldwide, including property evaluations for acquisitions and divestitures, financing, and reservoir management. Harrell earned a BS degree in petroleum engineering from Louisiana Tech University.

Prefrac Reservoir Characterization From Perforation Inflow Diagnostic (PID) Testing: “Measure Twice—Frac Once”

In an effort to enhance the deliverability potential of a tight gas well, operators sometimes overlook the “missing link” between stimulation design and the well’s post-frac production response. This presentation demonstrates that a properly designed and conducted closed-chamber PID test is a cost-effective, safe, and environmentally friendly method of obtaining critical prefrac reservoir parameters.

Robert Hawkes is Team Leader of Reservoir Services for BJ Services Company Canada. He began his career with Esso Resources. Since then, Hawkes went on to establish himself as a specialist in well-test analysis with Fekete Associates. He graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology with a diploma in petroleum engineering.

Integrated Reservoir Modeling—Challenges and Solutions

Integrated reservoir modeling involves several challenges, such as scale and resolution of various data sources, quality and content of information, qualitative observations, and solutions of inverse models. The presentation discusses various methods of overcoming these challenges. Through a series of case studies, a workflow process is discussed that can quantify uncertainties in future performance.

Mohan Kelkar is a Williams Endowed Professor and the Chairman of the Petroleum Engineering Department at the University of Tulsa. His primary research interest is in reservoir characterization and integrated reservoir modeling. As a consultant, Kelkar is involved in many reservoir studies that involve integration of various sources of data.

Crude-Oil Emulsions: Everything You Wanted To Know but Were Afraid To Ask

In these days of high oil prices and pressure to reduce production costs, there is an economic necessity to control, optimize, or eliminate the emulsion problem by maximizing oil/water separation. This presentation provides a summary of how emulsions form during oil production, the types of emulsions encountered, what stabilizes emulsions, and up-to-date methods for reducing emulsion-related problems.

Sunil Kokal is a PVT/reservoir fluid property consultant at the Saudi Aramco R&D Center. He is an expert in hydrocarbon phase behavior, crude-oil emulsions, and asphaltenes. Kokal earned a BS degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and a PhD degree from the University of Calgary, both in chemical engineering.

Maximizing Oil-Recovery Efficiency and Sequestration of CO2 With “Next Generation” CO2 EOR

Injection of CO2 into depleted and near-depleted oil reservoirs offers the potential for increasing oil recovery while sequestering industrial emissions of CO2. This presentation examines how alternative technology designs and operating strategies may enable industry to improve CO2-EOR oil-recovery efficiencies significantly, from the traditional 8 to 12% of original oil in place (OOIP) to potentially more than 20% OOIP.

Vello A. Kuuskraa is President of Advanced Resources International. He earned an MBA degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS degree in applied mathematics/economics from North Carolina State University.

Assessment of Forecast Uncertainty in Mature Reservoirs

Making the right decision on reservoir development using all available data in a timely manner is the key to successful operation. For mature reservoirs, the technical challenge is in obtaining probabilistic description of the reservoir models. This presentation demonstrates the practical approach to solving this critical problem by use of field examples.

Jorge Landa is a senior adviser in reservoir engineering with Chevron Energy Technology. His work experience before joining Chevron includes 15 years with Halliburton. Landa earned MS and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering from Stanford University and a mechanical engineering degree from Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Bridging Over Uncertainty: Past Performance Into Forecasting

This presentation aims to design the concept of modeling the existing data into visualized tools to help predict the future. Engineers should use Monte Carlo simulation, decision trees, databases, expert systems, linear programming, design of experiments, and all types of artificial intelligence to state their uncertainties not as discrete values, but as continuous ranges.

Sameh Macary works with IPR Group of Companies. He is the Production Department Head and a petroleum engineering professor in the Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute. Macary earned MS and PhD degrees in production and reservoir engineering from the Azerbaijanian Institute of Oil and Chemistry.

Oilfield Scale—A New Integrated Approach To Tackle an Old Foe

This lecture outlines the potential threats to production and safety that oilfield scale may present if not managed appropriately and discusses the criteria for analyzing and selecting the optimum control strategy. The general approach is illustrated by several field examples on which the author has worked very closely with a number of international oil companies.

Eric Mackay is a research fellow at the Heriot-Watt University Institute of Petroleum Engineering, where his interests include the application of reservoir-engineering principles and data for better understanding of production issues. Mackay earned a BS degree in physics from the University of Edinburgh and a PhD degree in petroleum engineering from Heriot-Watt University.

Smart Completions, Smart Wells, and Now Smart Fields—Challenges Our Industry Faces and How To Overcome Them

This lecture asks what are the challenges that our industry faces in turning high-frequency data into information and knowledge that can be used to make decisions and consequently turn the decisions into action. To overcome these challenges, we have to use the technology that others have used in order to solve similar problems, successfully.

Shahab D. Mohaghegh is a professor of petroleum and natural gas engineering at West Virginia University and the founder and President of Intelligent Solutions. He earned BS, MS, and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering.

CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery and Storage, the Weyburn Story—Industrial and Governmental Perspectives

This lecture discusses the Weyburn Project, which is the world’s largest commercial CO2 pilot project and continues to demonstrate the importance of conducting research in real-world situations. The Weyburn Project’s benchmark data set and models will be accessible to governments around the world and will serve as the basis for building regulation and policy procedures for future CO2-EOR and -storage projects.

Michael Monea is Executive Director of the Petroleum Technology Research Centre. He has been president of several companies and most recently sold Flatland Exploration in 2002. Monea holds chair positions in various companies.

Downhole Fluid Analysis, The Key to Unraveling the Complexities of Reservoirs and Their Contained Fluids

A common but incorrect working model is that pressure communication between different permeable zones implies flow communication. Such technical shortcomings have made compartmentalization one of the biggest problems in exploration/appraisal. Downhole fluid analysis coupled with compositional gradients is now routinely uncovering compartmentalization.

Oliver C. Mullins, a scientific adviser, is the originator of downhole fluid analysis, a commercial service for which he has received several awards. Mullins is Reservoir Domain Champion for Wireline–Schlumberger. He has published 60 articles in refereed journals, 30 in oilfield journals, and has coauthored 26 US patents.

A Journey Through the Evolution of Deepwater Drilling in Campos Basin

Since 1970, the Campos basin has been a major research area for drilling and production activities. The information obtained over the years enabled and pushed the testing of a number of technologies without losses to the company or damage to the environment. This lecture discusses an overview of drilling application and technology implementation that stems from 26 years of experience.

Emmanuel Franco Nogueira is a Senior Consultant for Petrobras’ Well Engineering and New Technologies Group in Rio de Janeiro. Nogueira earned a BS degree in mechanical-engineering from Universidade de Brasília and an MS degree in subsea engineering from Cranfield University.

Selection and Design Criteria for Sand-Control Screens

This presentation involves the critical evaluation of sand-control-screen selection, design, and performance. The proliferation of new screens and screen types has raised legitimate questions about how to select the proper sand-control screen or other device for a particular formation and type of completion.

William K. Ott is an independent petroleum consultant based in Houston and is founder of Well Completion Technology. He earned a BS degree in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri.

Current Practices and Challenges in Gravel Packing Open Holes With Reactive Shales

This presentation discusses the recent developments and current challenges in gravel packing of open holes in reactive-shale environments, and it highlights relevant field case histories as well as laboratory and large-scale-experiment data, with emphasis on wells drilled with oil-based fluids.

Mehmet Parlar is a technical adviser at Schlumberger. He holds a BS degree from Istanbul Technical University and MS and PhD degrees from the University of Southern California, all in petroleum engineering. Parlar has more than 16 years of industry experience and holds 12 US patents.

Innovation in the Oil Field—You Can Do It!

Construction of an innovation process, database, and measurements is essential to communicate progress to senior management and validate innovative efforts. A simple process and its execution are discussed using an example project. A method to involve producing-asset staff is also described.

Phiroze Patel is Innovation Director for Aera Energy. He earned BS and MS degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and a PhD degree in nuclear engineering.

Underbalanced Drilling—Remedy for Formation Damage, Lost Circulation, and Other Related Conventional-Drilling Problems

In almost every drilling operation, there is a potential for damage to well productivity, for lost circulation, for differential sticking, and for other related conventional-drilling problems. In order to overcome these drilling problems, the industry developed underbalanced-drilling technology. This lecture contains several case histories and results that highlight the advantages of this technology.

Hani H. Qutob is the Chief Reservoir Engineer for Weatherford Underbalanced Systems and Testing Services in the Middle East and north Africa. He has more than 28 years of diversified international experience. Qutob earned BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering.

GameChanger: Enabling Global Innovation in E&P

GameChanger has been successfully enabling innovators and entrepreneurs in the Shell E&P technology centers to rapidly develop innovative ideas that are not a part of traditional incremental technology development. This presentation demonstrates how innovators throughout the Shell E&P business have transformed subsurface-technology capability since the start of GameChanger in 1996.

Leo Roodhart is Manager Strategic Innovation in Shell GameChanger. He is an associate fellow of Templeton College, Oxford University. Roodhart earned an MS degree in chemistry and a PhD degree in mathematics and physics from the University of Amsterdam.

Wellbore-Cementing Challenges, Present and Future

Regardless of the work that has been performed to better understand wellbore-cementing requirements, obtaining effective long-term zonal isolation remains one of the biggest problems facing the oil and gas industry. This presentation addresses this industry challenge in detail.

David Ross is an associate member of InTuition Energy Associates. He has more than 24 years of service with BJ Services in the engineering disciplines of hydraulic fracturing, well cementing, acidizing, sand control, completion fluids, and coiled-tubing services. Ross earned a BS degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

The Physics of Steam Injection in Fractured Carbonate Reservoirs: Engineering Development Options That Minimize Risk

To understand the thermally assisted gas/oil-gravity-drainage (TA-GOGD) factors, deterministic fracture studies were undertaken. From these studies, fracture-permeability and spacing-map realizations were created for direct entering into reservoir simulations. The process mechanisms involved in TA-GOGD were validated by history matching laboratory experiments.

Gordon Thomas Shahin Jr. is a senior staff reservoir engineer at Shell’s International E&P Technology Organization. He earned BS, MS, and PhD degrees in chemical and biochemical engineering. Shahin is a senior technical leader in Shell’s Integrated Field Study Group and holds more than 60 patents in thermal recovery and related technologies.

Integrated Uncertainty and Decision Analysis of Petroleum Projects: Workflows and Tools

It is a fact that Excel plays a central role in several evaluation activities. Excel is also a tool that the majority of the technical personnel involved in such evaluations are familiar with. This lecture presents hints, opportunities, and pitfalls in the application of Excel and gives examples of how Excel is applied in various contexts.

Tarald Svanes is Leader Petroleum Technology Sleipner West for Statoil. He earned an MS degree in physics from the Norwegian Technical Institute and an MS degree in petroleum business engineering from the Delft University of Technology.