Session Topics

Deepwater Innovation and TRIZ: Russian Algorithmic Inventive Methodology

Session Chairperson: Don Wells, ConocoPhillips

Delivering the new, the challenging, the “untested” and “untried” requires innovation, originality, improvement, creativity, imagination, and the unique ability to embrace risk. Getting it right requires some luck, and more importantly, a systematic approach to risk management. The Russian theory of inventive problem solving, also known as TRIZ, has been available since 1946. It is a system that compares risks to every major patent and finds a single common denominator that spells “success”.

As a follow-up to our keynote presentation on TRIZ, this session will focus on applied inventive methodologies and the practicalities for their use in deepwater and harsh environment oil and gas developments. We will explore typical industry techniques and also examine TRIZ and other evolutionary techniques for meeting the challenges ahead.

Nanotechnology

Session Chairperson - Curtis Wendler, Halliburton

Nanotechnology has been successfully used in other engineering fields such as aerospace and pharmaceuticals.. Applications of similar technologies to the oil and gas industry may solve some its more challenging developments in an economical and safe manner.

Starting with the produced fluids, nanotechnology has been applied to chemical inhibitors that are injected into the production stream and can be applied to "smart pills" that might be delivered to the sand face in the reservoir, releasing necessary chemicals over time. Nanotechnology has already been employed for high-performance insulation systems, making "pipe-in-pipe" systems easier to install and delivering higher levels of thermal performance.

Nanotechnology also has the potential to improve topside and subsea surveillance in deepwater and harsh environments. Fiber optics, combined with piezoelectric sensors and other technologies, can lead to unmanned installations in remote or harsh environments. Following surveillance comes repair, where more recently materials with self-healing properties have emerged. As always, the rewards of new technology must be weighed against the cost of product development and the risk of the unknown. Who legislates the use of nanotechnology, and what safeguards do we need? It is very likely that without the use of these new technologies, many of the future deepwater and marginal fields may remain undeveloped. This session will focus on nanotechnology and its role in expanding the operating regions for deepwater and harsh environments.

Barriers To Adoption of New Technology

Session Chairperson - John Allen, ABB Offshore Systems ASS

Advances in technology have been instrumental in enhancing safety, improvements in environmental impact, lowering costs, and enabling access to new reserves. But are we making full use of available technologies?

In today’s market here are countless examples of “new and improved” tools/services that have passed all required testing and certification, but have yet to be adopted by industry. This is known in Research and Development circles as the Technology Valley of Death. Ironically, many of the edgy 90’s technologies such as 3D seismic, horizontal drilling, and subsea processing have gain broad utilisation across the industry. What makes one technology so desirable while others are destined?

Key questions include

What differentiates successful new technologies from failure or commercial failures?
What is the "normal" timeline from concept to first commercial application, and how can it be accelerated?
Is there a clear and understood metric for risk (and benefit)?
Has supersizing and merger mania eliminated the “can do” spirit of the small enterprise?
How do you protect and market game changing technology?

Other factors that influence the use of new technology include health, safety, and the environment; regulatory and local customs; risk vs. reward; the dominance of capital expenditures (capex) vs. operating expenditures (opex); life-cycle cost (the net-present-value or NPV model); historical lessons learned; and experiences and buy-in from the user asset (risk averse vs. inventive gains).

This session will discuss barriers to adoption of new technology and what can be done to eliminate these barriers.

Improving the Business of People and Processes

Session Chairperson - Jennifer Reese, BP

To thrive and succeed in the deepwater environment requires two essential elements: the best and brightest people, and innovative technology. As an industry, how do we attract, train, and retain new, talented engineers while not closing doors to our experienced “elders”? How do we set up an organisation that allows for the best and brightest to contribute to their maximum potential? What about knowledge management? How do we gain access to real learning and shared lessons while maintaining legal or contractual obligations? How do we maintain a distinctive, competitive advantage?

This session will focus on areas such as

Shared lessons: formal or informal; “our way” vs. “the right way”
Partnering, alliances, and the role of the regulator
Identifying innovative training techniques for engineers of the future—whether new to our industry or new to deep water
Attracting the right demographics when competing with well-known innovative and financially rewarding industries like dotcoms, aerospace, and finance
Standardisation and innovation: can they coexist within a project?
Organisational structure that promotes success: how much empowerment vs. upward accountability?

Remote Operations

Session Chairperson - Jim Chitwood

This session will focus on remote subsea well operations. To maximise regional development around existing surface host facilities, subsea tiebacks are sometimes used to produce small reservoirs that are not capable of supporting their own in-field surface host. We need enhanced recovery techniques such as pressure boosting, which significantly extends the "practical" offset of such tieback wells, to recover the greatest amount of crude from these wells. The status of pressure-boosting-technology and the need for further development will be discussed.

Another aspect of maximising recoverables is economical (low-cost) well-intervention methods. The conservatism in our deepwater designs may be limiting our ability to deliver the next generation of long tiebacks for fear of hydrate and wax plugging. A design philosophy with simple, uninsulated flowlines and periodic interventions with a dedicated, low-cost intervention system will be examined. Low-cost intervention could also play a role in closing the “recoverable reserves” gap between subsea and dry-tree developments.

Once the near-term technology issues are framed, extension of these technologies to future field needs will be discussed. This discussion includes such challenges as extreme pressures, difficult production fluids (sour or high viscosity), and limited-access areas such as the Arctic (below-freezing environment) and reservoirs under ice.

Drilling and Completions in the Future

Session Chairperson - Tom Lane, ExxonMobil Corporation

The session will challenge the current limitations in drilling and completions operations and technologies that drive the industry towards costly solutions. Specifically, this session will address technical and operational aspects of drilling, completing, and doing “workovers” on wells in deepwater and other harsh environments. We will discuss the technical issues where current tools, equipment, and processes are not adequate.

Speakers will suggest ideas on how to develop improved tools and procedures for greater reliability and more effective drilling and completion operations. We will review technologies on formation evaluation; formation testing and sand control, such as horizontal gravel packs; and standalone screens and expandable tools. We will compare horizontal and multilateral well design and forecast future drilling operations in ice-pack areas. We will also explore going beyond today’s sixth-generation drilling rigs towards the rig of the future needed to support such operations

Manufacturing and Delivery for Deep Water

Session Chairperson - Donna Birbiglia, Sarawak Shell Bhd

The maturation of the deepwater basins around the world is fuelling an increase in the number of deepwater projects being developed. Manufacturers are reaping the benefits of deepwater developments, with contracts totalling more than a billion dollars being awarded. But at what price? Is there room for new R&D when such huge projects demand so much design and fabrication resources? Will standardisation be ultimately defined by market population? With deepwater and harsh environments, the industry must realise the added burden of improved design processes and quality management techniques. Systematic material failures can easily result in doubling the cost of a deepwater development. This session will discuss how these challenges are being met, with particular emphasis on

Resource constraints in both contractor and energy companies
Contracting and how local regulatory bodies affect the success of the project
The impact that limited infrastructure can have on costs and staffing levels
Measuring project success and how the various stakeholders can limit project delivery and team organisation
Maintaining focus on quality assurance and quality control throughout manufacturing and installation