Mark your calendars for SPE’s workshop, “Subsea Standardization: Finding Common Ground,” which will take place in San Antonio, Texas, 9–10 April 2013. Topics include the current states of operators’ and suppliers’ efforts and discussion of processes for achieving subsea standardization, covering quality, welding, and materials. Service data objectives, joint industry projects, and a list of potential milestones and deliverables will be considered.
Paul Jones, subsea manager at Chevron, writes about the dream of an ultimate subsea system in Oil and Gas Facilities. One path to this system is an architecture that is compact and modular—a plug-and-play architecture with common interfaces that can be configured over the full life cycle of the field. Each component’s performance would be understood, enabling fit-for-purpose designs to be deployed when required. Read the column here.
![13ATCE_PC_8935_CFP_0712_FINAL[2]](http://www.spe.org/tech/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/cfp_thumb.jpg "13ATCE_PC_8935_CFP_0712_FINAL[2]")
ATCE 2013 will take place in New Orleans, Louisiana on 30 September-2 October, and now is the time to submit paper proposals for consideration in the conference program. Submit a paper proposal outlining your PFC-related technical advancement, new method, case study, or practical application by 28 January 2013 online at www.spe.org/atce/2013.
In-depth articles cover the latest developments in sour gas treatment and acid gas management, trends in facilities design and construction, and human factors engineering for safety.
Subscribe to Oil and Gas Facilities magazine or view the first issue for free.
Projects, facilities, and construction professionals—if you haven’t joined SPE yet, you’re missing out on the resources that could help you meet the increasing demands of your job.
Carlos F. Mastrangelo, Petrobras, Houston, Texas, USA
Considered by most of his peers and specialists in the oil industry as the right person responsible for the concept’s definition, going back to 1980s, that made popular the Petrobras way and worldwide use of FPSO’s used as permanent production system. He was responsible for the first FPSO that opened a window for use of this concept as a definitive system and for the biggest turret basic design with 75 risers. He was recognized by SPE Brazilian Section in 2005 as the engineer of the year for his contribution to the development of offshore facilities.
Please join SPE in congratulating the 2012 SPE International Award recipients. The SPE Board of Directors approved the 2012 International Award recipients at their recent meeting. Seventeen international award committees recommended these winners to the board because of their outstanding and significant technical, professional, and service contributions to SPE and the petroleum industry. The winners were chosen from a pool of first rate candidates. SPE President Ganesh Thakur will present the awards to the winners at ATCE in San Antonio Texas.
This year’s Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE), 8-10 October in San Antonio, Texas, will feature a number events focused on Projects, Facilities and Construction. Read this post to see a summary schedule.
John Hudson, SPE, Senior Production Engineer, Shell
As an industry, we clearly have moved beyond the heady first years of the digital transformation, where the anticipation from many was that within a few years we would have a consolidated software solution spanning the scope of E&P workflows. While the stories told by such a panel naturally focused more on success cases (particularly for large greenfield applications), what emerges is evidence of large-scale benefits when a company invests in repeating successful patterns at its scale of operation—this is found to be true for both operators and service companies. The clearest examples of such success were on the fundamental aspects of data quality, exception-based surveillance, standardization of human workflows, and large-scale applications of focused software solutions, often having required an investment cycle of at least 5 years. Focusing on the scaling of fundamental aspects to broad application provided significant return while managing risk, with the result of sustaining those programs that delivered benefits. If the human workflow failed to rely on any new technology deployment, any gains found in the first year or two following the deployment were not sustained. So, a simple, “fast follower” approach is unlikely to be successful, unless the follower can adapt the leader’s success to their own culture and processes well.
George Hobbs, SPE, Director, Strategic Chemistry Pty. Ltd.
In 2010, natural-gas reserves were approximately equivalent to 75% of the oil reserves (including oil sands). Unconventional gas sources continue to make up an increasingly important part of the natural-gas supply, particularly shale gas and coal- bed methane (CBM), which contribute approximately 40% to US natural-gas reserves.
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