2013 07

JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY www.spe.
org/jpt
JULY 2013
well capping evolution

RESERVOIR SIMULATION ARTIFICIAL LIFT UNCONVENTIONAL RESOURCES CO2 APPLICATIONS
FEATURES
Middle East Sour Gas Offshore Technology Conference Coverage
Volume 65 Number 7
18 G uest Editorial SHALE 2.0: FROM EFFICIENT TO EFFECTIVE SHALE DEVELOPMENT

Horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing have enabled shale development. In the next stage of shale recovery, the focus will be more effective development to achieve greater production with fewer wells and fewer total resources.
36 F ORMATION EVALUATION-WHILE-DRILLING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES DATA DELIVERY

Exploration wells, unconventional plays, and development wells can benefit from NeoScope, a sourceless formation evaluation-while-drilling solution. Two case studies share how the technology mitigates the risks or logistic complications associated with chemical nuclear sources.
40 W ELL CAPPING BECOMES AN INDUSTRY OF ITS OWN
Cover: This capping stack was one of
The new influx of well capping companies finds ways to shut down wells by employing equipment used for everyday tasks. Their challenge today is to anticipate and develop equipment to prevent the potential blowouts of tomorrow. In the Middle East, developing sour gas fields have become a priority of local governments because of soaring regional gas consumption. An interview with Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, chief executive officer of Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company. Attendance hit a 30-year high at this years Offshore Technology Conference, which focused on addressing energy challenges and safetyconcerns.
four built by Trendsetter Engineering for the Subsea Well Response Project for its global network.
54 sour gas interest grows in the middle east
57 Q&A
60 2 013 OTC MIRRORS CURRENT INDUSTRY VITALITY

6 10 12 14 16 22 28 136 138 139 143 144 Performance Indices Regional Update Company News Presidents Column Comments Technology Applications Technology Update People SPE News Professional Services Advertisers Index SPE Events
72 U NPLANNED DOWNTIME IS A SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTION LOSS MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR PRODUCERS

An analysis of US Gulf of Mexico producing assets reveals that reducing downtime can significantly improve operating efficiency. How does downtime affect profits and what strategies can be implemented to reduce it?
134 OFFSHORE EUROPE 2013 CONFERENCE SHOWCASES THE NEXT 50 YEARS

This years SPE Offshore Europe Conference and Exhibition to be held in Aberdeen will focus on challenges of the future and solutions for maintaining a strong oil and gas supply chain in the UK.
Printed in US. Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
An Official Publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.
TECHNOLOGY
76 R eservoir Simulation
Martin Crick, SPE, Chief Petroleum Engineer, Tullow Oil
77 Massively Parallel Simulation of Oceanic-Gas-Hydrate Production 82 Scaling Up a 900-Million-Cell Static Model to a Dynamic Model 86 Quality-Assured Initialization Optimizes the Value of Reservoir
Simulation
90 Artificial Lift
Shauna Noonan, SPE, Staff Production Engineer, ConocoPhillips
91 High-Reliability Gas Lift Flow-Control-Device Technology and

Erosion/Endurance Tests Fall-Velocity Model Shale-Gas Field
94 Measured Plunger-Fall Velocity Used To Calibrate New 98 Foamer Technology Optimizes Artificial Lift in the Alliance 102 U nconventional Resources
Simon Chipperfield, SPE, Manager, Special Projects, Santos
103 Focus on Unconventional Reservoirs Requires Advancements

in Technology
108 Holistic Appraisal Strategy Aims To Get the Most Out of

Unconventional Reservoirs MethaneWells
114 Drilling and Completion Technique Selection for Coalbed 120 CO2 Applications
John D. Rogers, SPE, Vice President, Operations, Fusion Reservoir Engineering Services
121 Controlled-Freeze Technology for Processing Sour-Gas Resources 125 Simulating the Chemical Interaction of Injected CO2 and
Carbonic Acid
128 Lacq Carbon-Capture and -Sequestration Pilot 131 CO2-Sequestration Projects Adding Value
The complete SPE technical papers featured in this issue are available free to SPE members for two months at www.spe.org/jpt.
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PERFORMANCE INDICES
world crude oil production+
THOUSAND BOPD OP E C
Algeria Angola Ecuador Iran Iraq Kuwait* Libya Nigeria Qatar Saudi Arabia* UAE Venezuela TOTAL 2012 SEP 1550 1740 506 3150 3275 2610 1500 2460 1200 9800 2820 2300 32911 OCT 1482 1790 503 3000 3075 2610 1500 2340 1200 9800 2820 2300 32420 NOV 1483 1770 504 3000 3225 2650 1450 2280 1200 9540 2820 2300 32222 DEC 1485 1790 503 3100 3125 2650 1350 2520 1200 9240 2820 2300 32083 2013 JAN 1490 1840 505 3200 3075 2650 1350 2460 1200 9140 2820 2300 32030 FEB 1490 1790 509 3200 3075 2650 1400 2420 1200 9140 2820 2300 31994
THOUSAND BOPD Non-OPEC

Argentina Australia Azerbaijan Brazil Canada China Colombia Denmark Egypt Eq. Guinea Gabon India Indonesia Kazakhstan Malaysia Mexico Norway Oman Russia Sudan Syria UK USA Vietnam Yemen Other Total Total World 2012 SEP 558 383 855 1924 3003 4242 956 178 553 297 241 780 859 1482 505 2602 1309 925 9941 95 136 609 6588 367 160 2407 41955 74866 OCT 552 372 870 2011 3172 4217 961 197 551 297 241 772 852 1487 532 2585 1549 935 9984 95 131 688 6955 347 160 2407 42919 75339 NOV 533 349 866 2045 3272 4232 970 202 551 297 240 774 848 1564 544 2622 1517 947 10048 95 131 865 7079 362 162 2418 43532 75754 DEC 546 371 916 2105 3423 4224 984 200 551 297 240 773 850 1545 551 2607 1558 950 10018 111 136 916 7122 357 169 2429 43949 76032 2013 JAN 534 282 910 2054 3333 4168 1010 187 548 282 240 763 834 1564 547 2609 1545 939 9995 112 131 910 7005 345 162 2424 43433 75463 FEB 553 309 903 2017 3563 4146 998 197 547 282 239 767 834 1583 559 2602 1502 944 9990 113 133 862 7177 320 162 2435 43738 75732
JPT JULY 2013
PERFORMANCE INDICES
Henry Hub Gulf Coast Natural Gas Spot Price*
5 4 3 2 1 2012 MAY AUG SEP JUL OCT DEC JUN 2013 JAN NOV
USD/Mil. BTUs
FEB MAR AUG DEC APR APR 1755 153 429 136 354 125 257 3209 APR
world crude oil pRICES (USD/bbl)

110.34 94.65 95.16
JUN
82.30
102.62
87.90
113.36
94.13
2012 MAY
JUL
112.86
SEP
94.51
111.71
OCT
89.49
109.06
86.53
109.49
87.86
NOV
112.96
94.76
116.02
FEB
95.31
108.47
92.94
102.25
92.02
2013 JAN
MAR
Brent
WTI
WORLD ROTARY RIG COUNT

R EGI O N
US Canada Latin America Europe Middle East Africa Asia Pacific TOTAL 2012 NOV 1809 385 398 127 394 102 246 3461 DEC 1784 353 414 136 363 102 238 3390 2013 JAN 1757 503 414 134 379 115 237 3539 FEB 1762 642 427 135 350 113 250 3679 MAR 1756 464 437 133 336 115 247 3488 MAY 1767 128 424 124 362 124 249 3178
world OIL SUPPLY AND DEMAND 1

MILLION BOPD
Quarter
2012
2nd 3rd 4th
2013
1st
SUPPLY DEMAND
INDICES KEY
+ Figures
89.13 88.75
89.02 89.18
89.29 89.94
88.56 89.63
do not include NGLs and oil from nonconventional sources. approximately one-half of Neutral Zone production. Includes crude oil, lease condensates, natural gas plant liquids, other hydrocarbons for refinery feedstocks, refinery 1 gains, alcohol, and liquids produced from nonconventional sources. Source: Baker Hughes. * The US Dept. of Energy/Energy Information Administration discontinued its reporting of US Natural Gas Wellhead Prices, replacing them with Henry Hub Gulf Coast Natural Gas Spot Prices. Source: US Dept. of Energy/Energy Information Admin. Includes *
JPT JULY 2013
REGIONAL UPDATE
AFRICA
The Ivoire-1X exploration well discovered
oil in the west zone of Block CI-100 offshore the Ivory Coast. The well, located in 2280 m of water, found approximately 92 ft of net oil pay in Cretaceous reservoirs. The oil is light with a gravity of 35 API. Total E&P Cte dIvoire (60%) operates the block in partnership with Yams Petroleum (25%) and Petroci(15%). in Block E in Kazakhstan. The planned depth is 885 m targeting Jurassicreservoirs. The well is operated byMaxPetroleum.
The Tonto-1 well struck 62 ft of

net oilpay in the British waters of the NorthSea. The initial production rate was 10,346 B/D. The well was drilled to 1928 m and encountered oil pay in an Eoceneaged sandstone reservoir. Apache holds a 100%working interest.
Australia
Drilling has begun on the Ngapaeruru-1
exploration well in the East Coast Basin of New Zealand. The well targets the Waipawa black shale and Whangai sourcerock formations at a depth of 1800 m. Tag Oil is the operator with a 100%interest.
Middle east
Natural gas was discovered at the
Karish prospect offshore Israel. The well was drilled to a total depth of 15,783 ft andholds 184 ft of net natural gas pay in high-quality lower Miocene sands. Noble Energy (47.06%) operates the block in partnership with Delek (26.47%) and AvnerOil (26.47%).
An Initial drillstem test on the Mzia-2

well in Block 1 flowed at a maximum rate of 57 million ft3 of gas per day, increasing the estimated recoverable resources from the field to 4.5 trillion ft3. This is the first test carried out on a Cretaceous discovery in deepwater offshore Tanzania. BG (60%) is the operator in partnership with Ophir Energy (40%).
Elfin-1 exploration well struck 40 m

of net gas pay in the upper Mungaroo sands of the Carnarvon Basin offshore Australia. The well was drilled to a total depth of 3630 m. Chevron Australia (50%) is the operator in partnership with Shell Development Australia (25%) and Mobil Australia Resources (25%).
North America
The Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management will offer more than 21 millionacres offshore Texas for explorationand production in a lease sale in August in New Orleans. The acreage includes 3,953 blocks located 9 miles to 250 miles offshore in waterdepthsranging from 5 m to 3346 m. The fields are estimated to generate production of 116to200 million bbl of oil and538 to 938Bcf of natural gas.
Asia
Oil was found at the Hai Su Trang and
Hai Su Den development within Block 15-2/01 offshore Vietnam. The facilities are expected to reach 15,000 B/D gross production once fully commissioned. Thang Long Joint Operating is the operator with Talisman Energy holding a 30% interest and Petrovietnam a 40%interest.
Oil production has commenced in the

Fletcher Finucane project in the Carnarvon Basin offshore Western Australia. The development has estimated gross proved and probable reserves of 14 million bbl, and the field is expected to produce at a rate of 15,000 B/D for the first year. Santos is the operator with a 44% interest.
Production has begun from the Wei

Zhou 6-12 oil field in the Beibu Gulf basin in the north part of the South China Sea. The project has 10 producing wells drilled at an average water depth of 29.2 m. CNOOC has a 51% operating interest in partnership with Roc Oil, Horizon Oil, and Oil Australia.
Europe
Oil was discovered at two Bonneville
exploration wells28/9a-6 and 28/9a6zin the North Sea. The discoveries are estimated to contain approximately 30 millionbbl. Premier Oil (50%) is the operator in partnership with Cairn Energy (30%) and Wintershall (20%).
The Phobos-1 well encountered

approximately 250 net ft of oil pay in LowerTertiary-aged reservoirs. The wellislocated in the Sigsbee EscarpmentBlock39 in the Gulf of Mexicoand was drilled to a total depth of8740 m. Anadarko (30%) is the operatorin partnership with Plains Exploration & Production (50%) and ExxonMobil (20%).
Salamander Energy signed productionsharing contracts for the Northeast Bangkanai and West Bangkanai license areas, onshore central Kalimantan in Indonesia. Each area covers approximately 2,214 sq miles. Salamander holds a 100% working interest.
Drilling has begun on the 44/23-1 well at

the Dunquin exploration prospect offshore Ireland. The Dunquin field is estimated to contain approximately 1.7 billion BOE. ExxonMobil (27.5%) is the operator in partnership with Eni (27.5%), Repsol (25%), Providence Resources (16%), and Sosina Exploration (4%).
Oil was discovered in three wells

in AlaskaQugruk 1, Qugruk 3, and Qugruk 6. The wells were drilled to total depths of 2493 m, 3214 m, and 2637 m, respectively.Repsol (30%) operates the discovering consortium in partnership with70 & 48, a subsidiary of ArmstrongOil and Gas, (22.5%), and GMTExploration(7.5%).
Oil was discovered in three wells offshore

and onshore eastern and westernIndia. Oil & Natural Gas will invest USD 386 million to revamp its facilities, which includes acquiring technology to improve output from three of its eastern offshore producing fields, installing surveillance facilities, and developing three shallow-water wells in the eastern offshorearea.
The 34/10-A-8 well on the Gullfaks

A platform in the Norwegian North Sea found additional resources within the Shetland group/Lista formation. Preliminary calculations indicate that the discovery contains between 40 million and 150 millionrecoverable BOE, and the well iscurrently flowing at a rate of 7,500 B/D.Statoil (70%) is the operator in partnership with Petoro (30%).
SOUth America
Oil was discovered in two of three
wellsdrilled in the Santos basin. KaroonGas Australia owns 65% of the venture in partnership with Pacific RubialesEnergy.JPT JPT JULY 2013
Drilling has begun on the ZMA-E5

development well in the Zhana Makat field 10
COMPANY NEWS
MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS
Southwestern Energy bought 162,000
net acres of Chesapeake Energys natural gas properties in Pennsylvania for USD93million. The resources currently produce nearly 2 MMcf/D net from 17grosswells. central, satellite, and mobile facilities that deliver water-management services and service options including storage, transportation services, and disposal. This transaction will expand Aquatechs network from three to five central watermanagement facilities.
DNO International signed a productionsharing contract for Block SL18 onshore Somaliland. Studies have begun on the 12,000-km2 block in addition to a seismic data-acquisition program planned for 2014.
Noble awarded Plains Exploration

& Production two 3-year term drilling contracts for two new ultradeepwater drillships, which will be used primarily in the Gulf of Mexico. Revenue generated by the contract is expected to be approximately USD 693 million per rig.
SemGroup is buying 540,000 acres

of natural gas properties in Oklahomas Mississippi Lime play from Chesapeake Energy for USD 300 million. The deal includes two natural gas processing plants, 200 miles of pipeline, and a 20-year commitment from Chesapeake to gather and process the natural gas.
Company Moves
TUV Rheinland launched a new
business line in North America offering certification services in functional safety and hazardouslocations. The company offers global certification options to the IEC/EN/UL/ANSI/ISA 60079 series of standards, IEC 61508, IEC 61511, and industry-specific standards.
Irelands Department of
Communications, Energy and Natural Resources awarded Fastnet Oil & Gas a licensing option for several blocks in the Mizzen basin and the western end of the North Celtic Sea basin. Fastnet will reprocess a minimum of 150 sq miles of existing 2D seismic data and acquire 3D seismic data.
Contango Oil & Gas and Crimson Exploration merged in an all-stock transaction in which Crimson would become a wholly owned subsidiary ofContango. Petrobras is selling its 20% stake in
a Gulf of Mexico asset known as Gila for USD 110 million and additional interest in an exploratory block next to its GOM discovery, Tiber. BP is the operator of the asset, which comprises exploratory blocks KC 49, 50, 92, 93, 94, and 138.
Baker Hughes opened two new

laboratories and testing centers to support the deepwater market. The Center for Offshore Cementing, Fluids, and Chemicals in Broussard, Louisiana, will employ 300 people and focus on the development of new completion, drilling, and production technologies. The Upstream Chemicals Deepwater Laboratory in Houston will provide new chemical technology designed to reduce risk and increase the safety of deepwater production.
Statoil awarded a contract to

Technip for engineering, procurement, construction, and installation in the Norne field development located in the Norwegian Sea at a depth of approximately380 m. The contract covers engineering and fabrication of two flexible smoothbore gas export risers.
Harkand will acquire 150 onshore and

offshore staff, three multipurpose vessels, and six work-class remotely operated vehicles from Veolia. This acquisition will add the Gulf of Mexico to Harkands current activities in the North Sea, Asia Pacific, andAfrica.
Intertek invested USD 1.37 million in

a new Malaysian regional E&P center. Based in Kuala Lumpur, the center has a three-floor, 10,000-ft2 facility that includes twolaboratories.
ConocoPhillips Australia awarded

a USD-26-million contract to FMC Technologies to supply subsea equipment for its Bayu-Undan gas and condensate project in the Timor Sea. FMC will supply subsea trees, wellheads, jumper kits, and associated control systems.
WesternGeco will acquire a major

multiclient seismic survey offshore Mozambique using the ObliQ slidingnotch broadband acquisition and imaging technique. The survey covers the majority of the offshore territory of Mozambique where future licensing rounds areexpected.
ExxonMobil and Statoil will form a

50/50 joint partnership to develop the Julia oil fieldestimated to hold almost 6billion BOEin the Gulf of Mexico. The field is located 200 miles south of New Orleans and is expected to take 3 years todevelop.
Aker Solutions won a 5-year,

USD-150-million contract from Husky Energy to support activities in the White Rose field offshore Newfoundland. The scope of work includes studies, modifications, and campaign maintenanceservices.
Petroceltic International and Edison

International entered a joint agreement to develop two blocksnorth Thekah and south Idkuin Egypt. North Thekah potentially contains an extension of the Levantine basin exploration play, and south Idku is located in the core Egyptian operating area onshore the Nile delta.
Contracts
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
(ADNOC) and Shell entered into a 30-year joint venture to develop the major Bab sour gas reservoirs in Abu Dhabi. The project will process 1 Bcf/D of sour natural gas, and a new gas-processing and treatment plant will be installed to produce 520 MMcf/D of sales gas. Shell will own a 40% equity stake with ADNOC holding60%.
The Spanish Council of Ministers

awarded two new exploration licenses Aquiles in the Zaragoza basin and Cronos in the Almazan basinto FronteraEnergy, a wholly owned subsidiary of San Leon Energy. Both licenses contain unconventional Paleozoic resource potential, and the company plans to target Permian, Carboniferous, Silurian, and Devonianshales. JPT
Aquatech will acquire Fluid Recovery

Services, which operates a network of
12
JPT JULY 2013
INNOVATION
SPE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

OFFICERS
2013 President Egbert Imomoh, Afren 2012 President Ganesh Thakur, Chevron Energy Technology Company 2014 President Jeff Spath, Schlumberger Vice President Finance Janeen Judah, Chevron
Innovations in Subsea Completions

Egbert Imomoh, 2013 SPE President The demand for more and more oil and gas has prompted the industry to seek new areas of hydrocarbon deposits, and the development of subsea completions has kept pace. Many huge innovations have taken place since the first underwater completion was made about 70 years ago, when the first wet wellhead, basically a land Christmas tree, was deployed in shallow water. Finding hydrocarbons in deeper and deeper waters, away from existing infrastructure, has prompted the need to complete wells on the sea floor and then pipe production to floating facilities. The depth of water in which these wells were drilled made the use of platforms become technically unfeasible or not supportable by the economics of the development. The North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and west Africa have been the major areas of subsea development and reserves in increasing water depths have been brought into production, and more recent finds in east Africa are yet to be developed. New technology has been deployed in a number of areas (Vernotzy 2013): Drilling rig and equipment design capable of operating in water depths in excess of 3000 m Better understanding of weather, ocean, and seabed conditions Flowline and pipeline design and deployment Design of very reliable processing and control systems The development of sophisticated remotely operated vehicles (ROV) A recent study (Nelson et al. 2013) to review and understand where oil and gas has been found recently revealed the following. Globally, deep water has become a significant source of discoveries, accounting for more than 50% of new conventional reserves. The size of deepwater discoveries is an order of magnitude larger than other discoveries. However, less than 40% of those discoveries are in production, contributing less than 10% of conventional production. Deepwater production could double in the next 7 years as more fields are brought into production. Early deepwater development required the use of proven technology, innovation, commitment, and teamwork between license holders, equipment suppliers, and service providers. Given the depth, it was essential that equipment be designed to operate at a very high level of success. Over the years, subsea completions have become more complex, varying from single wells connected to a platform to subsea factories consisting of an array of wellheads, manifolds, and processing equipment. Irrespective of the complexity of seabed configurations, the fluids produced will have to be channelled to an onshore handling facility or to a fixed or floating processing unit. Given the environment under which the installed equipment has to operate for long periods of time with minimum intervention, the equipment must be robust and reliable and must ensure safety for personnel and protection of the environment. As subsea technology has become more sophisticated over the years, collaboration between producers and suppliers of services and equipment has become
To contact the SPE President, email president@spe.org.
REGION DIRECTORS
AFRICA Anthony Ogunkoya, TBFF Upstream Oil and Gas Consulting. CANADA Keith MacLeod, Sproule Associates Eastern North America John Cramer, Superior Well Services Gulf Coast North America Bryant Mueller, Aclaro Softworks Mid-Continent North America Mohan Kelkar, University of Tulsa Middle East Fareed Abdulla, Abu Dhabi Co. Onshore Oil Opn North Sea Lon Beugelsdijk, Shell International E&P Northern Asia Pacific Ron Morris, Roc Oil (Bohai)/Roc Oil (China) Rocky Mountain North America Mike Eberhard, Anadarko Petroleum Russia and the Caspian Andrey Gladkov, Modeltech South America and Caribbean Nestor Saavedra, EcopetrolICP South, Central, and East Europe Maurizio Rampoldi, Eni E&P Southern Asia Pacific John Boardman, RISC Southwestern North America Peter Schrenkel, Vision Natural Resources Western North America Tom Walsh, Petrotechnical Resources of Alaska
TECHNICAL DIRECTORS
Drilling and Completions Joseph Ayoub, Schlumberger Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility Roland Moreau, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company Management and Information Cindy Reece, ExxonMobil Technical Computing Company Production and Operations Shauna Noonan, ConocoPhillips Projects, Facilities, and Construction John Walsh, GHD Reservoir Description and Dynamics Olivier Houz, KAPPA Engineering
AT-LARGE DIRECTORS
Sudhir Vasudeva, Oil & Natural Gas Corporation Mohammed Al-Qahtani, Saudi Aramco
14
JPT JULY 2013
INNOVATION
more e ssential to ensure the delivery of first-class equipment in the areas of wellheads, manifolds, flowlines, cables, umbilicals, seabed processing facilities, and ROVs. The verification and testing of equipment prior to deployment and compliance with regulatory requirements has become critical and essential in these types of developments. Whilst developments in deepwater technology have been focused on green fields, a new phase is emerging. Pressure depletion in some of these fields has made it necessary to seek ways to extend field life by deploying gas compressors at sea bottom. In the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, pioneering work has started (Knott 2013) in the design and deployment of compressors that will extend field life and add significantly to recovery factors. The use of these compressors will present challenges, as it is well known that attaining a high uptime even on platforms can give operators plenty of grey hairs, not to speak of operating in deep waters. The success of seabed compression will lead to application in greenfield development, thus eliminating the need for a retrofit. A number of factors have led to the success story of deepwater drilling and seabed completions: Successful exploration and finding of very significant reserves that can support the huge capital investment that isrequired Collaborative work between license holders, equipment suppliers, and service providers Attraction of talented people to the interesting, innovative work Focus on safety and environmental protection The future will present more opportunities and challenges. As the need arises to develop smaller and smaller fields, the industry will also need to seek ways to reduce the capital cost. The Industry will need to seek ways to shorten development time so that first production can be achieved faster, without compromising safety and environmental standards. Finally, talented people must be attracted and retained in this very innovative sector of our industry. JPT
References
Vernotzy, R. 2013. Operators Move to the Next Level of Subsea Development. World Oil April Vol. 234 No. 4. http://www. worldoil.com/april_2013_OPERATORS_ MOVE_TO_THE_NEXT_LEVEL_OF_ SUBSEA_DEVELOPMENT.html Nelson, K., DeJesus, M., Chakhmakhchez, A., and Manning, M. 2013. Deep-water Operators Look to New Frontiers. Offshore. http://www.offshore-mag. com/articles/print/volume-73/issue5/international-report/deepwateroperators-look-to-new-frontiers.html Knott, T. 2013. Subsea gas feels the pressure. Upstream April. http:// www.upstreamonline.com/hardcopy/ technology/article1324790.ece
Correction
The shale gas maps distributed with the February 2012 and March 2013 issues of JPT contained several omissions and errors. Both maps should have credited the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) and Advanced Resources International (ARI) as sources for some of the information presented. Several data in the February 2012 European Shale Gas Map were incorrect. The Shale Resource (TCF) column listed incorrect numbers for Algeria, Libya, and Sweden. The correct numbers are Algeria, 231; Libya, 290; and Sweden,41. JPT apologizes for these errors.
JPT JULY 2013
15
COMMENTS
EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Syed AliChairperson, Technical Advisor, Schlumberger Francisco J. Alhanati, Director, Exploration & Production, C-FER Technologies Mohammed Azeemuddin, Geomechanics and Pore Pressure Team Lead, Chevron Baojun Bai, Associate Professor/Graduate Coordinate Petroleum Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology Ian G. Ball, Technical Director, Intecsea (UK) Luciane Bonet, Reservoir Engineering Manager, Petrobras America Paul D. Cameron, Senior Well Intervention Discipline Advisor, BP plc Robert B. Carpenter, Sr. AdvisorCementing, Chevron Simon Chipperfield, Team Leader Central Gas Team/ Gas Exploitation, Eastern Australia Development, Santos Gerald R. Coulter, President, Coulter Energy International Martin V. Crick, Chief Petroleum Engineer, Tullow Oil plc Jose C. Cunha, Drilling Manager, Ecopetrol America. Alexandre Emerick, Reservoir Engineer, Petrobras Research Center Martyn J. Fear, General Manager Drilling & Completions,Husky Energy Niall Fleming, Leading Advisor Well Productivity & Stimulation, Statoil Emmanuel Garland, Special Advisor to the HSE Vice President, Total A.G. Guzman-Garcia, Engineer Advisor, ExxonMobil Robert Harrison, Global Technical Head of Reservoir Engineering, Senergy Oil & Gas Delores J. Hinkle, Director, Corporate Reserves, Marathon George W. Hobbs, Director, Strategic Chemistry John Hudson, Senior Production Engineer, Shell Gerd Kleemeyer, Head Integrated Geophysical Services, Shell Global Solutions International BV Gregory Kubala, Global Chemistry Metier Manager, Schlumberger Jesse C. Lee, Chemistry Technology Manager, Schlumberger Cam Matthews, Director, New Technology Ventures, C-FER Technologies Casey McDonough, Drilling Engineer, Chesapeake Energy Stephane Menand, Managing Director, DrillScan US John Misselbrook, Senior Advisor for Coiled Tubing, Baker Hughes Badrul H Mohamed Jan, Lecturer/Researcher, University of Malaya Alvaro F. Negrao, Senior Drilling Advisor, Woodside Energy (USA) Shauna G. Noonan, Staff Production Engineer, ConocoPhillips Karen E. Olson, Completion Expert, Southwestern Energy Michael L. Payne, Senior Advisor, BP plc Mauricio P. Rebelo, Technical Services Manager, Petrobras America John D. Rogers, Vice President of Operations, Fusion Petroleum Technologies Jon Ruszka, Drilling Manager, Baker Hughes (Africa Region) Hisham N. Saadawi, VP Engineering, ADCO (Abu Dhabi Co. Onshore Oil Opn.) Jacques B. Salies, Drilling Manager, Queiroz Galvo E&P Helio M. Santos, President, Safekick Otto L. Santos, Snior Consultor, Petrobras Luigi A Saputelli, Senior Production Modeling Advisor, Hess Corporation Brian Skeels, Emerging Technologies Manager, FMC Technologies Sally A. Thomas, Principal Engineer, Production Technology, ConocoPhillips Win Thornton Global Projects Organization, BP plc Erik Vikane Manager Petroleum Technology, Statoil Scott Wilson, Senior Vice President, Ryder Scott Company
Farewell
Dennis Denney, JPT Senior Technology Editor
For the past 17-plus years, it has been my privilege to serve as your JPT Technology Editor. After growing up in the oil patch as the son of a sales engineer for a major service company, I have spent all but a couple of years of my adult life as an oily. When I came aboard JPT, there was this idea of publishing condensed versions of SPE technical papers rather than the traditional full-length, peer-reviewed papers. The plan was to get more important technical information in front of more SPE members more quickly. That was a new type of job for me. I had spent 20 years as a petroleum engineer in reservoir and production engineering with Mesa Petroleum and Maxus Exploration (actually nearly 30 if you count my time as a well tester for Diamond Shamrockthank you, Bud Reitman, for encouraging me to go back to school to get my PE degree). The first full year of publishing these synopses (1997), we covered 22 separate topics (coiled tubing, cementing, production operations, etc.) This year, JPT will publish synopses under 46 topics. With the help of Karen Bybee, who retired 2 years ago, and now Adam Wilson, almost 2,500 papers have been presented to you in the pages of JPT. As an SPE member before I began working at JPT, I remember how difficult it was to find and read papers of interestmost of all, there was the lack of time to read full-length papers trying to find information that I could use in my job. Now, these shortened papers present enough material for busy engineers to determine if the technologies and case studies described are of value. I especially hope that engineers read papers from disciplines other than their primary ones. I am not an educator (I tried it) but my goal at JPT always has been to spread knowledge among SPE members. And it was always my hope that these synopses would pique the interest of readers, allowing them to see the range of possibilities a technology presents and imagine new applications to challenges they were facing. When taking junior- and senior-level courses in college, we used SPE papers as much as, if not more than, textbooks to learn engineering technology and applications. Since going to work for you here at SPE, I have learned that you can use SPE papers to expand your knowledge exponentially. A great advantage of SPE is access to the breadth of technology available in the papers, from the simplest applications to the most highly technical. Almost every engineering discipline is represented here. Besides petroleum technology, information in the construction, marine, civil, structural, safety, mechanical, electrical, and other sectors is represented. The rewards that I have received from SPE are many. I have had the privilege of meeting and working with the smartest and greatest people in the oil and gas industry. Working directly with the JPT Special Series Committee and the JPT Editorial Committee, I got to meet professionals who had written papers that had helped me in my engineering days. I have enjoyed working with scientists, educators, company CEOs, and many others who took the time to share their knowledge with fellow engineers. I became friends with some and have shared stories with many.
(Continued on page 21)
To contact JPT s editor, email jdonnelly@spe.org. 16
JPT JULY 2013
GUEST EDITORIAL
Shale 2.0: From Efficient to Effective Shale Development

Jeff Meisenhelder, Vice President, Unconventional Resources, Schlumberger
Jeff Meisenhelder, SPE, is vice president, unconventional resources, for Schlumberger, responsible for R&D strategy, operational support, and marketing of Schlumberger services for shale gas and liquids, coalbed methane, and tight gas. He has more than 33 years of industry experience and has held various technical and managerial roles in North and South America, Australia, Asia, and Africa. His career includes diverse experience in conventional oil, tight gas, highpressure/high-temperature and deep gas, H2S, and unconventional resources. Meisenhelder graduated with a BSc degree in physics from the University of Illinois.
Hydrocarbons from shale were first produced commercially as long ago as 1821, and from the 1860s through the 1920s gas was produced from shallow, low-pressure, naturally fractured shales in the eastern US. However, todays shale revolution did not really begin until 1985. That was when George Mitchell started developing a model for economically viable exploitation of the Barnett Shale. It took almost 20 years and literally hundreds of wells to find the right formula, based on two transformative technologies: horizontal drilling and multistage hydraulic fracturing. Since roughly 2005the beginning of what I call Shale 1.0we have successfully revived old shale plays and developed new ones. Every year, North American companies complete thousands of wells in shale reservoirs. How ever, even in mature plays like the Barnett, where productivity per well has doubled or tripled over the past decade, as many as 30% of all perforation clusters contribute absolutely nothing to production. That is the same as drilling 30 totally nonproductive wells out of every 100. To improve shale economics, operators and oilfield service companies have focused considerable brainpower and technical resources on reducing the unit cost of production through greater operationalefficiency. In many cases, we have brought drilling and completion costs down 50%, largely through application of new technologies, efficient project management, and supply chain negotiations. In some cases, advanced drilling technologies, automation, and real-time data have slashed average time to total depth from 48 days to just 8. Not all new technologies are exotic. For example, installation of rupture disk valves which replace coiled tubing or drillpipe-conveyed perforations for the first stage in horizontal wellsreduced completion costs in 15 Eagle Ford wells by more than USD 100,000 per well. The shale revolution has yielded many economic and social benefits, including growth in jobs and local businesses across the US, lower domestic energy costs, reduced CO2 emissions, andperhaps most importantaccess to a new national resource that holds enormous potential for long-term energy security. According to the Institute for Energy Research, the US has more than 200 years capacity of technically recoverable oil reserves and 110 years worth of natural gas at current rates of consumption, much of those from unconventional plays. In fact, shale oil is leading the current growth in US crude production. The US Energy Information Administration conservatively predicts global shale oil production will reach more than 4 million BOPD by 2030. Other analysts double that estimate. The obvious benefits of the shale revolution in the US have sparked the industrys imagination worldwide. Many nations are scrambling to evaluate their own shale resources. However, development strategies pioneered here in North Americaoften at great costmay not translate well overseas. While the industry has made enormous gains in efficiency, we may be reaching our technical limits. Even highly efficient shale operations today still require large numbers of wells; considerable e nvironmental disturbance during the development phase; extensive services and resources per
Shale 1.0: The Quest for Operational Efficiency
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GUEST EDITORIAL
well; and complex management of water, emissions, andpermitting. Many of these requirements are problematic elsewhere in the world. For one thing, no other country on Earth has the sheer scale of oilfield resources and infrastructure as North America. A single pad operation in the Fayetteville, for example, could assemble more horsepower than entire countries have in other parts of the world. In addition, the tolerance for failure is much lower outside the US. Few national or international operators are willing to drill hundreds of expensive experiments before they achieve economic production. Finally, as characterization work and experience has taught us, every shale is fundamentally different. From a technical perspective, what works in one place may not work elsewhere, even in the same play, much less across the globe. For unconventional resource development to advance worldwideindeed, to achieve the next step change even in US shale economicswe must shift from an obsession with well-centric efficiency to a concentration on reservoir-centric effectiveness. It is time, in other words, for Shale 2.0. Heterogeneityvertical and lateral variations in reservoir and completion qualities within a given shalealso has considerable impact on productivity. Only with this knowledge will we be able to plan, drill, land, geosteer, stimulate, and produce shale wells more effectively, saving vast amounts of time and money in the process. The secret lies in better integration of diverse information and tighter collaboration among disciplines that historically focused mainly on their piece of the puzzle. Operators and service companies must begin to access, integrate, and utilize every bit of data available, on every scale from core to seismic, to understand reservoir complexities in sufficient detail to design optimal pilot wells and make effective development decisions. While people are crucial to success, new technology and integrated software platforms will be essential enablers as well. Consider multistage completion design. Assuming we have successfully remained in the sweet spot along the horizontal lateral, an efficient, well- centric approach to completions would aim to lower per-stage costs, while spacing fracturing stages geometricallythat is, at equal distances along the lateral. In this scenario, some perforation clusters would not fracture sufficiently because rocks of dissimilar quality are staged together, and the better rocks dominate each stage. An effective reservoir-centric strategy, on the other hand, would integrate geological, geophysical, petrophysical, and geomechanical data and simulation models to measure variations in reservoir and completion quality along any proposed lateral. Based on these properties, geoscientists and engineers would group perforation clusters into stages that fracture equally and contribute proportionately toproduction. Both completion design strategies might use the same number of stages. However, an engineered approach could dramatically increase production and maximize return on investment. In one Eagle Ford block, for example, the average 3-month cumulative production from laterals completed with geometrically spaced fracturing stages was roughly 30,000 BOE per well. Switching to geologically driven completions, optimized based on variations in reservoir and completion quality, boosted average 3-month cumulative production by about 15,000 BOE per wella whopping 50% improvement in this case. Remember that 30% of the completion clusters in many mature shale plays are nonproductive. This is one way to begin rewriting thatequation. The ultimate objective of Shale 2.0 is to unlock the rock as quickly as possible, and then not to forget all that we have learned about operational efficiency to drive down costs and accelerate production. When we become efficient and effective, we will achieve far greater production with fewer wells and fewer totalresources.
Unlocking Shale Plays Worldwide
Shale 2.0: The Coming Revolution in Effectiveness
If operational efficiency means doing the same things faster and cheaper, effectiveness entails doing things differently as well. To unlock shale plays worldwide, we need to change the game itself, to eliminate every task and every well that does not contribute directly to production. We must upgrade the Shale 1.0 model. How? By understanding the rock first before we drill 100 or 1,000 wells. That is what I mean by Shale 2.0. We must take a more scientific, less statistical approach to shaledevelopment. We must understand early on the unique reservoir and completion quality of each shale. Reservoir quality refers to the petrophysical capacity of the shale to store and transport hydrocarbons. Completion quality refers to how mechanical properties, local stresses, and regional tectonics impact hydraulic fracturing.
However informative the North American industrys hard-won experience may be to shale development initiatives elsewhere, simply exporting the Shale 1.0 model will not be effective. Every shale play, indeed every reservoir, is structurally, compositionally, and geomechanically unique. From a reservoir-centric perspective, each shale requires its own development strategy based on a unique combination of analysis, interpretation, drilling, and completion technologies. Even when a shale play outside the US is lithologically similar to one in the US, other critical properties may differdramatically. Consider, for example, a key component of shale productivity: the impact of local and regional stresses on fracture propagation. Most of the unconventional plays in the US occur in relatively relaxed continental basins, although even here stress regimes vary significantly from the mid-continent to the Appalachians. China, which has perhaps the worlds greatest shale potential, is under a completely different stress regime, with the Indian subcontinent driving up the worlds highest mountain range in between.
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In Argentina, another nation with promising shale resources, yet another set of tectonic forces is at work, lying as it does between a passive continental margin to the east and a subduction zone to the west. Elsewhere, such as the Middle East and Russias Bazhenov shale, conventional development activities are providing vital geomechanical insights into the regional tectonics of source rocks that will help unlock those plays in the near future. Understanding the rock, therefore, is the first and most critical key to effective shale development worldwide.
In the absence of the perfect storm of technical infrastructure, market conditions, regulatory environment, and oilfield services we have in North America, economic success in shales worldwide will depend on new technologies and drilling, perforating, and stimulation strategies tailored to the unique properties of each reservoir. The good news is that, as an industry, we have proven capable of rising to the challenge, no matter how complex. The next stage in the global shale revolutionShale 2.0has just begun.JPT
COMMENTS
(Continued from page 16)
SPE is an association full of wonderful people who are willing to share and help each other. If you are not active in a local SPE section, you should be; there is no better place to meet people who will help you at a moments notice. My biggest reward has been the opportunity to help SPE members share their knowledge with you so that you can be better engineers and make the world a better place to live. Many of you have seen the work of Adam Wilson and Chris Carpenter in JPT and SPEs technical journals over the years, and I am pleased that my former job will be in their capable hands. I leave you with an old Scottish blessing: May there always be work for your hands to do. May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine on your window pane. May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near you. May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you. And in the words of Roy Rogers and DaleEvans: Happy trails to you, till we meet again. JPT
JPT JULY 2013
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TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
Dennis Denney, JPT Senior Technology Editor
Fig. 2Baker Hughes RCX Sentinel focused-sampling tool.
Fig. 1Fann Instruments Model 290 HPHT Consistometer.
HP/HT Consistometer
Fann Instrument has introduced its Model 290 HPHT Consistometer (Fig.1) that is rated to 30,000 psi and 400F and was designed to meet American Petroleum Institute (API) Specification 10A and American National Standards Institute/API 10A/ISO 10426-1-2001. While it is designed for cement slurries, the effects of pressure, time, and temperature can be observed for other fluids, emulsions, dispersions, or slurries under static or dynamic conditions. There are many choices for configuring cement- slurry devices. This instrument exposes a cement-slurry sample to a controlled set of parameters of temperature, agitation, and pressure that simulate downhole conditions. During a test, these para meters are monitored and controlled by proprietary control-system software. A flat-panel, high-resolution touch screen provides the user/software interface. The screen provides real-time viewing of temperature, pressure, and consistency data in graphic and text formats. Data are recorded to a database for future analysis to help predict downhole performance. The instrument uses distributed process-
ing, based on National Instruments RIO platform, so that the system can continue to run tests even if a computer crashes. A collection of processors enables capturing calibration routines, customizing settings, and capturing more-frequent event recordings (six/minute). Software wizards guide users through all tasks before test runs can be started.
For additional information, email fannmail@fann.com.
Baker Hughes announced its RCX Sen tinel focused-sampling service that collects and validates data necessary for reservoir characterization, reducing the risk of subsequent intervention or production-facility redesign. The w irelinedeployed service enables operators to capture cleaner formation-fluid samples in less than half the time required for conventional fluid-sampling methods. The formation-testing probe has two isolated fluid streams (Fig. 2) to focus formation fluids into a sample inlet while extracting more of the contaminated fluids through a separate inlet. Fluid focusing is attained by real-time monitoring of high- resolution pressure gauges and independent control of two pumps connected to separate flow areas within the concentric packer. The modular design allows conveyance of up to 52 sample chambers in a single run. By
Focused Sampling
optimizing the flow rates at the sandface, the RCX Sentinel service isolates the contaminated fluid into the perimeter inlet and allows cleaner fluid to pass to the inner flow area, reducing stationary time while obtaining pristine samples. Dual independent fluid analyzers control the sampling operation precisely and ensure that high- quality samples are secured in the shortest time possible. The service is deployable in wells with temperatures and pressures up to 375F and 25,000psi, respectively.
For additional information, visit www.bakerhughes.com/RCX.
Sliding-Friction Testing
Brookfield Engineering introduced its TA-SFJ Sliding-Friction Jig (Fig. 3) for measuring the coefficient of friction between two materials by sliding them against each other. One material is affixed to the base plate of the test fixture, and the other material is wrapped around a weight, which is pulled across the first material at constant speed. The test apparatus uses the Brookfield CT3 Tester to pull the weight in a horizontal direction so that the sliding friction between the two materials is measured accurately over a distance that is sufficient to verify steady-state behavior. The friction jig is used to measure tactile qualities such as smoothness, slipperiness, or stickiness. Applications include
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lubricants, grease, and types of coatings. The tester is a standalone instrument for physical testing, and it operates in compression and tension modes. The TexturePro CT software enables automating test procedures for generating analytical data.
For additional information, visit www.brookfieldengineering.com/ products.
Multiple Simulation Realizations
Fig. 3Brookfield Engineerings TA-SFJ Sliding-Friction Jig on the CT3 Tester.
Fig. 4Schlumbergers MEPO software automates and intelligently designs reservoir-simulation runs to achieve faster more-reliable results from multiplerealizations.
The latest releaseVer. 4.2of S chlumbergers MEPO multiple-realization optimizer has several workflow-guidance measures designed to streamline the reservoir-engineering work process. These measures include a fully redesigned cycle panel presenting key information, the ability to set a cycle objective and simulator, and the ability to import input-parameter and base-case files automatically. Users benefit from a new simulation-control center (recommending the best optimization methods and direction), new response para meters, and a result-image gallery. Improved sensitivity analysis (to define the influence of input parameters on response parameters) helps users decide which uncertainties to prioritize. New history-conditioned forecasting combines history matching and forecasting through improved proxy-modeling techniques and advanced Markov-chain Monte-Carlo-based workflows. The software automates and intelligently designs reservoir-simulation runs (Fig. 4), helping users achieve faster more-reliable results from multiple realizations, and manage the analysis of tens of para meters simultaneously. Users can optimize any reservoir model for any objective, including cumulative production, number of wells, net present value, injection volumes, gas lift, and enhanced oil recovery. Engineers can implement tightly integrated workflows driven by the optimizer with the Petrel E&P software platform, and the Eclipse and Intersect reservoir simulators.
For additional information, visit www.slb.com/services/software/reseng.
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JPT JULY 2013
Fig. 6Quantitech Voxtrac flowmeters use in-pipe speed-of-sound gas-flow monitoring technology.
Fig. 5Ulterra CounterForce PDC bit.
PDC Technology
Ulterra has introduced its CounterForce polycrystalline-diamond-compact (PDC) bit design (Fig. 5) that uses a cutter configuration that reduces bit torque and vibration to create more-efficient rock failure. The cutters of this patent-pending PDC-bit technology work together to decrease lateral vibration and increase crack propagation. The bits cutting structure is engineered to slice through rock while maintaining a more-consistent torque signature to increase stability and rate of penetration (ROP). This technology improves drilling efficiency and is being incorporated into many of the companys PDC bit designs. Early field runs indicate that U519M bits, designed with this technology, drilled with improved tool-face control and higher sliding ROP. In the tangent drillout interval of an Eagle Ford field well, this bit technology set a rig ROP record, drilling 41% faster than the closest offset. In a Permian Basin Wolfcamp lateral, use of this bit technology enabled finishing the lateral with 42% faster ROP than direct offsets. This technology consistently reduces torque and vibration problems, and it improves directional performance.
For additional information, visit www.ulterra.com.
affected by the gas composition, temperature, density, viscosity, or pressure, and there is no obstruction at the measurement point. When the speed of sound in a gas is measured along the flow path in both directions simultaneously, the difference in the measured velocities is proportional to the gas velocity along the pipe. If the gas temperature is expected to fluctuate, an automatic compensation is applied. Measurements taken at 100 mbar are feasible, and flow rates between 0.01 and 288 m3/d are possible in pipes up to 200 mm in diameter. For qualitative monitoring of single gases, any change in the speed-of-sound measurement will indicate that the purity of the gas has changed. For mixtures of two gases, the speed of sound is a combination of the two main gas components, so there is a simple calculation to derive the proportion of each component.
For additional information, visit www.quantitech.co.uk.
uses the companys Dopeless technology, which enhances its performance and reliability and provides operational; wellproductivity; and health, safety, and environmental benefits. The connection has a 100% external pressure seal. It has an outside-diameter (OD) clearance of 1.5 to 2% of specified nominal-pipe-body OD for high-clearance applications. The connection has exceptional torque capability and compression efficiency developed through the simultaneous engagement of opposing flanks of the dovetail thread.
Deepwater Connection
Measuring Gas Flow and Composition
Quantitech has launched its Voxtrac flowmeters that use in-pipe speed-ofsound gas-flow monitoring technology (Fig. 6) that can measure gas composition or purity. This measurement is not
TenarisHydril Wedge 623 connection (Fig. 7) was developed to comply with recent changes in deepwater operating requirements in the Gulf of Mexico. The new connection has an additional external metal-to-metal seal that provides compression ratings of 80 to 86% efficiency in an integral connection. The new connection has sealing capabilities and compression ratings that make it suitable for severe deepwater and high-pressure applications. It has been tested under the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 13679 CAL I-E testing protocol and meets additional operator requirements for survival loads in line with API RP96 criteria. The connection
Fig. 7The TenarisHydril Wedge 623 connection.
JPT JULY 2013
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Fig. 8The Atlas Copco Secoroc jet sub diverts much of the air required for cleaning to the hole before it reaches the motor.
There are no drift restrictions after overtorque. The 100% internal-pressure- rated metal seal maintains gas-sealing capability under high axial loads.
For additional information, email premiumconnections@tenaris.com.
Downhole Hammer
Atlas Copco Secoroc has patented a method for directional pneumatic drilling. The new method increases penetration rates, reduces vibrations, decreases equipment damage, and enhances bit performance. With the new method, excess flow is released through one or more jet subs (Fig. 8) above the bottomhole assembly. This manages airflow through the motor when the hammer is in operation and allows the bit to turn at the correct speed. Without the use of a jet sub, the flow required to clean the hole effectively had to pass through the hammer/ motor assembly, which caused the motor to overrotate, resulting in inefficient drilling with excessive wear and damage to the bit. Modifications incorporated into the companys Model TD 90 DT, QL120 DT, and QL60 HF HC hammers keep the hammers flow/pressure profiles the same on bottom as off-bottom, to maintain constant rotation speeds. Constant rotation speed prevents whipping of the bottomhole assembly caused by a sudden increase in motor rotation resulting from high airflow rates while off-bottom, which can lead to motor damage. Vibration levels caused by whipping can destroy tools such as those in an electromagnetic measurement-while-drillingsystem.
For additional information, email ray.shelor@us.atlascopco.com.
Fig. 9IHCs Model S-90W Waterhammer.
Passive Fire Protection
Jotun has launched its Jotachar JF750 mesh-free passive fire-protection coating. This new coating can help owners, fabricators, and applicators save time, lower costs, and reduce risks compared with other coatings that require mesh reinforcement. The new coating has a fiber-matrix system incorporated in the material. This fire-protection coating has been independently fire tested to key industry standards, demonstrating structural fire protection for up to 3 hours. Steel sections and divisions are tested to the ISO 834/BS 476 Part 21 hydrocarbon curve, proving protection from hydrocarbon-pool fires. The coating also demonstrated jet-fire-protection performance without additional mesh reinforcement in the ISO 22899 test for up to 2 hours. This fire-protection coating also passed a 4-bar-blast overpressure test, without any need for additional reinforcing mesh. This fire-protection coating does not use boric acid, a poten-
tially harmful substance often incorporated into coatings as a flame retardant.

For additional information, visit www.jotun.com.
Subsea Installation
IHC Hydrohammer, part of IHC Merwede, has successfully used seawater instead of oil as a drive fluid for offshore installation. The Waterhammer technology is a sustainable product development that minimizes potential oil-spill hazards in the marine environment and presents new opportunities for deepwater offshore pile driving for offshore construction. The Model S-90W (Fig.9) system was used by Swiber Offshore Construction as its advanced pile-driving hammer to install four foundation piles on the subsea pipeline-end manifold approximately 210 km offshore Mumbai. The 1.1m-OD piles were driven into theseabed. JPT
For additional information, visit www.ihcmerwede.com/offshore.
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TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Mobile Mixer Adds Dry Friction Reducer to Fracturing Fluid at the Wellsite
Geeta Nakra, SPE, Steven Wright, and David Wright, SPE, SNF Holdings
A mobile system has been developed that mixes consistent solutions of powderbased friction reducers (FRs) at the wellsite and adds them to hydraulic fracturing fluid. The use of the system has achieved reductions in fracture stage cycle times of as much as 10% and significant cost savings, compared with the conventional use of oil-based liquid emulsion FRs in slickwater fracturing fluids. In addition, the use of powder-based FRs reduces the potential of the FR solution freezing, settling, or gelling and eliminates the hazard of liquid FR spillage in work areas.
100 6000
Water-soluble dry polyacrylamide can be used as an FR, with the selection of a polymer dependent on water quality. Dry FRs can perform in waters ranging from fresh water to high-brine produced water. The challenge to developing the use of dry FRs in fracturing fluid was the ability to hydrate them on a treatment site. The PowderFrac mobile mixing and feeding system developed by SNF has performed successfully in the field since its initial deployment in the Barnett Shale of Texas during 2011. The system provides onsite stor-
age, hydration, and dose control of the powder FRs. The mobile unit enables well operators to reduce logistics and labor costs, and the chemistry of the dry FR solutions is also less costly. Deployment of the mobile unit does not require the modification of equipment or infrastructure at the fracturing site. The unit was designed and built with field replaceable parts to ensure prompt, cost-effective vehicle maintenance while deployed. The equipment includes a patented Polymer Slicing Unit (PSU) for rapid hydration of the dry FR. The PSU can
9 bbl/min increase rate
643 psi pressure drop
Slurry Rate, bbl/min
4000
STP-1, psi
50
Dry FR @ 1.0 GPT Emulsion FR @ 1.0 GPT
2000
Initiate dry FR addition
0 50 60
Elapsed Time, min
70
80
Fig. 1By comparing the pressure, rate, and density on a treating chart with the declining surface treating pressure (STP), it is observed that the pressure changes at the surface during pumping. STP is lower with the use of a dry friction reducer (FR) than with a liquid emulsion FR (4,300 psi vs. 5,000 psi). The results also substantiated the cost-effectiveness of replacing a liquid emulsion FR in totes with a powder FR in the mobile unit.
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TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
10.0K 9.0K Pressure, Rate (x100), psi 8.0K 7.0K 6.0K 5.0K 4.0K 3.0K 2.0K 1.0K 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Dry FR Emulsion FR STP 5,500 psi STP 7,000 psi
10.0 9.0 8.0 7.0 Bbl/min 6.0 5.0 4.0 3.0 2.0 1.0 0
sure with the dry FR was 4,300 psi compared with 5,000 psi with the emulsion FR at equivalent gal per thousand (GPT) of fracturing fluid. The treating rate was 109 bbl/min with the dry FR compared with 100 bbl/min with the emulsion FR. This resulted in a 10% reduction in the fracturing stage cycle. Dry FR hydrated with the mobile unit showed a 15% pressure drop. The fracturing was successfully executed at the desired depths with pressures maintained. After the deployment, all 10 stages were successfully fractured and monitored, and the well was put onproduction.
Time, min Fig. 2By comparing the pressure on a treating chart with declining surface treating pressure (STP), it is observed that the pressure changes at the surface during pumping. STP is lower with the use of a dry friction reducer (FR) than with a liquid emulsion FR (5,500 psi vs. 7,000 psi). The results also substantiated the cost-effectiveness of replacing a liquid FR in totes with a powder FR in the mobileunit.
Case History 2
operate at treatment rates up to 120 bbl/ min. Additional equipment consists of two solution tanks, a 12,000-lbm dry storage container, a horizontal screw conveyor, water filter pots, water pumps, FR solution pumps, and a self-contained generator system that can be fueled by an onboard tank or the saddle tank of the tractor. Safe deployment and operation is a crucial part of the units design. All electronics capable of data recording can perform reporting and analysis. The mobile unit, 45 ft in length, requires no special transport permits and can be refilled with dry powder FR by a powder bulk truck. The friction reduction from a polyacrylamide will be affected by water quality and salinity and any other additives in the fluid that interact with the polymer. Concentrations of FR are adjusted during the treatment to lower or raise the pumping pressure. The unit is equipped with a remote starting and monitoring system in the control room. The operator sets the desired loading, and the FR dosing is controlled automatically by following the clean ratethe rate that signifies that the system has stabilized so that dosing
can be increased to its targeted rate. The operator can change the loading easily at any point. A user option allows the operator to upgrade the mobile unit to provide direct two-way communication with the data van, which enables a consistent data stream between the two units. The real-time monitoring tool can recall and replay a given job from saved archives. The self-contained dry FR storage unit on the mobile system holds the equivalent of 5,000 gal (16 totes) of liquid emulsion. The elimination of this liquid handling cost reduces the cost of setting up the mobile unit.
Case History 1
Fig. 1 is a recording of one stage in a slickwater fracturing treatment with a dry polyacrylamide FR. The operator wanted to monitor the difference in performance of an emulsion polyacrylamide FR with a dry FR hydrated from the mobile unit. Fracturing was started with the emulsion FR and about 64 minutes into the stage, hydrated dry FR was introduced. An immediate drop in surface treating pressure was observed. The pressure trace showed that the treating pres-
Fig. 2 is a recording of one stage in a slickwater fracturing treatment executed with a dry polyacrylamide FR. The operator wanted to monitor the difference in performance of emulsion-based polyacrylamide FR with a powder FR hydrated from the mobile unit. The friction reduction performances of the liquid and dry products hydrated in a blend of fresh and produced water (total dissolved solids @ 130K mg/L and CaCl2 @ 29K mg/L) are shown in the graph. The emulsion FR and dry FR used were polyacrylamide-based products. The pressure trace shows that the treating pressure for the dry FR was 5,500 psi, compared with 7,000 psi for the emulsion FR at equivalent GPT of fracturing fluid. The fracturing was successfully executed at the desired depths with pressures maintained. After the deployment, all 20 stages were successfully fractured and monitored, and the well was put onproduction.
Summary
The use of dry FR has shown a reduction in cycle times by as much as 10% and typical fracturing stage cost saving of 30%. The technology eliminates the use of oil-based FRs and tote handling, thus reducing the potential for freezing, settling, and gelling. In addition, the use of dry FR eliminates the potential hazard of slippery work areas caused by spillage of liquid FR. JPT
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TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
CLD Rigs, MPD Change Equation for Deepwater Well Control

Brian Grayson, SPE, Weatherford
Closed loop drilling (CLD) systems and managed pressure drilling (MPD) are challenging long-held industry ideas about well control. This realignment in philosophy is happening because of a unique ability to precisely monitor, analyze, and control wellbore pressure in real time. These capabilities are the basis for a growing number of proactive and reactive methods and tools that are solving many conventional well control problems. This is particularly true in the extremes of deepwater drilling, in which managing wellbore pressure plays a principal role in safety, efficiency, and even the ability to drill the well. Fig. 1 presents many of the critical issues addressed by advances in MPD. Although the number of deepwater MPD applications is relatively small, the
Cause
Shallow Gas
advantages being achieved with closed loop systems are driving its increased use and the development of specialized deepwater MPD technology and drilling rigs.
Monitoring and Control
MPD reduces well control events and pressure-related wellbore problems by addressing two key challenges associated with conventional methods: the uncertainty of the predrill model and the inflexibility of the resulting well design and mud regimes. These challenges are overcome by a dynamic capability that is counter to static predrill models. Uncertainty is reduced by very precise measurements of wellbore pressure profiles in real time. Just as important, MPD complements this information with equally precise real-time control.
Consequence
Blowout
Event/Hazard
Well Kick Influx of Hydrocarbon Circulation Loss
Injury to Personnel Damage to Safety Critical System Environmental Damage H 2S Release
Hydrocarbon flow from pressurized formation
Gas Cut Mud
Prevention/ Control Barriers
Mitigation Barriers
Fig. 1With the advancements in managed pressure drilling, the industry can ensure that correct barriers are put in place to protect the crew, the rig, and the environment.
This dynamic solution is proving a key enabler for enhancing safety, efficiency, and operational capabilities in deepwater drilling. To achieve these capabilities, MPD builds on the inherent characteristics of a closed loop system. Within this contained, pressurized wellbore environment, pressure is closely monitored. Pressure changes, such as those caused by an influx, loss, or ballooning, are rapidly detected and controlled in increments as small as a few barrels. Accurate fingerprinting of these minute pressure oscillations quickly identifies the event, which both informs an effective response and avoids a misdiagnosis that can exacerbate the condition. The MPD control response is initiated at the surface by automatically or manually varying the annular backpressure by using a specialized MPD choke manifold. These changes within the closed fluid system are used to manipulate downhole pressure without the delay, cost, and imprecision of changing mud weight. The ability to immediately dial in and hold the desired wellbore pressure changes the well control equation fundamentally with a new set of proactive and reactive pressure management options. Micro influxes that are the precursor to well control events are quickly managed before they can escalate into a kick. When kicks occur, they are rapidly identified, controlled, and circulated out of the well. This mitigates a significant source of risk and nonproductive time (NPT). In deepwater wells, precise pressure management is also critical to navigating narrow drilling windows between the pore pressure and the fracture gradient.
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TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Similarly, it is central to managing transitions between high- and low-pressure zones to avoid kicks and losses, and to optimizing casing setting depths. gy. To meet the demand, existing vessels can be refitted to accommodate a CLD system, while new CLD-ready designs, such as Stena Drillings DrillSLIM semisubmersibles and drillships, are entering the market. Rig availability will also benefit from the development of industry guidelines, procedures, and standards for equipment procurement, rig modification and design, and training. Driving all of these developments are the impressive results being achieved with CLD rigs and MPD methods in deepwater applications around the world. control device, Weatherfords SeaShield Model 7875 RCD, which was used in a BTR installation as an integral part of the riser. To drill the difficult well, the MPD constant bottomhole pressure method was used at first. In early drilling, a 2-bbl influx was detected and successfully processed out of the wellbore. When severe losses occurred deeper in the well, the MPD drilling mode was transitioned to pressurized mudcap drilling and the well was drilled to TD. Riser gas was eliminated in drilling this and seven subsequent exploratory wells. There was no incidence of formation gas breaking out of solution above the BOP and inside the riser. The MPD control system algorithms detected at least five flow anomalies that were kept to minimal volume and safely circulated out of the well. There was only one instance in which an influx was circulated out through the riser. The process started with closing the subsea BOP and the MPD annular BOP (located below the RCD at the top of the riser) to isolate the influx. The mud and influx in the riser was then circulated out through the automated MPD choke manifold and the rigs high-rate mud gas separator. Once the influx was out of the riser, the mud was weighted up, the subsea BOP was opened, and the rest of the well was circulated to a higher mud weight while applying MPD control.
Solution to Riser Gas
MPD monitoring and control is also solving the old deepwater well control problem of riser gas. Gas in the marine riser presents a significant challenge to conventional well control because it is above and beyond the effect of the blowout preventer (BOP) system. While gas handling systems and methods provide a solution, it is reactive in nature and limited in its control ability. MPDs proactive and reactive response to riser gas results in a safer, more effective solution. The proactive approach uses early kick detection and control capabilities to achieve a major reduction in the incidence of reservoir gas entering an oil-based mud system at depth and dissolving into it without being detected, only to come out of solution in the drilling riser and above the subsea BOP. Should gas occur in the riser as the result of an influx or entrained gas, the MPD system provides a controlled means of circulating it out of the riser and dealing with any remaining gas downhole of the BOP.
HP/HT Drilling
New Rigs and Technologies
This success in solving many of the problems that have stymied conventional well control is driving the development of new technologies, CLD-ready rigs, and industry guidelines. A major technical step in the deployment of CLD systems in deep water on dynamically positioned (DP) drilling vessels was the development of the industrys first rotating control device (RCD) that is made up below the tension ring and integral to the riser package of a DPdrillship. A below-tension-ring (BTR) RCD was first deployed in 2010. The device contains the annular flow and redirects it to help form a closed loop circulating system, thus making the device a key component of a deepwater MPD system. The availability of CLD-ready rigs is crucial to the adoption of the technolo-
In drilling a high-pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) well in the North Sea, MPD saved approximately 75 days compared with conventionally drilled offset wells. Five separate influxes were successfully managed over 9 days. The ability to quickly identify high-pressure, low-volume gas stringers while drilling enhanced safety and well control, reduced NPT, and eliminated the need for a planned liner section. On the Norwegian Continental Shelf, a surface pressure of nearly 15,000 psi made pore pressure evaluation and kick detection critical to drilling an exploratory well. A key objective was setting the 9-in. production-casing shoe as close to the reservoir as possible, facilitating the drilling of an 8-in. section to total depth (TD) within a very narrow 0.4 ppg drilling window. MPD helped avoid well breathing problems while maintaining an overbalanced wellbore. Using the closed loop system saved an estimated 10 rig days and USD 7.5 million while reducing risk and improving safety.
Borehole Instability
Narrow Windows; Total Losses
When planning a deepwater exploratory well in Indonesia, limited pore pressure and fracture gradient information caused significant uncertainty in the predrill model. MPD was selected as a means to monitor and manage pressure in the difficult conditions. The drillship application was enabled by the industrys first use of a submerged rotating
Recent experience in the deep waters offshore Ghana further illustrates the advantages of drilling with closed loop systems. While conventional drilling had failed in two attempts because of pressure-related wellbore problems, MPD enabled the well to be drilled without borehole instability issues, underreaming, or contingency liners. Riser gas was routinely mitigated. The first drilling attempt encountered an unstable rubble zone and sharp pore pressure and fracture gradient changes. The well packed off several
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times because of sloughing shale and progress stopped. The main wellbore was plugged back and a sidetrack was drilled using a higher mud weight to prevent sloughing. Drilling eventually took a 16- to 20-bbl influx and the sidetrack was shut in. The next attempt 4 years later used a CLD rig and MPD to control wellbore pressures, provide stability in the rubble zone, and successfully drill the well. In addition, the 14-in. section was drilled deeper than the planned objective, which allowed the 13-in. casing shoe to be set deeper and eliminated the need for the 10-in. section.
Deepwater Well Control
Real-time insight into the wellbore pressure environment combined with realtime pressure control form the pivot point for a new way of looking at well control. In deepwater applications, this perspective is quickly gaining ground as the advantages of CLD systems and MPD
Fig. 2Well control is achievable through close collaboration by all parties to establish safety cases and singular well construction interface documentation.
are fully understood, and the technology and rig systems become available. The operator, rig contractor, and service company work together to integrate the
enhanced well control capabilities of the MPD system (Fig. 2), thus bridging the gap between traditional primary and secondary well control. JPT
JPT JULY 2013
35
YOUNG TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE
Formation Evaluation-While-Drilling Technology Improves Data Delivery

Jean-Marie Degrange and Roger Griffiths, Schlumberger Todays drilling engineering teams are continually looking for better ways to mitigate risk and improve health, safety, and environmental conditions at the rig site. Many operators would prefer to acquire a comprehensive suite of petrophysical measurements while drilling without incurring the risk and cost associated with deployment of chemical nuclear sources. Traditionally, both wireline and logging-while-drilling (LWD) tools have depended primarily on radioisotopes such as americium-beryllium to generate high-energy neutrons for porosity measurements, and cesium to generate gamma rays for bulk density measurements. However, transportation, storage, handling on the rig floor, and potential abandonment of radioactive sources at the wellsite should the tools become stuck require special safety precautions and costly, time-consuming procedures. In remote geographic regions, mobilizing chemical sources can be slow and logistically complex.
DRILLING ENVIRONMENT MEASUREMENTS
If a bottomhole assembly (BHA) with a chemical source becomes stuck, complicated fishing procedures can waste precious rig time, and delay eventual production of oil and gas. To meet the growing industry need for an alternative to radioactive chemical sources, Schlumberger recently released NeoScope sourceless formation evaluation-while-drilling solution (Fig. 1). This technology is unique in three ways. It is the first LWD tool to introduce a completely new
GAMMA RAY, ULTRASONIC CALIPER, AND PROPAGATION RESISTIVITY MEASUREMENTS

Attenuation Resistivity, 40-in spacing 0.02 200 Attenuation Resistivity, 34-in spacing 0.02 200 Attenuation Resistivity, 28-in spacing 0.02 200
SOURCELESS PNG-BASED SNGD, NEUTRON-POROSITY, SPECTROSCOPY, AND SIGMA MEASUREMENTS
INTEGRATED SOURCELESS MEASUREMENT INTERPRETATION

0 Volumetric Proportions ft3/ft3 Volume Fraction of Bound Water in Undisturbed Zone Volume Fraction of Irreducible Water in Undisturbed Zone Volume Fraction of Water in Undisturbed Zone 1
0.02 0.2
200 0.2 2,000 0.2
Phase Shift Resistivity, 40-in spacing
Formation Resistivity ohm.m
2,000
Invasion Mudcake/Enlargement
Volume Fraction of Siderite Volume Fraction of Pyrite Volume Fraction of Carbonate Volume Fraction of Quartz, Feldspar, Mica Volume Fraction of Clay Volume Fraction of Coal Effective Permeability to Hydrocarbon Intrinsic Permeability Effective Permeability to Hydrocarbon mD 0.01
20.00 Gamma Ray Image gAPI Image Orientation, R D L 90 180 270
80.00
6.03028
Phase Shift Resistivity, 34-in spacing Attenuation Resistivity, 40-in spacing ohm.m 2,000 0.2 2,000 0.2
0 MD, ft
Gamma Ray, Average gAPI 150
Borehole Shape 3D 4.125 6.03028 U 360 L 270 Orientation, U R 90
Phase Shift Resistivity, 28-in spacing Attenuation Resistivity, 22-in spacing Ultrasonic Caliper Average in ohm.m 50 0.2 2,000 0.2 2,000 0 Phase Shift Resistivity, 22-in spacing Phase Shift Resistivity, 22-in spacing ohm.m 0.2 2,000 0.2 2,000 0 Phase Shift Resistivity, 16-in spacing Phase Shift Resistivity, 16-in spacing 0.2 2,000 0.2 ohm.m 2,000 0 Bit Size in Invasion Diameter in 50 50
0 0
Grain Sigma from Elemental Spectroscopy cu 50 Formation Sigma, Average cu 50
Grain Density from Elemental Spectroscopy g/cm3 1.95 2.95 Neutron Gamma Density, Average g/cm3 1.95 2.95 Best Neutron Porosity, Average pu 45 -15
Bound Water Saturation ft3/ft3 1 Irreducible Water Saturation 1 ft3/ft3 Total Water Saturation ft3/ft3
Perforated Interval
0
Flushed Zone Resistivity ohm.m 2,000
ROP Averaged Over Last 5 ft U ft/h 250 0 0
Collar Dry Weight Fraction of Rotational Speed Anhydrite 0 250 rpm Dry Weight Fraction of Siderite Shock Peak 50 gn 0 Ultrasonic Caliper, Dry Weight Fraction of Pyrite Horizontal Diameter Downhole Annular in 15 0 Temperature Dry Weight Fraction of Mudcake/Enlargement Carbonate deg/f Ultrasonic Caliper, 140 180 Vertical Diameter Downhole Annular Dry Weight Fraction of in 0 15 Bit Size Pressure Quartz, Feldspar, and Mica Bit Size in 7 12 4,000 6,000 psi Dry Weight Fraction of Clay in 15 0 Equivalent Ultrasonic Caliper Circulating Density Bit Size Average lbm/galUS in 15 5 7 12 0 15 Dry Weight Fraction of Coal in
Sigma Quality Indicator
Bound Water Saturation Irreducible Water Saturation Total Water Saturation
Saturation Quality Indicator
Ultrasonic Quality Indicator
Resistivity Quality Indicator
Attenuation Resistivity, 22-in spacing 0.02 200 Attenuation Resistivity, 16-in spacing
Spectroscopy Quality Indicator
Gamma Ray Quality Indicator
Dry Weight Proportions
Neutron Gamma Density Quality Indicator Best Neutron Porosity Quality Indicator
Volume Fraction of Hydrocarbon in Undisturbed Zone
0.6
10,000
Cumulative Fractional Flow of Hydrocarbons Cumulative Fractional Flow of Water
Intrinsic Permeability mD 10,000 0.01
X,200
X,250
X,300
X,350
X,400
X,450
X,500
X,550
X,600
X,650
Fig. 1The sourceless PNG technology provides a complete set of petrophysical data without using chemical nuclear sources. 36 JPT JULY 2013
nuclear measurement to the industrysourceless neutron gamma density (SNGD). It is the only tool in the industry that provides formation density and neutron measurements without the need for chemical nuclear sources. Finally, it is the first tool to provide collocated density and neutron measurements(Fig. 2).
the commercial solution was officially released in June. PNG. Unlike radioisotopes, which are always on, emitting a continuous stream of neutrons, PNGs produce neutrons on demand. They generate highenergy neutrons in carefully timed pulses only when the tool receives electrical power from the turbine in the measurement-while-drilling (MWD) system. When mud flow stops, the MWD turbine powers down and the PNG turns off. In addition, a series of built-in safety control mechanisms prevent any possibility of accidentally activating the PNG either at surface or downhole. As such, it can be transported, stored, handled and, if necessary, abandoned without any specific safety requirements or costly procedures. There are no restrictions on wellsite storage or manipulation of PNGbased tools, and government agencies, such as the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, have exempted them from special precautions for abandonment in oilfield wells. The new SNGD measurement. Fast neutrons emitted by the PNG collide with formation nuclei, creating a secondary source of gamma rays, which are received by a special set of detectors in the tool (Fig. 4). Induced gamma rays arriving at long-spaced detectors exhibit significant sensitivity to formation density. Since SNGD is a complex measurement, sophisticated algorithms and environmental corrections are required. While conventional density measurement is accurate to 0.015 g/cm3 in clean sandstones and carbonate formations, the SNGD measurement has an accuracy of 0.025 g/cm3 under the same conditions. SNGD is less dependent on good contact with the formation than conventional density.
Development and Field Testing
Pulsed neutron generator Neutron porosity Neutron-gamma density Sigma
Spectroscopy
LWD tools have typically used two chemical nuclear sources to obtain neutron porosity and bulk density. In partnership with Japan Oil, Gas, and Metals National Corporation, Schlumberger first developed and deployed a pulsed neutron generator (PNG) for commercial standard neutron porosity, spectroscopy, and sigma measurements 7 years ago, eliminating the need for one of the chemical sources (241AmBe). However, development of SNGD was not yet mature enough for commercial use. The only way to acquire a reliable density measurement was still to use a cesium source. Hence, it remained impossible for operators to obtain a comprehensive sourceless suite of petrophysical data whiledrilling. Ongoing research and engineering led to modifications of existing technology, design of new detectors, and development of sophisticated characterization algorithms and calibrations to provide the first commercial SNGD measurementa true breakthrough. Since 2005, extensive laboratory modeling and experimentation, as well as more than 200 field tests in more than 30 countries have been conducted to verify and refine the new SNGD measurement. Tests have been carried out in a wide range of formations under many different environmental conditions. Comparisons of the new PNG-based density measurement with conventional bulk densities derived from chemical sources showed good correlations both in carbonates and sandstone formations, onshore and offshore (Fig.3). Field testing extended through early 2012, and
Propagation resistivity
25 ft
16 ft
Dual ultrasonic caliper
APWD and temperature 3-axis shock and vibrations Azimuthal GR Near-bit inclination
Fig. 2All sensors are integrated in a single 25-ft collar. All measurements are obtained within 16 ft of the bottom of the tool.
Applications and Case Studies
sources. NeoScope service reduces these operational risks while allowing existing field formation evaluation models to be applied. These models are generally based on density and neutron measurements and many have been refined over numerous years. Exploration wells. Exploratory wells and new frontiers pose greater risks and unknowns. Obtaining real-time formation-evaluation data earlier allows drillers
NeoScope sourceless technology is ideal for any drilling or logging situation in which the operator is concerned about the risks or logistic complications associated with the use of chemical nuclear
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YOUNG TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE

137
3 2.9 2.8 2.7 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9
Cesium GGD (RHOB)

3 2.9 2.8 2.7 3 2.9 2.8 2.7 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 3 2.9 2.8 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.4 2.3 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6
3
RHON, g/cm3
2.5 2.4 2.3 2.2 2.1 2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6
3
2.5 2.4 2.3 2.2 2.1 2.7 2.8 2.9 3
RHON, g/cm3
2.6
2.6
2.6 2.5 2.4 2.3 2.2 2.1 2 2.7 2.8 2.9
RHOB, g/cm
Sourceless SNGD (RHON)
RHOB, g/cm
Fig. 3SNGD compares favorably with traditional conventional density from cesium sources; examples: shaly sands in Egypt (left), and limestone in the US (right).
Neutron source
and geoscientists to avoid running blind. Early formation assessment with LWD can optimize the drilling program and logging program, and help an operator decide when to plug and sidetrack. Sourceless formation-evaluation technology completely eliminates the risk of losing a chemical source and having to undertake complex abandonmentprocedures. Unconventional plays. In unconventional plays, long horizontal wellbores increase the potential for stuck pipe. Sourceless LWD data not only evaluates reservoir quality in real time for better well placement, but also provides critical input to rock mechanics necessaryto optimize multistage hydraulic fracture completiondesign. Development wells. In development drilling, any operational or logisticaldelay can result in additional expense and postpone production. In the caseof a stuck pipe or a lost-in-hole incident, costly fishing can be avoided. The BHA can be abandoned and sidetrack operations commenced without furtherdelay. Case study 1: Offshore, tight carbonates. An operator drilling an offshore exploration well wanted to acquire a full suite of petrophysical measurements
Neutron detector
and properly characterize the reservoir while avoiding the potential risk and cost of having to abandon chemical sources. The operator decided to run the new sourceless service, saving the cost of subsequent logs that would have required chemical sourcesin this case, saving approximately USD500,000. The neutron-gamma density measurement in conjunction with other real-time data provided an accurate saturation profile, estimated matrix properties, and helped identify high-potential hydrocarbon zones. Case study 2: Onshore, sandstone reservoir. While logging a deviated well in the Western Desert of Egypt, the operator encountered a zone with significantwellbore stability issues. The company decided the best approach would be to deploy sourceless LWD tools to complete the evaluation, and rapidly mobilized the service to the wellsite. The PNG-based technology provided high-quality data over the full 1,774-ft interval, including the oil-bearing reservoir. The LWD measurements compared favorably with those obtained from wireline conventional logs. Eliminating the time and expense of shipping chemical LWD sources to the wellsite saved 7 days and USD 200,000.JPT
Gamma ray detector
Fig. 4Fast neutrons emitted by the PNG collide with formation nuclei, creating induced gamma rays. Received by a special set of detectors, these rays provide a sourceless measurement sensitive to formation density.
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WELL CAPPING
BECOMES
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Editor
An Industry of Its Own
This capping stack has been reassembled after shipment to Singapore where it will be stationed to serve customers of the Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP) in the region. The unit was built by Trendsetter Engineering whose technicians put it back together as part of a contract to maintain SWRP capping equipment.
he word to describe offshore well capping is more. There are more people being hired to manage more hardware in more places around the world, and there are more things under development. A niche business within the offshore exploration and production sector has sprung up since the Macondo disaster destroyed the Deepwater Horizon in 2010, which killed 11 and flowed for months before it was finally capped. This growing industry is going to be a lasting and ever-evolving part of the business, said Kurt Kriter, Americas regional director for Oil Spill Response Ltd. (OSRL), which is one of the interlocking network of industry-owned organizations responsible for thisgrowth. Oil Spill Response is an industry-owned cooperative whose responsibilities include owning and managing equipment to quickly respond to out-of-control wells around the globe for another group created by nine big oil companies, called the Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP). The four recently established hubs covering major oil regions around the globe feature four high-capacity capping stacks, which were built using design advice from the engineering departments of the SWRP members. The two highest-performance units can shut off a well flowing at 15,000 psi, and divert up to 100,000 B/D to surface vessels. When the last of the caps is delivered later this year to Brazil by Trendsetter Engineering, it will mark a transition for this business, which has been focused on building capping stacks, going from zero before Macondo to around 20 currently. The focus is shifting toward operations and developing improved response methods. This year, OSRL is staffing hubs in Stavanger, Norway;Cape Town, South Africa; Angara dos Reis, Brazil; andSingapore, with six in each location, and 10 in its Britishwell response center, said Jan Strom, director of subsea well intervention services for OSRL. The local teams are charged with maintenance and logistics, with support from outside advisors, such as Trendsetter, which has built nine caps, making it one of the largest companies active in thisfield. Well capping companies began in the US, with Marine Well Containment Corporation (MWCC) and Helix Well Containment Group (HWCG). They were created to allow offshore exploration companies to share the cost of buying and maintaining the equipment needed to respond to well incidents. Macondo showed the need, and led to US regulations requiring operators to demonstrate they have access to the equipment and expertise needed to stop an offshore blowout. Now governments around the world have similar regulations. Mexico has ordered a capping stack to cover its deepwater exploration program in its share of the Gulf of Mexico, south of the area where the two US containment equipment companies operate, said Edgar Rangel German, a commissioner on Mexicos National Hydrocarbons Commission. There are still areas around the globe not covered by spill response organizations, including the
Cooperative Containment Groups

Marine Well Containment Co. Members: ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, BP, ConocoPhillips, Anadarko, Apache, Statoil, BHPBilliton,Hess Covers: US Gulf of Mexico Helix Well Containment Group Members: ATP Oil and Gas Corp, Deep Gulf Energy, ENI, Energy Resource Technology, LLOG Exploration Co., Marubenei Oil & Gas, Murphy Oil Corp., Noble Energy, Plains Energy, Repsol E&P, Stone Energy Corp., Walter Oil & Gas Corp, W&T Offshore Covers: US Gulf of Mexico Subsea Well Response Project Members: BG Group, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Shell Statoil and Total Covers: Global from bases in Brazil, Norway, Singapore and South Africa
Who does what in a spill

Cooperation is critical in the plans laid for blowout response, with multiple organizations each filling a role, along with government agencies. The players are Containment organizations: Generally industry groups that put together the specialized organizations to develop, maintain, and deliver equipment to and fromasite. Examples: Marine Well Containment Group (MWCC), Subsea Well Response Project (SWRP), Helix Well Containment Group (HWCG) Operating companies: In the event of a spill the well operator is in charge. Many are members of multiple spill response organizations and some majors own capping stacks of their own. Examples: Shell and Noble Energy recently led spill response drills in the US Gulf of Mexico. Oilfield fire fighters: Experts in dealing with blowouts will continue to play critical services from clearing out major damage to advising on the steps needed to kill the well. Examples: Wild Well Control, Boots & Coots
Middle East and China, but both are reportedly considering theiroptions. Shell and BP, which are leading members in several capping organizations, have also built their own stacks. Shell has one for the shallow waters of the Arctic and another with a small footprint designed to fit into the cramped spaces beneath a tension leg platform. Statoil is working on a project to build a new class of Arctic oil rig that will include a capping stack designed for the extreme conditions there, Geil Ove Elkin, head of mobile offshore drilling unit new builds at Statoil, said in a presentation at the 2013 Offshore Technology Conference.
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41
WELL CONTROL IMPROVEMENTS

ORSL has built up an inventory of specialized equipment. In addition to the four capping stacks, it has dispersant tool kits stationed in Brazil and Norway that can be flown to the scene of an accident, and it is building up a supply of 5,000 m3 of liquid dispersant, about 1.3 million gallons worth. But as engineers affiliated with the capping organizations develop new methods, their goal is to re-purpose equipment used for other jobs to avoid the high cost of specialized equipment built for emergency response. Containment technology developers are like chefs adept at creating a varied menu while only using pasta, sauce, cheese, and meat. What is new is usually a remix of things now usedelsewhere. Where possible they figure out ways to shut down wells using equipment used every day for other tasks, which can make it easier to ensure the hardware and the people are ready to perform in the event of an accident. The challenge facing these organizations is the need to develop the ability to improvise solutions as needed, because past disasters are not a good predictor of future ones. Among the beneficiaries of the growing focus on blowout response preparation has been Wild Well Control. The company, which is one of the oldest and largest of the wellcontrol specialists, has added capping stacks in Aberdeen and Singapore. Its contracts around the globe include working with Mexican state oil company, Pemex, on its well-control response organization.
Workers lower a ram blowout preventer into a capping stack, giving it the power to shut down wells with pressures of up to 15,000 psi. If needed, this system built for the Subsea Well Response Project can produce up to 100,000 BOPD.
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Capping stacks are now designed to be broken down into their component parts and shipped in standard shipping containers or skids. Each has been designed to securely transport specific components. While the preferred mode of transport is by boat, Trendsetter has used trucks, and Boeing 747 cargo planes can be used, but they require long runways and heavy lift equipment found in a limited number of airports.
Anyone can build the hard assetswhat we have is people to go with it, said Ben Malina, director of international business development in the Asia-Pacific region at Wild Well. The industry is better equipped, but the cause of the next crisis may well be differenta production well could go. The one given in this business is, the circumstances are never the same.
Remixing
The centerpiece of well capping, the capping stack, is at its heart a blowout preventer (BOP). Both are heavy-duty devices capable of cutting off uncontrolled flow from a well. On the higher-performing capping stacks, a BOP is used. (Valves can be used to save weight if the pressure is less.) Capping stack designs have gotten increasingly complex. The OSRL-owned capping stacks in the four hubs created to serve SWRPs members show the influence of the engineering departments of its nine member companies. OSRL, and others, are looking for a variety of ways to use existing equipment to transport the oil from the ports of the capping stack diverter units to the surface.
One motivation for repurposing is lower costs. A specially built self-standing riser was a big piece of the more than USD 1 billion spent for the equipment inventory held by MWCC, said Marty Massey, the groups chief executive officer. Now engineers in the companies that started MWCC, as well as others with Trendsetter and Helix Energy Solutions Group, are working on doing more with equipment that is likely to be available at the scene, such as the drilling rigs normally called in. The task of getting the oil to the surface is conceptually similar to a production test, but the damage caused by a blowout complicates the situation by breaking any connection to the surface, and likely leaving a wellhead that is not able to bear the weight of a riser and the pressure-controlequipment. Several parties are working on ways to securely connect a flowline into a diverter port on a well cap and run that pipe into a nearby drilling riser that has been modified to handle the high-pressure flow that it otherwise could not, said Mario Lugo, chief executive officer of Trendsetter. For example, Trendsetters working design includes a slim tree normally used for production tests (Schlumbergers SenTree) run
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through an 18-in. BOP. It is lowered in place using pipe that is welded to enable it to handle flows as high as 15,000psi, Lugo said. They are considering another option, sending hydrocarbons up the choke and kill lines. If lines normally used for mud circulation prove to be practical, Lugo said it could eliminate the need for added pressure control equipment, such as the test tree and its control system. Similar adaptive thinking is going into SWRPs search for a better way to deploy a capping stack in shallow water over a rapidly flowing well. Rather than bringing in a crane able to handle the weight of the capping stackits 15,000-psi design weighs 130 tonsit is working on a way to do so using a buoyancy system used to install large subsea manifolds in shallow water, Strom said. When in place, its ballast tanks open up letting in water and allowing it to slowly descend on the location of a damaged wellhead. Drillships are now being equipped with the cranes and production equipment that will allow them to be first responders in the event of a spill and also be of use in well construction or testing. A Brazilian offshore drilling company, Queiroz Galvao Oil and Gas, has added features to its new drillship that will allow it to better respond to deepwater emergencies. The design includes a heave-compensated crane capableoflowering things weighing up to 135 tons in roughseas to depths of up to 3,000 m. It also has an oil production systemcapable of burning or offloading 30,000BOPD, said Gustavo Carvalho, project manager at Queiroz Galvao. The design for the ship, known as the BravaStar, goes beyond designs from shipbuilders that are now offering features to improve a drillships ability to respond to an emergency, or do heavy duty subsea construction jobs. Another remix of existing technology blurs the functional line between BOPs and the capping stack. Camerons Environmental Safe Guard system puts a single BOP on the wellhead that can shear and seal the well if required, allowing the rig to disconnect and move away.
This design offered by Trendsetter Engineering could be used to convert a drilling riser to handle a high-pressure flow of hydrocarbons from a well that has been capped after a blowout. It calls for delivering a flowline with pipeline end terminations to the well site. Those would be tied into the capping stack, and the flow base at the bottom of a drilling riser. Once in the riser hydrocarbons would flow through a test tree commonly used for production testing and up a high-pressure line to the surface. A variation of this design could be used to deliver dispersant from the surface.
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At the heart of this capping stack are two gate valves with a capacity up to 10,000 psi built for the Subsea Well Response Projects location in South Africa. Gate valves reduce the weight of the unit, which can be upgraded to 15,000psi by substituting a higher-capacity blowout preventer in the otherwise standard design.
This would reduce the size of subsea equipment considerably by moving other BOPs used for well control to a floating platformabove. Trendsetter is offering what it calls a pre-installed capping stack. The system, installed on the wellhead below all other flow-control hardware, combines a high-performance BOP with a diverter system to allow production if required by wellbore damage. It has drawn the interest of oil companies planning to explore in arctic areas seeking a quick and sure well shutdown in places where ice can block access for emergency responders.
Drilling
The young business of capping oil wells is developing routines. In the past year, the two US response groups, demonstrated that they could cap a simulated deepwater well in the Gulf ofMexico. Last summer, Shell led the first drill, attaching an MWCCcapping stack onto a simulated well in the Walker Ridge area, which is 200 miles offshorein the central US Gulf of Mexico. The exercise, which was completedin 7 days, required months of planning. Because capping had never been
tested this way before, regulators and industry people had to get together and agree on the methods and decide what success looked like, Massey said. The test required the stack to be lowered and attachedto a simulated wellhead on a piling in nearly 7,000ft of water and pressurized to up to 10,000 psi and held at that level for 20 minutes. It also required coordinated work by industry and government staff using a communication system offering live video and data over the Internet. That drill was followed by a second one in which NobleEnergy successfully attached an HWCG capping stackona simulated well in 5,000 ft of water in the US Gulf ofMexico, also in about 7 days. Given the cost of full-scale deployment drills, those are likely to be fairly rare occurrences but, in 2012, MWCC did about 20 exercises with its member companiestodemonstrate its ability to mobilize quickly. When a converted tanker is added to its fleet, special trainingwill berequired for the crew members, Massey said. The key is a dedicated, capable organization trainedtoensure that everyone knows their jobs and canperform them well, Massey said. JPT
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Drive for BOP Improvements Spurs Innovation
uyers of blowout preventers (BOPs) want new ones able to handle higher pressures and cut tougher components. Regulators are also pushing for BOPs with systems that constantly monitor them and can highlight parts likely to fail. And, for everyone, greater reliability is a toppriority. For makers of high-end BOPs, it adds up to more technology development work to do. At National Oilwell Varcos (NOV) Pressure Control Group Research and Development Center there are now 60 people plus contractors working, up from about 12 before it opened 18 months ago, said Frank Springett, pressure control group vice president of engineering at NOV. To keep up with all the product development programs, NOV applied methods previously used to increase manufacturing productivity, allowing its 13 testing stations to do 40 tests a week, up from 3 to 10 tests a month on the three stations at its previous facility. There is so much work in pressure control, we have increased our development efforts, Springett said. Much of the work relates to BOPs, but the research facility also works on risers and subsea controlsystems. The products of the rise in R&D throughout this segment of the business were seen at the 2013 Offshore
Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston. BP executives offered updates on Project 20K, which BP started in 2012 to create the next generation of equipment able to manage pressures as high as 20,000 psi and temperatures up to350F. The hardware exists today to manage those extreme conditions, but BP and other companies are working to take what is now based on cutting-edge engineering and create an expanded supply of components based on standard designs. Also at OTC, Cameron was showing how big 20K equipment can be in the form of the Evo 20,000-psi BOP, a hulking machine showing the heft needed to meet those extreme specifications. It is not Camerons first 20K machinethat work dates back a couple years but remains at the leading edge of pressure-control technologydevelopment. That imposing BOP at Camerons OTC exhibit overshadowed two innovations nearby, one looking like an oversized water heater and another a shiny metal tube the size of a small flashlight in a display case. The bigger one was a new supplementary pressure device developed by Shell and Cameron, called the SPRA for Sea Pressure Reduction Assembly, which lowers the hydrostatic pressure inside the hydraulic system that drives
Workers lift a blowout preventer made by National Oilwell Varco that will be used in a capping stack designed to stand up to 15,000 psi.
the pistons in a BOP. It creates a high-pressure differential in the hydraulic system, allowing it to create a high-pressure surge using the hydrostatic pressure of the deep ocean to assist the hydraulic system, or if needed, replace it. Inside the display case was the sensor unit for the Cameron Stack Instrumentation Package. The unit can be installed in the hydraulic system and can tell an operator what position the rams are in at the moment. It is part of a system that includes a black box that keeps a record of operator commands and sensor data, similar to a flight recorder on a plane that often plays a critical role in accidentinvestigations. The displays are an indication of two research trends: 20,000 is a magic number for a lot of things now and regulators want constant condition monitoring, said Mel Whitby, director of innovative technology and industry relations at Cameron. GE executives have seen an appetite for BOP innovation. The blind shear ram it rolled out a year ago, which GE said can cut drillpipe connections previous rams could not, was ordered by all the owners of GE BOPs with cavities able to accommodate the upgrade, said Chuck Chauviere, president of drilling for GE Oil and Gas.
We are talking about a new culture that is becoming predominant in this space, he said. GE is working on systems that take what has been learned in aviationwhere monitoring systems alert mechanics to check components that may soon failand apply it to subsea equipment data. The goal is going from a maintenance-based system to prognostication, Chauviere said. All three of these major BOP makers are working on high-pressure, high-temperature components, improved shearing, and predictive systems. But when it comes to issues causing customers the most pain, Springett said at the top of the list is downtime. That has always been a concern but the Macondo blowout changed it as well, because the standard for reliable performance has become more rigorous. While BOPs have many redundant systems, operators are more likely to stop work for repairs if a primary unit goes down and the backup takes over, and that can be costly, he said. At NOV, the push for more reliable products has led to redesigns making the devices simpler with fewer parts. A component used to stab in choke and kill lines was redesigned, reducing the number of parts from 150 down to one moving part and two seals, he said.
National Oilwell Varcos Pressure Control Group Research and Development Center was designed and is managed to increase the productivity of the work done there. To increase its productivity, test bays are organized in cells capable to performing a range of tests on multiple pieces of equipment, and on-deck areas nearby ensure equipment is set up and ready for testing when the next test bay is available.

Over time the goal is to reduce the complexity of subsea BOP stacks by creating devices so reliable there can be a reduction in the number of BOPs in a stack, which have grown taller and more complex as more units are added to ensure it does its job even if some parts go down. One goal for the industry is to use sensors to constantly observe the condition of the BOPs, and ultimately use this information to reduce downtime by observing components likely to fail and replacing them before they go bad. This change will require convincing regulators and users that data analysis can mean more dependable equipment. While regulators are quietly considering whether to mandate monitoring, the high cost of downtime offshore can make it harder to convince drilling contractors who buy BOPs that they should buy into monitoring systems. For one, installing a monitoring device inside with a data line running through the wall of the BOP on the way to the control room could run afoul of another prime goalavoiding leaks. And no one wants to shut down a project to pull a BOP based on a faulty instrument reading or analysis. Monitoring adds complexity. If it has an issue, that is a potential (BOP) stack pull, so the monitoring systems being developed must be robust and reliable, Springett said.JPT
For Further Reading:

OTC 24076 Capping Stack Demonstration in the US Gulf of Mexico by Marty Massey, Marine Well Containment Company OTC 24143 Driving Innovation Through Collaboration in the Rig Market by Geir Ove Eikill, Statoil, et al. SPE 163573 BOP TestingQualification Tests, Test Facilities and the Efficient Means of Operating Them by F.B. Springett, National Oilwell Varco, et al. SPE 163499 Subsea Cap and Contain Method for a Deepwater Tension Leg Platform by John A. Henley, Shell Exploration and Production Co., et al. SPE 128477 20 ksi BOP Stack Development by Melvyn F. Whitby, Cameron Drilling Systems
MIDDLE EAST SOUR GAS
Sour Gas Interest Grows in Middle East

Abdelghani Henni, JPT Middle East Staff Writer
Growing global demand for natural gas has pushed oil and gas companies to increase the development of sour gas fields, which contain about a third of the worlds gas reserves. The defining chemicals in sour gas are often hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and carbon dioxide (CO2), though in some cases, other sulfurous compounds such as carbonyl sulfide and mercaptans are also found. The higher concentrations in sour gas demand more intensive and more expensive developmentprocesses. In the Middle East, developing sour gas fields have become a priority of local governments because of soaring regional gas consumption. In addition to tapping the development of new sour gas fields, companies in the region are also facing the issue of increasing level of sourness in operating fields in which the levels of H2S and other contaminants that were negligible on startup have become a problem later in production.
UAE: Moving Ahead
Fareed Abdullah, senior vice president (Bab and Gas) at Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO), said the development of sour gas fields in the United Arab Emirates is a priority given the growing gas requirements for power generation, gas injection to boost oil production, and the rising petrochemicalsector. It is expected that the Shah field will produce first gas in the fourth quarter of 2014, and the importance of future sour fields such as Bab, Hail, and Shuwaihat plus others under evaluation is underlined by the current activity levels and consideration within the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) Group,
he said recently at the Sour Oil and Gas Advanced Technology conference in AbuDhabi. When the Shah field is operational in 2014, it is expected to increase gas capacity by 10.34 Bcm/yr, and all aspects of this project will serve as benchmarks for future sour gas development, hesaid. ADNOC selected Shell to participate in a 30-year joint venture to develop the Bab sour gas reservoirs in Abu Dhabi. Shell will hold a 40% equity stake with ADNOC holding 60%. The two companies are beginning commercial and technical work leading up to the development of Bab, which is 150 km southwest of Abu Dhabi. Gas from the field will supply localmarkets. During the bidding process for the USD 10 billion deal, Shell recommended exporting the sulphur while another major bid recommended reinjecting it back into the reservoir. Once developed, the Bab field will produce 500 MMcf/D to 800 MMcf/D, but expertise is required to handle the large amounts of sulfur generated from the estimated 15% H2S content of thegas. ADNOC has also sent letters to companies inviting them to submit bids for the offshore Hail sour gas field. With a CO2 content of 11%, Hail is less toxic than Shah or Bab. Because it is located in ecologically fragile shallow waters, ADNOC will proceed cautiously. Estimates suggest that Hail could produce up to 1 Bcf/D. The country has also opened up development plans for the Shuwaihat field, inviting Wintershall and OMV to conduct technical evaluations for potential development and production.
Oman: Handling Acid
In Oman, the Petroleum Development Oman (PDO) is continuing efforts on the Harwell project and other projects involving sour gas reinjection. PDO said it faces major technical challenges in developing sour gas fields, including acid gas increasing over the life of a field and its effects on the design of surface processingfacilities. Faced with the issue of disposing acid gas, PDO had three options: to inject it in gas and condensate fields; to inject it in oil fields; or to split it. The best option to take that would mitigate all the design issues is to equally share it, because if you put it in one of the fields, there is too much souring in it, and we do not want the design to be suboptimal, said Ahmed Al-Azizi, a process engineer at PDO. You are trying to minimize the extent of the material that you are injecting. In addition to the technical challenges, local regulatory specifications must be met. The main challenge was to reduce the sulfur content in the gas to less than 5 ppm and also to meet Omans SO2 emission regulations of 35 mg/Nm3, saidAl-Azizi. The combination of the regulatory requirements made the design of the gas processing and sulfur recovery facilities challenging. This required the utilization of the best-in-class solutions in order to comply with the standards, hesaid.
Saudi Arabia: Karan Up, KidanUnsure
In Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco has begun production from the offshore nonassociated sour gas field Karan, which is designed to produce 1.8 Bscf/D of dry gas
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by this year. The gas is processed through a number of trains that include facilities for gas sweetening, acid gas enrichment, gas dehydration, and supplementary propane refrigeration. The onshore facilities also include a cogeneration plant, a sulfur recovery unit with storage tank, substations, and a transmission pipeline linked to Saudi Arabias Master Gas System. Another sour gas field in Saudi Arabia is Kidan, located in the Empty Quarter. The field is operated by a joint venture between Saudi Aramco and Shell called the South Rub al-Khali Company. News reports have surfaced that Shell may pull out of the project.
Kuwait: Challenging Conditions
In Kuwait, Shell is assisting Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) with high-pressure/high-
temperature (HP/HT) sour gas fields, in which deep exploration wells present challenging drilling conditions. Among the major challenges are the hostile environment and poor rock properties with low porosity and low permeability as well as H2S content between 3.5% and 12% and CO2 content between 0% and 2.5%. In addition, KOC has encountered challenges related to heavymud. The project is of critical strategic importance for the state of Kuwait for power generation and to reduce reliance on imports, said Mohammad Ahmad Husain, chief executive officer of Equate and former deputy chairman and deputy managing director of planning and gas at KOC. Jurassic development is particularly challenging and hard to handle because
of the difficult reservoirs, deep wells, HP/HT, H2S, new facilities, toughoperations, sulfur production, high HSE standards, and close monitoring, he said. We havelimited experience and resources in this area. To develop this project, Husain said that finding a foreign partner,suchasShell, will help KOCachieve its target. The partner should have expertiseinsimilar Jurassic-type projects, he said. We also expect the partner to transfer technology and to train KOC staff, he added, stressing the importance of knowledge transfer in this sector of theindustry. The project is currently facing delays, as the Parliament is examiningthe technical services agreement.JPT
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Q&A
Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, CEO, Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company

Abdelghani Henni, JPT Middle East Staff Writer
Ali Rashid Al-Jarwan, Chief Executive Officer, Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO), the offshore arm of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), says ongoing projects in Abu Dhabi will boost the countrys production capacity to 3.5million BOPD.
What is the current production capacity of your company? What is your contribution to ADNOCs overall production? We are on the growth agenda, as is the case with all global oil and gas producing countries. As a subsidiary of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), Abu Dhabi Marine Operating Company (ADMA-OPCO) is playing a major part in the ongoing efforts to increase oil production capacity by 35% to 3.5 million BOPD by 2018 from the current 2.7 million BOPD. This production target is set to be achieved through three major subsidiaries of ADNOC: ADMA-OPCO, Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations(ADCO), and Zakum Development Company. For ADMA-OPCO, we are planning to increase production by 370,000 BOPD over current production levels of 550,000 to 600,000 BOPD. The new production target will be achieved mainly from the LowerZakum field (100,000 BOPD) with 270,000 BOPD from the Umm Lulu, Satah Al-Razboot, and Nasr fields. Added to the Umm Shaif production share, which currently stands at 275,000 BOPD, and Zakum production of 325,000 BOPD, we are targeting a total production of 1 million BOPD by 2020. Are the fields under development on track? What is the main scope of work at these fields? Phase I of the Umm Lulu and Nasr fields is to assess reservoir behavior; however, we are already now moving to full field development of Umm Lulu. We awarded two packages: The first package consists of seven towers and flowlines and a pipeline toZirku Island to join SARB. For SARB, the company is moving to a full field development to produce 100,000 BOPD, and all seven engineering and construction packages have been awarded. For the full development of SARB oil field, we have selected the construction of two artificial islands, SARB-1 and SARB-2, which are currently under constructionby the ADNOC Civil Projects Division. The location of the islands is 120 km off the northwest coast of Abu Dhabi. The onshore facilities engineering, procurement, and construction work undertaken by Hyundai covers processing, storage, and export facilities on Zirku Islandand wellhead facilities on two artificial islands. Meanwhile, the offshore work undertaken by Petrofac mainly includes around 200 km of subsea pipelines, 55 km of subsea cables, a single point mooring crude loading facility, four offshore flares, and two riser platforms, in addition to drilling utilities on the artificialislands. ADMA-OPCO has taken advantage of these major projects to develop and train young United Arab Emirates (UAE) nationals in engineering and project management. When are you expecting the startup of these projects? ADMA-OPCO is planning to commission and start production from the Umm Lulu field by the end of 2017. For the Satah Al-Razboot field, startup production is fore-
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Q&A
cast to commence by the third quarter of 2017. For this project, all the wells will be drilled from two artificial islands, which are now near completion. Meanwhile, drilling will start in the second quarter of 2014, and eventually we will commission all these facilities,including the majority of wells. When completed in April 2017, Satah Al-Razboot will be the first offshore digital intelligent oilfield development with a state-of-the-art technology in automated facility in the UAE offshore. The modular construction, energy efficiency, and environmental compliance are major cornerstones of the project design. Your company has announced a CO2 offshore program as part of the emirates project to boost ultimate crude recovery to 70% from the current 50%. What is the status of thisprogram? The 70% ultimate recovery target is the UAEs program as well as a corporate objective for ADNOC and its subsidiaries. As a subsidiary of ADNOC, we have a road map to achieve this objective through research and development (R&D), experiment in the laboratory, and pilot projects. For our offshore operations, we are conducting some R&D works on CO2 injection and, so far, results are very promising. To get more oil through the CO2 injected, we also haveanother technique called smart water. This technique aims to strip some of the unfavorable salts and make it low-salt water. For this technique, we are currently studying it from a researchpoint of view, and then again, we will move to a laboratory experiment and then a pilot project. In addition, in all of ADNOC subsidiaries, we are paying special attention and focusing on the design of enhanced oilrecovery (EOR) projects that will help in the future to move recovery from 50% to 70%. It is really a long journey, and requires a very comprehensive focus on swift efficiency and different techniques on howto extract oil, but we strongly believe that it can beachieved. Do you have a time frame to achieve this 70% target? As there are different phases, we have set a deadline for each phase. The R&D part for characterizing the behavior of CO2 from a geological reservoir engineering point of view has been completed. Now the modeling part is being conducted through a joint research program with leading US universities such as Stanford University jointly with the Petroleum Institute ofADNOC. ADMA-OPCO said that it reduced gas flaring at Zakum field to zero. Which technologies/initiatives did you apply to achieve this? Our gas processing facility project in the Zakum field was the first project within ADMA-OPCO to achieve zero flaring. With 0.4 MMscf of gas recovered and reused each day through the facilitys vapor recovery system, this sustainable project leads the way in increasing energy saving and, more important, increasing environmental protection. Overall, it is a long journey and we aim to achieve the zero flaring rate at all our operating fields. The gas utilization is above 98% and by now, it should be close to 99%. We produce more than 2 Bcf/D of associated gas, and we learned how toreduce flaring to only 4 MMcf/D, which is necessary for operating more than 36 flare stacks, which is very efficient given the volume of oil and gas we produce. What is your companys short-term strategy regarding onshore and offshore oil and gas development? Our strategy now emphasizes exploring more gas in the deep area of Khuff and pre-Khuff. This will be our focus for the next 5 years in addition to searching for more gas as well as drilling and developing new fields in general. What do you see as the biggest technological challenges currently facing the oil and gas industry? From a technological point of view, we are focusing on automation, which requires a lot of interconnection of people to strategize and to deploy technology. The preparation of the organization to digest all this automation is a big challenge,and wehave to increase the level of awareness and the level of knowledgeand capabilities within our organization to digest and utilize the automation technology of smart fields moreefficiently.JPT
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
2013 OTC Mirrors Current Industry Vitality

Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor
This years Offshore Technology Conference (OTC), held 6-9 May in Houston, reflected the offshore oil sectors health and energy, with attendance hitting a 30-year high and the event attracting top industry names from around the world. The globes largest offshore industry event attracted 104,800 people, the second highest in show history and up 17% from last year. Exhibitors represented 40 countries. Panel sessions, keynote speeches, and technical papers spanned the breadth and depth of the oil and gasindustry. At one panel session, energy ministers and national oil company senior executives shared their perspectives on how the industry should adjust to address energy challenges as well as how the role of companies and governments should change to shape the future. The panel was moderated by Gamal Hassan, chief executive officer of ADHIG and OTC Program Chairman. The panel began with Jose de Vasconcelos, Angolas Minister of Petroleum, who highlighted the connection between the need for energy and economic and social development. The industry faces many challenges in the quest to obtain energy security, which he defines as an equilibrium between supply and demand. Several challenges must be addressed to meet production needs: technologic, environmental, regulatory, and financial. Angola, he said, will maintain a permanent dialog with other producers to develop a common approach on energy and energy-related issues.
Total attendance of nearly 105,000 approached an OTC record.
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Industry consultant Dick Westney shares his views during a panel session on agile project management.
David Ramsay, Minister of Industry, Tourism, and Investment, Northwest Territories, Canada, said that the role of government is to ensure that resources are developed in a manner that brings economic development while ensuring the environment and its benefits and at the same time working with industry and regulatory agencies to achieve this. Ramsay said that there is a renewed interest in the Arctic and northern Canada with opportunities onshore and offshore. The Canadian government is building infrastructure to assist in the transportation of fuels. Petrobras Chief Executive Officer Maria das Gracas Silva Foster said that exploration is a priority, and major investments that have been sustained over several years have resulted in the development of a diversified and competitive goods and services. Petrobras has benefited from a close association with universities to facilitate research in exploration and development, and the recent major discoveries as well as monetization of these reserves are a direct result of the investments in research anduniversities.
Carlos Morales-Gil, general director of Pemex Exploration and Production, noted that increasing energy demand calls for greater focus on enhanced recovery, tighter formations, heavier oils, deeper waters, and colder climatesall amid increasing regulations. Demand for energy is increasing around the world because of growing populations and economies, he said.
Agility Needed Across Project Mix
In a panel session on agile project management, Dick Westney, founder and director of the Westney Consulting Group, said that stage-gate project management methods with heavy front-end loading (FEL) of technical and business objectives may be impeding needed project agility. The growth in project scope and complexity has pushed megaprojects from the USD 1 billion range of a few years ago into the USD 10 billion range today. Projects get bigger and they take longer, when you try to optimize the situation that are 10 years down the road, Westney said. Maybe were actually
spending a lot of time and energy thats not all that well spent. Maybe we need to be more agile. While FEL has benefited industry projects, it may have become excessive. We have a culture in the project management community of, Hey, Im going to resist change, once Ive got my scope, once Ive got my plans. Im going to pull up the drawbridge, Westney said. Part of the problem is that everybody says, I followed the process. And that becomes an excuse for whatever happens. He said that the needed level of project agility should reflect a balance between conventional best practices and completeflexibility. Eric Namtvedt, president of FloaTec, contrasted two large tension-leg platform projects that his company had worked on: Chevron Big Foot in the Gulf of Mexico and Petrobras Papa Terra in Brazils Campos basin. Big Foot has taken a very conventional approach, Namtvedt said. The operator is directly managing all phases of the project, which involved large FEL and, beginning in 2009, several years of front-end engineering, design, and con-
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
China: The Future May Be Offshore

China is regarded as a reliable customer for oil because of soaring local demand, but in recent years, it has also emerged as a global operator and provider of services. Although the country is one of the worlds largest energy consumers as a whole, it is considered a small consumer per capita and coal remains the main source of energy. In 2012, coal accounted for 70% of Chinas energy use. At a panel session during OTC, Yan Cunzhang, president of China National Petroleum Corporations (CNPC) foreign development department, said that energy consumption per capita in China will continue to rise. National companies such as CNPC will continue to play a leading role in Chinas petroleum industry, even as the country moves away from subsidizing energy-related products, he said. China is transforming its oil and gas pricing from governmentdominant to market-dominant, Yan said. China has considerable conventional and unconventional resources, but it will not fully develop its unconventionals any time soon, he said. We need to be more patient and more skilled to be able to develop our shale gas, Yan said. In another presentation, Zhang Yong Jie, president of Sinopec Oil Field Services, highlighted Chinas offshore development potential. Chinese offshore companies are capable of providing solutions for oilfield development, compared with 30 years ago, when we relied mainly on foreign contractors, he said. Chinese fabrication yards are now able to supply the full range of fabrication requirements of global energy companies. Zhang said that 15% of the worlds floatover installation projects are based in the South China Sea. The deepwater market in the South China Sea will continue to be a growth area, he said, as large investments are expected through 2015 in platforms, wells, subsea pipelines, FPSOs, onshore terminals, and offshore windmills. through international investment by opening up its deepwater fields to foreign oil companies that can drill in challengingenvironments. Petrovietnam wants to increase oil production from 110,000 BOPD to 180,000 BOPD by 2015 and to 470,000BOPD by 2025. Vietnam, a net exporter of crude oil, has a total production of 320,000 BOPD through Petrovietnam and other producing companies operating in the country. Nearly 90% of domestic production is in the southern offshore fields located on the continental shelf, leaving deepwater fields relatively untouched and open for exploration by foreign partners, Hau said. Petrovietnam also produces nearly 1 Bcf/D of natural gas and plans to increase output to 1.5 Bcf/D in the next 4to 5 years. With the abundance of natural gas found offshore, Petrovietnam has become the countrys second largest generator of electricity, supplying roughly a third of total demand using a combination of gas-powered plants, hydropower plants, and coal-fired plants. Petrovietnam plans to maintain its role as an electricity provider with five new gas plants that are in various stages of construction. The company is seeking companies outside the country to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Vietnam Aiming to Expand Production
Petrovietnam, the state-owned oil and gas company of Vietnam, is seeking international partners to help produce more oil and gas, company executives announced at OTC. Do Van Hau, president and CEO of Petrovietnam, told attendees at a topical breakfast that his countrys oil and gas demand is rising 15% annually and that the company plans to aggressively increase production
The panel session about China focused on offshore development in that country.
struction. First production is anticipated in 2014. On Papa Terra, the operator signed an engineering, procurement, and construction contract with FloaTec in 2009 to design, build, maintain, and install the tension-leg wellhead platform, which FloaTec will operate for 3 years. The
heavy-oil project is slated to start production this year. While the approaches are different, project management in both cases is cohesive, Namtvedt said. I am not going to value judge and say one is better than the other, he said. It isnt a one solution; there isnt one answer.
Agility is necessary in any case, and Namtvedt offered a number of suggestions for achieving it within the project structure. The guidelines are as follows: Adapt but accept givens. Demonstrate insight, while listening to the client. Where appropriate, innovate.
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Petrovietnams international portfolio consists of 20 projects spanning 17 countries, whose total continued production is 26,000 BOPD. The company hopes to increase the rate to 60,000 BOPD as it brings online wells in Peru, Algeria, and Russia in late 2013 through 2015. Petrovietnam also has rights to undeveloped fields in Uzbekistan andMyanmar. While the company owns rights to exploratory blocks offshore Cuba, Petrovietnam officials said there are no plans to begin drilling operations there. Petrovietnam owns five drilling rigs: three jackups, a semisubmersible, and a land rig in Algeria. The company said it is interested in acquiring more jackup rigs to expand shallow-water exploration operations.
H. Hardiono, executive expert to the chairman of the Special Task Force for Upstream Oil and Gas Business Activities (SKK Migas), delivered a keynote speech during a topical breakfast about Indonesia.
Indonesia: Changing the Game
Indonesia is changing its hydrocarbon development strategy, focusing more on developing its gas fields to maintain economic growth and meet soaring localconsumption. H. Hardiono, executive expert to the chairman of the Special Task Force for Upstream Oil and Gas Business Activities (SKK Migas), a governmental agency that manages upstream business activities under cooperation contracts, said that Indonesia is trying to shift from oil to natural gas resource exploration and development and will also shift most of its E&P activity from the western part of the country to the east. The country is also turning more of its gas production from export to the domestic market, said Hardiono, who spoke at a topical breakfast during OTC. Indonesia currently holds 19% of the total Asia Pacific gasreserves and 1.3% of the worlds gas reserves. The country produced 974,000 B/D of oil in 2012 and its gas production was 2.69 Bcf with exports at about 1.37 Bcf. Our economic operating environment has changed, so we changed our production dynamic to support the growth, Hardiono said. The country, which pulled out of OPEC in 2008, is working hard to regain its status as the biggest oil producer in southeast Asia. The country has 18 major oil and gas projects under development, of which 15 are gas developmentprojects.
In his presentation, Hardiono featured some of the major ongoing gas development projects, including the Donggi Senoro Project, which consists of two fields: the Matindok field which holds gas reserves of 1 Tcf, and is fully operated by Pertamina EP; and the Senoro field, with gas reserves of 2.1 Tcf and operated jointly by Pertamina (50%) and Medco (50%). The ongoing exploration and development activities are set to increase the reserves. We expect the project to be up and running by Q4 2014, he said. Hardiono also featured the Abadi gas field project, whichis located in the Masela Block in the Arafura Sea. Operated by Inpex Masela, the project is expected to be operational by 2016 and will feature a floating LNG unit. Meanwhile, Enis Jangkrik Project in the Makassar Strait, which has a gas reserve of 921 Bcf, is set to be operational by 2015. Speaking about offshore challenges in Indonesia, Hardiono highlighted several issues related to the scarcity of seismic survey vessel and deepwater drilling rigs, in addition to uncertainties in development concept selection, design, and technological approaches. Indonesias plan will be based on expanding exploration activities in deepwater and frontier areas, and improved regulations and incentives to attract more deepwater investments. Streamlined process, regulatory approvals, and issue resolution are also part of the streamlined plan, he said.
Build trust. Include the younger generation on the project team. Dennys Campos, manager of integrated project management (IPM) operations in Brazil at Schlumberger, discussed different IPM models used in two Brazilian offshore projects. One was an inte-
grated services model designed to reduce the number of contracts and interfaces, simplify the project structure, create synergies, and reduce nonproductive time. The other was an alignment process in which the contractor project personnel were colocated inside the clients office. Both models proved successful in execu-
tion and exemplify agility in action, Campos said. Sandeep Kuhrana, manager of development in the major projects group at Noble Energy, said that agile project management requires always anticipating the need for change. Project developers must recognize how their devel-
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
Gazprom Moving Forward on Arctic Offshore Gas

A final decision on Gazproms Shtokman project is expectedby years end, and drilling of its first production well will begin this year, the head of its Russia gas operationsaid. Both projects represent large steps in a long-term program to significantly increase Russias offshore production, said Vsevolod Cherepanov, head of the Gas, Gas Condensate, and Oil Production Department at Gazprom. The Russian Federations hydrocarbon resources development plan calls for offshore reserves to increase from 15% to 43% of total reserves by 2030. The centerpiece of the program is the oft-delayed Shtokman project. The next stepa final investment decisionis now expected by the end of the year, Cherepanov said. The Sakhalin III project, though, is moving ahead of schedule. First production was moved up because gas demand is stronger than expected. The recent nuclear disaster in Japan may result in a further change of plans. There are six gas production wells located 44 km off the coast of Sakhalin Island in Russias Far East. The current plan to move gas by pipeline to serve the Russian market may change, he said. In the wake of the tsunami that destroyed a major nuclear plant in Japan, Gazprom is considering redirecting gas from the Sakhalin project and expanding its LNG exports, Cherepanov said. Looking ahead, Russia is exploring enormous gas reserves on its continental shelf. Over the next 20 years, it expects that more than 60% of its added offshore gas production will come from the Yamal Shelf and 20% from the Barents Sea, he said.
Drilling Cost Reduction Drives Statoil Rig Design

With a goal of cutting operating costs by 20%, Statoil said it is moving ahead with a project to build a new generation of rigs designed to drill and complete wells on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The company is seeking bids to build the first two of its Category D design, which it plans to have in service by next year. The design relies on proven technology to maximize productivity using what Jon Arnt Jacobsen, Statoils chief procurement officer, described as a standardized industrial approach to cost reduction. For example, the design focuses on creating expansive deck spaces to streamline operations and reduce the risk of accidents caused by falling objects, a danger on older vessels with multiple deck levels. There will also be a focus on automated material handling equipment, separate systems for drilling fluids and completion fluids, and a design that contains spills onboard. There are still variables in the process, including two hull designs for bidders to choose from. To encourage participation, Statoil is offering long-term lease termsfrom 8 to 20 yearsand will become an equity partner ifneeded.
opment and marketing needs overlap with the needs of partners and suppliers and governments and communities, he said. Stuart Wheaton, manager of group development and operations at Tullow Oil, said that successful projects are built around clarity of purpose, performance management, people, culture and values, and decision rules.
Stakeholder Issues Present Challenge
Integrating stakeholder interests is the global challenge we all face in our industry today, said Francisco Vacas, manager of health, safety, environment, and quality at Eni US Operating Company, at a panel session on the integration of stakeholder interests in the global offshore industry.
Stakeholders play a pivotal role in the success of our activities at our contract development sites, Vacas said. For the benefit of stakeholders, he said that Eni had shut down production operations in a Nigerian swampland to help authorities combat bunkering, the practice of thieves breaking into pipelines to steal oil. In another country, Eni has built power plants to convert associated gas from oil production operations into electricity for local communities. This and other measures have enabled Eni to reduce gas flaring companywide by more than 50% between 2007 and2012. Speaking about the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM), Vacas said that Eni has made a true commitment to search for the best options to ensure safety for all our stakeholders. We believe that regulatory
compliance alone is not what our stakeholders expect from us. Doug Morris, chief of regulatory programs at the US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), discussed his agencys new regulatory approaches in the aftermath of the Macondo blowout. The regulations take a hybrid approach that combines prescriptive and performance-based requirements, and the agency is taking a lifecycle approach toward the regulation of critical equipment, he said. BSEE will rely increasingly on independent thirdparty review and verification of cuttingedge technology, Morris said. We have become more engaged in the development and review of domestic and international standards, Morris said. This will allow us to fill gaps in the current regulatory framework and also
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Subsea Oil/Water Separation Starts

Petrobras program to move oil processing to the ocean bottom has taken another step forward with the startup of the first oil/water separation unit that reinjects produced water back into the field. During OTC, the company confirmed that the unit made by FMC Technologies is running in Brazils Marlim field. Work is still needed to scale up this pilot project and other devices under evaluation that are designed to handle a significant part of the output from the aging but still prolific Marlim. Based on a Petrobras paper (OTC 24161) delivered at the conference, the goal is to have a subsea processing unit ready for field use 3 years from today. For now, the FMC system is separating the relatively heavy crude from the water, which makes up about 70% of the flow from a single well. The technology uses a pipe separator to split the oil and water at a depth of nearly 3,000 ft. Industry interest in subsea oil/water separation is strong because the process could extend the life of fields where rising water cuts increase the energy needed to lift the crude to the surface and require costly upgrades to water processing facilities. Often the cost of dealing with these problems is prohibitively high in aging fields. Oil/water separation is one of many efforts by Petrobras to expand what it can do subsea. Technical sessions at OTC also featured one program to use multiple electric submersible pumps for cost-effective multiphase pumping over long distances, and a second seeking to create a subsea gas compression system able to inject sour gas into reservoirs in water more than 8,000 ft deep. A presentation about the water/oil separation program by Fabio Alves Albuquerque, an equipment engineer at Petrobras, described the current stage of the subsea waterprocessing program as technical studies. The company is also considering alternatives, such as a unit developed by Cameron using electrostatic separation to remove the oil from the water. Petrobras will need a compact system, both in terms of the size of the unit that must be handled by offshore construction vessels and its output per pound. As depths increase, weight becomes a greater challenge because rising pressure levels demand ever-thicker steel pipe. Engineering challenges extend beyond the processing units. Albuquerque said a big problem is shearing in the
After a talk outlining Brazils ambitious program to rapidly develop Brazils pre-salt, Carlos Tadeu da CostaFraga, the exploration and production executive pre-salt manager at Petrobras, met with a long line ofattendees.
subsea production chokes in the manifold, which can homogenize the oil/water mix, making it harder to separate. A simplified explanation for how shearing can affect an oil/water mix is: It is really easy to turn heavy oil into mayonnaise, said John Byeseda, a senior principal engineer at OneSubsea, a joint venture recently formed between Schlumberger and Cameron. On its first test, Petrobras avoided a choke by running the flow from a single well through the FMC unit. Its goal is a unit processing a stream of oil from multiple wells that would need to flow through a manifold. On Petrobras list of technology gaps to fill is a valve design that does not cause shearing. It has tested two alternatives, including one developed in Brazil, which the OTC paper said showed better performance compared withconventional alternatives. When Albuquerque was asked by an FMC representative whether his company unit was working well, the Petrobras engineer said, In my opinion, the contribution of the choke to shearing isenormous.
to determine if additional regulations are needed. The agency is also encouraging the development and improvement of offshore safety culture in outer continental shelf operations, he said. Regulations issued since Macondo include drilling safety rules in 2010
and 2013, and safety and environmental management system (SEMS) rules in 2010 and 2013 (SEMS II). BSEE also issued the first requirements on production safety systems issued since 1988 and will issue a major new rule on blowout preven-
ters and well control later this year, Morris said. Charlie Williams, executive director of the Center for Offshore Safety, discussed the SEMS and SEMS II rules. The rules work as a nontraditional, performance-focused tool for integrating
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
Saudi Aramco Discusses New Technology Strategy

Abdelghani Henni, JPT Middle East Writer
Saudi Aramco plans to become an enabler and creator of new technology by increasing its research funding fivefold by 2020, a Saudi Aramco executive said at OTC. The company is undergoing a strategic corporate transformation, covering every function including major new business areas, as part of its effort to become a fully integrated energy company, Khaled Al-Buraik, vice president of petroleum engineering and development at Saudi Aramco, said at a topical luncheon. The new strategy is consistent with Saudi Aramcos development plans for its oil and gas fields, because it will allow the company to maximize reservoir performance and add further value to its integrated energy value chain, he said. The same far-reaching time horizon applies to our investments in both talent and technology. We are emphasizing high-impact technologies that typically involvelong-range strategies. We are pursuing research anddevelopment to bring about breakthrough achievements, not simple or merely incremental enhancements, he said. Al-Buraik revealed that his companys upstream research and development roadmap includes the characteristic subsurface technology domains of the geosciencesgeophysics and geologyproduction and reservoir engineering, and computational modeling. Our focal points of research were carefully selected through a rigorous process based on the greatest potential business impact addressing our highest priorities, he said. Through its new strategy, Saudi Aramco will be striving to find answers to key questions that are crucial to its growth. Can we acquire four times the data yet reduce acquisition time and cost by 50%? Can we achieve 5-ft seismic resolution at 15,000 ft depth? These are the types of questions we are trying to find answers to, he said. In reservoir engineering, Saudi Aramcos areas of focus include enhanced oil recovery, pore-scale physics, waterflooding using modified water or smart water, and unconventional resources. The company is trying to increase recoveries by 15% to 20% and more accurately increase reservoir data. Saudi Aramco is also continuing the development of its reservoir nanoparticle program. The program has two goals. The first is for the injected particles to help us characterize and describe reservoirs better. The second is to increase recovery, Al-Buraik said. We have already conducted a major field test of our in-house manufactured nanoparticles. This year, we will conduct two more major field tests. One will focus on enhancing reservoir characterization, the other on recovery. As for the computational modeling technology, Saudi Aramco has its own simulator, GigaPOWERS, which was fully developed in-house. Our research focus areas under
Khaled Al-Buraik, vice president Petroleum Engineering & Development at Saudi Aramco, talks about the companys technology development initiatives, including a program to set up an international network of research and development centers.
computational modeling include reservoir simulation, basin modeling and simulation, massive visualization, and modeling of unconventional resources, he said. Regarding unconventional resources, Al-Buraik said that Saudi Aramco is focusing on three major regions. In the northwest, the search is characterized by shale at shallow depths. In the east, excellent tight gas opportunities have been identified for appraisal, and the company could lower costs by using its existing infrastructure. In the southeast, prospects are economically attractive given the existing petroleum system. Al-Buraik said that his company knows that its success with unconventional resources will depend on an integrated solution involving the geosciences andengineering. Saudi Aramco believes that achieving its research and technology goals will require some of the best talent worldwide, he said. Therefore, we are establishing upstream global research centers in strategic locations, while maintaining core research in Dhahran, Al-Buraik said. The goal of these centers is to use international scientific expertise, allow the company better access to technology, and to strengthen collaboration with the industry and academia. Al-Buraik said Saudi Aramcos largest international research center will be in located in Houston, with a second North American center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focusing on computational modeling and nanotechnology research. Both of these centers will be operational by the third quarter of this year, he added.
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Panelist Erik Milito of the American Petroleum Institute gives a presentation on integrating stakeholder interests in the offshoreindustry.
Gerald Schotman, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Shell, addresses a panel session on value creation through global technology.
and managing offshore operations to enhance safety by reducing the frequency and severity of accidents. This is really process safety at another level, because this is process safety where the process is actually managing your whole business, he said. The offshore industry uses a large number of contractors, by some estimates more than 5,000 in the GOM alone, Williams said. Since Macondo, all of our stakeholders became quite interested in how we manage the relationship between operators and contractors, he said. As a result of the SEMS rules, operators must now assure the government that all of their contractors have a good safety management vehicle and that contractor staff is trained and capable of performing its assigned work, Williams said. Erik Milito, director of upstream and industry operations at the American Petroleum Institute (API), said that the government is a stakeholder in various technical programs of the Center for Offshore Safety, the International Association of Drilling Contractors, and the APIincluding APIs standardization and certification programs. At the same time, he noted that these organizations
are stakeholders in the governments safety initiatives. Its really critical and beneficial for the government and industry to work together, he said. George Nowack, project manager for the German sector of the Nord Stream pipeline, a line crossing the Baltic Sea that links Russian natural gas supplies to Germany, discussed Nord Streams management of stakeholder issues during line construction. Economic, environmental, and political opposition to the project emerged from a number of sources across Europe. Nowack said that meticulous regulatory compliance, swift communication response, open community dialogue, and the efforts of an experienced, multidisciplinary management team defused opposition to allow project completion and startup in late 2012.
Global Technology Delivers Value
As the oil and gas industry seeks to meet future energy demand, a number of the technologies that will drive that advance may come from other industries. There is a tremendous array of technologies across all the industries that we support that can enable us to do really great things inside the oil and gas industry,
said Mark Little, chief technology officer and senior vice president at General Electric, about technology developed in his company within other industrial sectors. Little made his remarks in a panel session on value creation through globaltechnology. Advances in cancer imaging could bring improvements in oil and gas seismic exploration and facility inspection technologies, he said. Advanced manufacturing technologies enable prototypes to be built in the blink of an eye, Little said, which greatly speeds the development of new materials and products for industrial applications while significantly lowering costs. Tool development is among the areas that could strongly benefit, he said. The polymer-carbon composite material from which the blades on the latest jet aircraft engines are built could be used to design new composite risers for offshore oil and gas facilities, Little said. Nanotechnology combined with advanced manufacturing has enabled surface coatings to be developed with corrosion- and erosion-resistance thats really remarkable, he said. High-performance computing is enabling modelers of components and
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
Technology Standardization Remains Elusive

There are strong arguments for standardization when developing a new technology. The hard part is getting competitors in the oil industry to agree on the standard to apply when faced with a new challenge in which there is no accepted solution. An OTC panel discussion put together by Deepstar, an industry-backed organization that fosters innovative ways to overcome barriers to deepwater developments, kept coming back to the need for greater cooperation when faced with new challenges. The profession has to resist the entropic trend toward complexity increase, said Alain Goulois, vice president of reservoir development at Total. We know if we do something over and over that you get good at something and costs go down, said John Gremp, chairman and CEO of FMC Technologies. More standards will allow the industry to move toward zero defects, said Stephen Thurston, vice president of deepwater exploration at Chevron. I do not believe you cannot have standardization and innovation, said Solange Guedes, an executive manager at Petrobras. If we cannot agree on standards, we will be deciding on everything the first time every time, said Kevin Kennelley, vice president of technology at BP Global Projects. The topic is a constant concern for Kennelley, who is heading an initiative at BP called Project 20K to develop, test, and certify the next generation of equipment for dealing with high-pressure (from 15,000 to 20,000 psi), high-temperature (up to 350F) wells. The project is based on the high-pressure/high-temperature challenges presented by three areas around the globe, including the enormous reserves in the US Gulf of Mexico trend known to some companies as the Lower Tertiary, and to others as thePaleogene. That semantic divide is an indication of the difficulties involved in getting exploration and production experts to agree on standard approaches when confronted by a frontier presenting a generation of problems, such as the Lower Tertiary, where wells in waters approaching 10,000ft are drilled into formations where the pressures are extremely high but the permeability is relatively low. In the Lower Tertiary, the list of equipment that will need to be upgraded is long, from towering stacks of blowout preventers down to the gaskets in the many connections that need to stand up to the increased pressure. Kennelley is working to simplify the transition by getting the many experts involved to agree on some standards. When I talk about the value of standardization to people, they say, I agree with you, and you should use mine, he said. For Project 20K, BP is working with Maersk and KBR on engineering studies to guide work through the end of the
Solange Guedes, an executive manager at Petrobras, said setting design standards for subsea components used offshore Brazil has not hindered innovation.
systems to see levels of detail we could just not see before, reducing the modeling and experimentation time needed to develop new components and systems, Little said. Advances in software and analytics applied to huge networks of operating equipment data are enabling the devel-
opment of diagnostic and prognostic tools that can detect process disruptions before they happen and allow operators to improve their planning of how equipment is used, Little said. Gerald Schotman, executive vice president of innovation and R&D and chief technology officer at Shell, dis-
cussed a number of new technologies the company is using. The Bully Rig, designed by Shell and Noble, is able to reduce drilling time and enhance safe operations on ultradeepwater wells, he said. Shell is also working with Transocean to develop its seventh-generation offshore drillships, he said.
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Stephen Thurston of Chevron, second from right, discusses the value of industry collaboration on technology development with panelists on the panel presented by DeepStar. The panelists, from left, are: Alain Goulois, Total; John Gremp, FMC Technologies; Kevin Kennelley, BP; Thurston; and Occo Roelofsen, McKinsey & Co.
decade, he said. The hope is that some of those products and approaches will be used industrywide. Collaboration with competing peers can be difficult it can be easier to work through suppliers, Kennelly said. Those service companies are also typically the biggest spenders on new technology development. ConocoPhillips is rebuilding its deepwater development portfolio using money raised by asset sales. As it searches the globe for deepwater discoveries, it is already trying to anticipate what tools it will need to effectively explore them and shorten the time it takes to begin producing them. By the time you know what you are going to do, it is too late to decide how to do it, said Ram Chenoy, chief technology officer at ConocoPhillips. Shortening the gap between discovery and production has become an increasingly important consideration for host countries when deciding which bidders will be granted explorationblocks. An example of anticipating needs was the collaboration between Chevron and Halliburton that led to an improved
version of a completion tool designed to speed the job of fracturing and gravel packing deep wells in the Lower Tertiary. Thurston said the work began about 5 years agobecause Chevron anticipated that completing formations with multiple producing zones within a 1,000ft segment would be time consuming using techniques available at that time. A recent study showed that Chevron saved an average of 18 days per well, or about USD18million per well based on typical rig rates, on three well completions using Halliburtons Enhanced Single-Trip Multizone System. As new tools come along, they need to be tested to see if they can withstand extreme conditions. The current industry standard requires new tools or equipment to pass multiple tests by companies that often impose different performance criteria. And component testing may fail to answer the big question: What happens when components are assembled? When you put things together into a system, they can work in surprising ways, said Kennelley, so its important to qualify and test the systems.
The company is planning to use subsea boosting and compression at the Ormen Lange project offshore Norway, Schotman said, which will mark the industrys first use of subsea compression. To enhance rig safety, Shell has developed an emergency separation tool placed in the riser above the blowout
preventer (BOP), Schotman said. When activated, the tool severs in milliseconds any tubing that might be located across the BOP, with minimal deformation. The equipment drops into the well and clears the BOP sealing rams, which becomes a secondary mechanism to ensure BOP closure. Shell also has an insert device that is
placed below the BOP, he said. The device can collapse the tubing, while maintaining casing integrity, to stop or substantially reduce an uncontrolled well flow, should the BOP fail. Schotman also discussed the advanced life of field seismic that Shell is using at its Parque das Conchas pro-
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CONFERENCE REVIEW
Pluto Ramps Up LNG Down Under

Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor
Woodside Energy highlighted the challenges of its flagship Pluto project, a large liquefied natural gas (LNG) development that started production last year offshore northwest Australia. We brought together local and international expertise to face these challenges, and it was because of their hard work and innovation that we were actually able to overcome these challenges, said Feisal Ahmed, executive vice president of technology at Woodside, at an OTC topical breakfast. The AUD 15 billion greenfield project centers on the 2005 Pluto gas discovery and integrates offshore, subsea, and onshore components. The field lies 190 km northwest of Karratha, Western Australia, and 800 km north of Perth. Subsequently, Woodside discovered the nearby Xena field and will develop it as a tie-in to the Pluto facility in the future. Together, the fields hold a 5 Tcf gas resource. The key here is first LNG production in 2012, Ahmed said, referring to Pluto. I dont think I have seen anything that has been even close to the time frame of this project. Normally, they end up being in the high teens, even 20 or 30years from discovery to final production. Pluto comprises five big-bore subsea wells in approximately 800 m of water that produce between 720MMcf/D and 800 MMcf/D of gas. Dual 20-in. pipelines, tied back 27 km over a steeply rising escarpment, connect the wells to a riser platform in 85 m of water. The platform is normally unstaffed. A 36-in. production pipeline tied back 180 km, along with a continuous-injection MEG line to combat hydrates over the long tieback, connect the platform with an onshore LNG processing train on the Burrup Peninsula. The project has four dedicated LNG transport vessels to carry shipments to customers and recently delivered its 50th sales cargo, Ahmed said. A major challenge for LNG projects is project expense, particularly in the high-cost Australian construction market. Among the ways that Woodside managed the cost was by drilling large wellbores to accommodate 95/8-in. production tubing. While a comparable facility might have 15 or 20 wells, Ahmed said, Pluto has five wells and needs only three producers to serve the plant. Weve got a couple of
Feisal Ahmed, executive vice president of technology at Woodside Energy, discusses the challenges his company faced in developing the Pluto liquefied natural gas project offshore northwest Australia.
insurance wells out there because it is an LNG facility that needs constant production to deliver the plateau volumes, he said. In addition, Woodside achieved large savings by building the plant with prefabricated megamodules, making Pluto the worlds first LNG facility to do so. Very unusual seabed conditions created challenges for building pipelines and the platform foundation, which Woodside addressed by a high level of front-end engineering to select the best pipeline routes and to minimize stabilization issues, Ahmed said. The project also worked successfully with government regulators to protect and ensure minimal impact on indigenous rock art along the Dampier Archipelago. When Pluto received its final investment decision (FID) in 2007, Australias only LNG facility was the huge Woodsideoperated Northwest Shelf project, which has produced since the 1980s. There were no new LNG projects slated. Today, seven projects involving 13 processing trains, including Pluto, have received FID, Ahmed said.
duction complex offshore Brazil and instantaneous 4D seismic, a quick, low-cost method for observing fast reservoirchanges. David Eyton, group head of research and technology at BP, discussed company research and newly developed technology. BPs Well Advisor uses novel sensors and wired pipe to integrate data
with predictive software tools and processes to help operators improve realtime decision making. The company is teaming with university researchers to develop hydrogen-resistant steel to withstand hydrogen embrittlement in deepwater pipe. Another research initiative is in bioscience to develop biological methods of preventing biosour-
ing, the buildup of hydrogen sulfide, inreservoirs.
Megaprojects Bring Broad Impact
A panel session on megaprojects stressed the importance of the industry handling these projects skillfully and striving for improvement in execution.
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Clive Vaughan, chief executive officer for upstream at Foster Wheeler, said that megaprojects have been defined as projects costing more than USD 1 billion. Its probably greater than that today with inflation, he said. These projects can have a significant impact on communities, countries, environments, and the public. They typically have a significant number of stakeholders. The stakeholder issues, Vaughan said, add challenges of complexity that go beyond project size. Looking across industries, Vaughan said that more than 80% of megaprojects fail to deliver on time and within budget. The sheer size and the timelines involved differentiate megaprojects from others, and health, environmental, and safety issues should always be a top priority, he said. Megaproject risks can be similar to other projects, but what is different is the challenges, Vaughan said. A 10% overrun on a USD 100 million project is significantly different than the impact of the same percentage on a USD 1 billion project. Recruiting is critical to success, and with the industry workforce stretched, it is a challenge. Vaughan closed the session by asking a question, which he did not answer: Are some projects too big, so that they produce diseconomies of scale? Rob Kretzers, executive vice president of projects and technology at Shell, said that the resources being developed in megaprojects are often remote, possess high levels of H2S and CO2, and lie in highpressure, high-temperaturereservoirs. Notwithstanding the industrys successes with megaprojects, Kretzers said he was concerned with the quality of our work, a problem that was not prevalent 10 to 20 years ago. We have leaking wells and pressurized equipment, he said, and it is often detected only as project ramp up or after startup. We need to fix that very quickly, he said. The industry should recognize the same need for quality as we have for safety. Kretzers also discussed nontechnical project risks. In Africa, the local content requirements are ever growing, and
Clive Vaughan (center), chief executive officer for upstream at Foster Wheeler, answers an audience question at a panel session on megaprojects. Seated beside him are panelist Lee Tillman (left) of ExxonMobil and moderator Bob Fryklund of IHS.
rightfully so, he said. To meet this challenge, Kretzers recommended that we as an industry work more jointly together than as individual contractors and international oil companies. Lee Tillman, vice president of engineering at ExxonMobil Development Company, discussed Arctic oil and gas. There is no doubt that the Arctic is a poster child for megaprojects, he said. But our industry is confronted with one very fundamental question. Can we explore, develop, and produce in the Arctic responsibly, ensuring high levels of safety, environmental standards, as well as integrity? From the ExxonMobil perspective, our answer is an emphatic yes. And thats based on essentially 90 years of experience in the Arctic. Luc Messier, senior vice president of projects, supply chain, and aviation at ConocoPhillips, spoke about his companys major projects, including the Canadian oil sands and the Curtis Island LNG development in Australia. The successful projects always have good engineering up front, Messier said. Good relations and collaboration with major project contractors, he said, is also a key
element. ConocoPhillips is reducing the cost of the Australian and Canadian projects through modularizing the construction. Messier also noted the potential of manufacturing approaches to the development of major North American shaleprojects. Carlos Tadeu da Costa Fraga, an executive manager at Petrobras, said, Megaprojects are mega because they have mega investment. . They are always complexsometimes technically complex, sometimes complex because of other reasons. But in our opinion, more important than that, they are mega because they have much, much higher stakeholder expectations. When industry megaprojects fail to make their final schedules, Fraga said, almost 80% of the time, it is because of stakeholder- relatedissues. JPT
JPT staff members Stephen Rassenfoss, Abdelghani Henni, Robin Beckwith, Trent Jacobs, Mika Stepankiw, and John Donnelly contributed to this report.
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MANAGEMENT
Unplanned Downtime in the Gulf of Mexico: A Significant Production Loss Management Opportunity for Producers
Richard M. Tucker, Tom Straub, and Shu Feng, Ziff Energy Group
An analysis of 190 US Gulf of Mexico (GOM) producing assets in Ziff Energys field level operations database reveals significant opportunities for improving operating efficiency by reducing downtime. Total (planned and unplanned) production efficiency (PE) of these assets was found to be 88%. Of the 12% production loss relative to potential (no downtime) production, 8% was a result of unplanned downtime, while 4% was either planned (i.e., accounted for in the companys annual budgets) or a result of external causes, such as weather. This result indicates significant potential exists to increase production by reducing the frequency and duration of unplanned downtime(Fig. 1).
Fig. 1Production efficiency.
Economics of Improved Production Efficiency
The exploration and production (E&P) sector is historically a 10% to 15% rate of return business, which means that the last 10% to 15% of production is profit. If an operator could eliminate or reduce half of the 8% unplanned production loss, it could potentially double the rate of return from its assets. Because production loss management often can be done at small expense or investment, no other activity has the same potential to positively affect the bottom line. In short, production loss management is the best margin lever in the E&Pbusiness. Based on 5-year (20082012) average of GOM production of 1.39 millionB/D of oil and 5,932 MMcf/D of gas, the additional annual production from recovery of all unplanned losses in the GOM could reach 102,000 B/D of oil and 582 MMcf/D of gas respectively (Fig. 2). The annual value of the recovered oil
alone (without considering gas) would exceed USD 3 billion/yr. Deepwater represents almost 80% of unplanned oil losses. Shelf gas, which accounts for more than half of total gas produced in the GOM, accounts for two-thirds of the unplanned gas losses.
Uptime Reliability Metrics
is included in the annual budget. It should be noted that improvements in planned downtime are possible if the duration and frequency of planned events can be reduced resulting in improvedproductionefficiency.
Ziff Energy has defined a family of metrics to assess uptime reliability. To determine production loss, an estimate of production capacity called predicted production capacity (PPC) can be used. Total production loss is the volumes of lost production due to all reasons. The total loss is derived by comparing actual annual production with PPC and consists of the following components: Planned loss: Production loss because of scheduled downtimefor repairs and maintenance or new well/ facilitytie-ins. An event is planned only when it
Fig. 2Unplanned production loss volumes (MBOE/d).
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MANAGEMENT
is the average time between unplanned downtime measured in days. Mean time to recover (MTTR) is the average time measured in days for production to return to prior levels. Downtime caused by external factors, such as midstream downtime, market limitations, and weather is excluded from MTBI and MTTRcalculations. Fig. 3 shows MTBI and MTTR for various types of GOM assets. The weighted average MTBI for all the studied GOM assets was about 11 days; however, shelf oil assets and deepwater subsea tiebacks had more frequent downtime than other types. Deep floating assets recover in about the same as shelf assets, (i.e. about 2 days). Total production efficiency is actual production as a percent PPC for a year. Unplanned production efficiency, the single most important measure for operators, is the percentage achieved when planned and external downtime are disregarded. Two other metrics measure the frequency and duration of downtime. Mean time between incidents (MTBI)
Fig. 3Production efficiency indicators.
Unplanned loss: Production lossbecause of equipment/ facilityfailures or operationalupsets. External loss: Production loss caused by external reasons, which are further broken downinto midstream downtime,market limitations, and weatherrestrictions.
Complexity and ProductionLosses
High
We have found unplanned production losses are generally related to the size and complexity of offshore deepwater production facilities. Ziff Energy has developed a complexity factor (CF) to analyze the impact of complexity on production uptime reliability. Formed by the scores of a number of factors, the CF index reflects various aspects of a facilitys size and processes. The factors include processing capacity, production train counts, counts of major equipment (e.g., generators and compressors), and other elements. As can be seen from Fig. 4, unplanned production losses of deepwater facilities are significantly correlated with their CFs. Notice, however, that several of the more complex deepwater facilities achieved unplanned losses well below those of equally or more complex facilities. This would indicate their management of production losses is better than their peers.
Complexity Factor
Loss MBOE/D
Low F10 F11 F12 F13 F14 F15 F16 F17 F18 F19 F20 F21 F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 F6 F7 F8 F9
Production Loss Management
Unplanned Losses
Complexity Factor
Fig. 4Unplanned production losses of deepwater facilities are significantly correlated with their complexity factors.
Leading operators have implemented production loss management practices and programs designed to identify and eliminate systemic causes of downtime, and suboptimum production performance. Production loss management encompasses a variety of specific
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tasks and disciplines that identify and address underlying problems and solutions to production shortfalls. These same efforts often lead to insights that not only increase production, but also uncover opportunities to reduce expenses. Other times, increased expenditures are needed to reduce downtime. Production loss management processes and practices involve root cause failure analysis, production budgeting, and loss measurement and reporting, as well as monitoring of daily production, deferrals, losses, and causes ofdowntime. Benchmarking of similar types of operations allows operators to quantify their unrealized production potential and thereby assists with establishing achievable and stretch targets for performance improvement. Operators should formulate an action plan for reducing production lost to unplanned
down time with a business case to gain organizational support for implementing the plan. Operators should also embed the essential production loss management elements, process-
es, and disciplines throughout their organization through training, coaching, and bringing proven techniques andtools to blend into the clients existingprocesses. JPT
Richard M. Tucker is vice president of marketing and client relations at Ziff Energy and has more than 35 years of experience providing consulting services to the energy industry, both upstream and downstream. Previously, he was a vice president at Petroleum Information Corporation (now IHS Energy), responsible for managing a number of commercial energy databases used by natural gas producers, pipelines, marketers, and local distribution utilities. He earned a degree in economics from Western Maryland College (now McDanielCollege). Tom Straub, SPE, is an executive associate at Ziff Energy and has more than 30 years of upstream operations experience with major oil companies. He has held management responsibilities throughout North America and internationally, both onshore and offshore. He earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Nebraska. Shuqiang Feng is a project manager at Ziff Energy specializing in upstream oil and gas field development and the oilfield service market. Feng earned an MSc degree in petroleum mechanical engineering from the University of Petroleum, China, and an MBA in finance from Tulane University.
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TECHNOLOGY
Martin Crick, SPE, is chief petroleum engineer with Tullow Oil, responsible for all aspects of reservoir and production engineering in the group worldwide. Currently, he is on assignment in Ghana as subsurface manager of the Jubilee field. Previously a principal reservoir engineer with Schlumberger, Crick was responsible for the design of the reservoir-engineering features in Petrel and, most recently, for a review of well-test-interpretation workflows within Schlumberger. His experience over 25 years in the industry has focused on reservoir engineering, especially simulation in support of fielddevelopment planning. Crick holds a BS degree in physics from the University ofBristol. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 159274 A Novel Simulation-Model Review Process by M.R. Palke, Ryder Scott Company, et al. SPE 159584 Dual-Continuum Modeling of Shale and Tight Gas Reservoirs by Prince N. Azom, The University of Texas at Austin, et al. SPE 162380 Application of Streamline Simulation to Reservoir Management: Management of WAG-Injection Optimization by Mohamed Bouaouaja, Schlumberger, et al. SPE 162045 Stochastic Uncertainty Analysis in Compositional Simulation for Giant-Gas/Condensate-Field ReservoirPerformance Prediction by E. Descubes, Schlumberger, et al. SPE 164142 Uncertainty-Quantification Workflow for Mature Oil Fields: Combining Experimental-Design Techniques and Different Response-Surface Models by Syed Jawwad Ahmed, ADNOC, et al.
RESERVOIR SIMULATION
Looking back through previous editions of this article, I note that, in 2011, I wrote, theres a growing tendency in some quarters to use very simple models. That may be true, but there is also a growing tendency among vendors to offer models with more and more features. That is how they stay in business, after all, and many of the new features solve problems we have struggled with for years. The trouble, however, is sometimes a feeling that all those features have to be used at the same time. Lets remind ourselves that a compositional model will never have as many components as there are distinct molecules in the reservoir fluid. The most sophisticated coupled pipeline simulator is still only an approximation of the complexity of fluid flow in pipes. Even the most advanced geomechanics simulator has a very coarse model of the over-, under- and sideburdens, and a crude approximation of often unknown boundary conditions. Building an exact model of the reservoir and production system is like seeking the end of the rainbow. Piling on complex features can easily mask critical issues. We should always strive to use the simplest model that captures the most important physics affecting the decision we are trying to make. And judging what is the most important physics is the responsibility of the reservoir engineer, not the software and not the software vendor. A simulation model is only a model. And our job is to produce the reservoir, not themodel.JPT
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Massively Parallel Simulation of Oceanic-Gas-Hydrate Production

arge volumes of gas can be produced at high rates with conventional horizontal- or verticalwell configurations for long periods of time from some methanehydrate accumulations by means of depressurization-induced dissociation. However, most assessments of hydrate production use simplified or reducedscale 3D or 2D production simulations. This study used a message-passinginterface parallel code to make the first field-scale assessment of a large deep-ocean hydrate reservoir. Systems of up to 2.5 million gridblocks, running on thousands of supercomputing nodes, were required to simulate such a large system at the highest level of detail. The simulations begin to reveal the challenges inherent in producing from deep relatively cold systems with extensive water-bearing channels and connectivity to large aquifers. The main difficulties are water production and achieving depressurization.
X-Ax is
(10 3 )
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Fig. 1Placement of the horizontal well and surrounding cylindrical mesh. Hydrate-bearing sediments are shown as brown volumes.
Introduction
Gas hydrates are solid crystalline compounds in which gas molecules occupy the lattices of ice-like crystal structures called hosts. Gas hydrates occur in the permafrost and in deep-ocean sediments, where the necessary conditions of low temperature and high pressure exist for their formation and stability. Most naturally occurring gas hydrates
contain methane in abundance. Not all hydrates are desirable targets for production. Of the three possible methods of hydrate dissociation for gas productiondepressurization, thermal stimulation, and use of inhibitorsdepressurization appears to be the most efficient. Recent studies have indicated that, under certain conditions, gas can be produced from natural hydrate deposits at high rates over long periods of time by use of conventional technology. Earlier work
focused on production from vertical wells, but more-recent studies show that horizontal wells are more productive and are easier to manage, if the technology isavailable.
Study
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper IPTC 17026, Massively Parallel Simulation of Production From OceanicGas-Hydrate Deposits, by Matthew T. Reagan, SPE, George J. Moridis, SPE, Craig M. Freeman, SPE, Katie L. Boyle, and Noel D. Keen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, prepared for the 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Beijing, 2628 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference. Reproduced bypermission.
The objective of this study was to use real geophysical data at the field scale to simulate a realistic 3D gas-hydrate reservoir. Previous studies focused on simple 2D modeling, 2D modeling with artificial heterogeneity, or extremely simplified (coarse-scale) 3D modeling. Through collaboration, Statoil provided real data on the geometry and geology of a known oceanic-hydrate system. The deposit is a layered system, approximately 75.5 km and 350 m thick. The hydrate is arranged in a series of high-permeability channels bounded by slightly-lower-permeability levees. The system is probably impermeable at the top and bottom boundaries,
For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.
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Fig. 3Cumulative methane release (VR), cumulative methane production (VP), and total WGR (right axis) for the horizontal-well scenario.
but may connect to an aquifer along the xz face. Constructing 3D volume meshes for systems of this scale is well beyond the means of standard routines. To build a horizontal-well system, custom tools for manipulating the raw list of element centroids and creating new mesh- element configurations (i.e., cylinders) were combined with a meshing toolkit to create a new meshing tool that is capable of generating a full 3D- Voronoi mesh for any valid configuration of cell centers. The system keeps track of all relevant cell and interface properties and makes them available for manipulation. This feature enabled creating highly flexible and dynamically refined meshes. The domain was trimmed such that regions of the mesh that do not represent permeable reservoir rocks were removed to promote computational efficiency. All subsequent meshing begins with this reduced mesh, which contains 1,663,900elements. For the horizontal well, the geophysical data were analyzed to find the longest continuous horizontal layers of hydrate that are more than 60 m thick. A region of roughly 65-m thickness was found near the core of the system, accomodating a horizontal well 1900 m in length, with no intersection with nonhydrate-bearing channels or le
vees. A cylindrical mesh was constructed around the well to a radius of 250 m, and this radial mesh was inserted into the rectilinear mesh derived from the geophysical data (Fig. 1). Element properties (i.e., hydrate saturation) were interpolated from the rectilinear data onto the new mixed mesh. The resulting mesh contained 2,264,000 elements, requiring the simultaneous solution of more than 9,000,000 equations. The new meshing tool also provides geometric information required for ongoing research into the visualization of Voronoi meshes and the data sets generated by simulations of such unstructured systems. This visualization involves tessellation of the unstructured finitevolume meshes, creation of visualization meshes of 10 million to 100 million volume elements, and then rendering these tessellated volumes into 3D images by use of a visualization cluster. This visualization problem has been difficult for reservoir simulators (because most visualization tools have strict data-set-size limits or are limited to meshes of certain geometries), and these tools are helping to create new possibilities for visualizing large-scale problems. First, the system was brought to hydrostatic equilibrium at the known depth and then to thermal equilibrium by use of
the known geothermal gradient. Because of the size and extent of the system, this process consumed significant computing time. Hydrate was added to the system according to the distribution derived from the geophysical data. The system then was allowed to reach full thermal, hydrological, and chemical equilibrium at stated conditions before any simulations were performed.
Results
Preliminary simulation work by Statoil, using commercial software with gas- hydrate add-ons, suggested that the system could be productive if vertical wells were drilled into the lower part of the formation near areas of high hydrate saturation. However, these simulations used a 2D slice of the full system, and the initial configuration of the reservoir assumed that significant free gas existed. For Class-2 and Class-3 hydrate deposits, it has been demonstrated that properly placed horizontal wells are a moreeffective production strategy. Therefore, production from the horizontal well was simulated, as shown in Fig. 1. Because of the nature of the Voronoi grid (i.e., on average, more connections per element than a rectilinear grid), the computational requirements for this simulation were approximately an order of magni-
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WGR, kg/m3
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tude greater than anything previously attempted with this parallel code. Initial equilibration was performed with a 220-processor in-house cluster, but production was scaled up to the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center Hopper supercomputer for multiday runs using 960 and 1,920 processors. At the time this paper was written, the authors had been able to simulate 135 days of production time, with simulations ongoing. Evolution of the rate of hydrate dissociation/methane release and the rate of methane production at the well is shown in Fig. 2. Release exceeds production from the beginning, which is necessary to generate free gas in the reservoir for production later. Water production is large but steady; how ever, after less than 5 months of production, both release and production ceased to increase with time, while water production remained approximately constant. This trend suggests that effective depressurization is hindered by the inflow of large quantities of water from the surrounding formation. Because economically viable production rates for offshore wells must be in the millions of cubic feet per day, this system is evolving towardunsustainability. Cumulative quantities of methane, released and produced, are shown in Fig. 3. More significant, however, is the water/gas ratio (WGR), shown in green. While the WGR drops rapidly as production proceeds, the curve is heading toward asymptotic behavior at values of 700 to 800 kg/m3, which suggests that methane transport occurs entirely in the aqueous phase, and even then, the quantity of water produced greatly exceeds the quantity of water needed to dissolve and transport the methane observed at the well. Therefore, it is likely that the hydrate zone around the well has been
perforated by dissociation, connecting the well to the massive reservoir of mobile water surrounding the hydrate layers and hindering depressurization after a few months ofproduction.
Visualization Challenges
For simpler simulations, a key part of the analysis is to make detailed 2D illustrations of the state of the simulated systems at various times, ideally creating a movie or time sequence of property evolution. This visualization puts the derived properties of the simulation (e.g., dissociation rate and production rate) into context, and highlights the physical processes that lead to success or failure of a particular production strategy. However, for large 3D-volume meshes, simple scripts or off-the-shelf visualization tools rapidly become unworkable. The codes used in this study use finitevolume meshes that are, in essence, nonpositional. The x/y/z coordinates of gridblocks are retained for post-simulation analysis, but the mesh used by the code sees each gridblock only as a volume connected to other gridblocks by connections of known area and length. The shape of the gridblock (i.e., the corners and edges used in finite-element meshes) is not part of the mesh itself. For a simple rectangular mesh, it is simple to convert a series of element- centroid locations into an equivalent finite- element-style mesh for visualization with several commercial or freeware visualization programs. For more-complicated meshes in two dimensions, a representative visualization mesh can be created through triangularization, and the properties of the elements can be interpolated onto this mesh with minimal loss ofinformation. Such simplifications are not possible for this field-scale Voronoi mesh. The difference in scale between the largest
gridblocks (50-m length) and the smallest (0.2 m) prevents interpolation onto a uniform mesh without either a severe loss of information (i.e., reducing all near-well gridblocks to a set of 5000-m3 averaged cells) or the creation of a mesh too large to render (approximately 1016 cells). The alternative is to create the visualization mesh through tetrahedralization, analogous to the 2D triangularization used for simpler problems. The element properties then can be interpolated onto this tetrahedral mesh without loss of information.
Conclusions
While the simulations used the most extensive, realistic, and data-based model available, the insights found here strongly relate to earlier studies on the productivity and nonproductivity of various configurations of hydrates. Preliminary results for a horizontal-well configuration showed that large quantities of water are able to reach the well early in the depressurization process, reducing depressurization effectiveness. Whether this is caused by rapid dissociation and breakthough, or other effects (e.g., greatly reduced but still finite effective permeability of hydrate-bearing media), remains to be proved (ongoing simulations and advanced visualization will produce detailed 3D images of system evolution to evaluate this hypothesis). As a result, it is becoming clear that systems with large quantities of water in communication with the hydrate reservoir, even if not connected to aquifers beyond reservoir boundaries, are particularly challenging production targets. Permeability ofthe bounding media, distance from the hydrate-stability boundary, and configuration of the hydrate into large contiguous masses must be considered in reservoirevaluation.JPT
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Scaling Up a 900-Million-Cell Static Model to a Dynamic Model

he Greater Burgan field began producing in 1946. It remains under primary depletion with natural waterdrive. Subsurface modeling is an integral part of reservoir management. In 2001, the first comprehensive fullfield geological model was built with 65million cells, encompassing all of the major reservoirs. A reservoir-simulation study (1.6-million-cell dynamic model) was conducted in 2003 by use of parallel-simulation technology. During the last decade, active field-development plans have resulted in major surfacefacility upgrades and the drilling of +more than 300 new wells. This paper discusses scaling up the high-resolution geological model and specific problems encountered by the study team.
vents communication between the Wara and Burgan sands. The Burgan oil field was discovered in 1938, with first oil production in 1946. Burgan has good energy support from strong natural aquifers, and after 66 years of production, most of the field is still under primary depletion. More than 1,200 wells have been drilled across the field. While drilling spacing is dense in the crestal area, well control in the flanks is relatively weak, giving rise to more geostatistical uncertainty. As the field has matured, the reservoir pressure has declined, reducing productivity.
Scaling-Up Approach
Introduction
The Greater Burgan field is in southeastern Kuwait, with an area of 320 sq miles. Fig. 1 shows the five main reservoir units of the Greater Burgan field complex: the Wara sand, Mauddud, Burgan Upper sand, Burgan Middle sand, and the Burgan Lower sand. Areally, the field is separated into three producing areas, Burgan, Magwa, and Ahmadi. Mauddud, the only carbonate reservoir in the sequence, is relatively tight and, together with the extensive Wara shale, acts as a barrier separating the Wara sand from the massive sands of the underlying Burgan formation. However, extensive faulting pre-
Because the field comprises significantly different reservoir units, a detailed geological description is required. A veryfine-scale geological model with 900million cells was required. This geological model was constructed as a master model integrating all types of data available, and will be maintained and updated over time with new data from drilling, production, and other activities. For dynamic modeling, the very-fine-scale geological model is too big and must be scaled up. A multiscale approach is needed for the Greater Burgan field. Several studies, including reservoir management and optimization, facilities design and planning, recovery optimization, and enhanced oil recovery, are envisaged for the field. These studies are expected to require different resolutions and different
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 164187, Answering the Challenge of Scaling Up a 900-Million-Cell Static Model to a Dynamic ModelGreater Burgan Field, Kuwait, by Eddie Ma, SPE, Kuwait Oil Company; Sergey Ryzhov, SPE, Schlumberger; Yuandong Wang, SPE, Petrobras; Reham Al-Houti, SPE, Laila Dashti, SPE, and Farida Ali, Kuwait Oil Company; and Muhammad Ibrahim, SPE, Schlumberger, prepared for the 2013 SPE Middle East Oil and Gas Show and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain, 1013 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
levels of reservoir-description detail. Use of a single model with the highest possible resolution for all of the studies is impractical for a field this size. Thus, each study had to formulate model- resolution requirements in accordance with the phenomena to be studied, which resulted in different scaling of the models. Of these models, one is the master model and is used for the flow simulation. Choice of model size in this case was dictated by reasonable turnaround time, which in turn warranted that model history matching could be completed on schedule. However, certain aspects of field redevelopment could require a finer-resolution model, here called the Finer model, and should benefit from the groundwork of the Coarse master model. The Coarse master model is used for full-field history matching and is expected to capture the general energy balance and the water-front movement. It can be used to generate reliable production forecasts for certain redevelopment scenarios such as infill drilling and waterflood. However, the reliability of the forecast profiles is expected to be limited to the regional level. Resolution of the Finer model would enable accuracy beyond the regional level (i.e., the Finer model is expected to produce the cube of r emaining-oil saturation that can be used for actual well planning and water- injection design). In addition to the Coarse and Finer models, the team also proposed the use of an even coarser model with resolution just high enough to capture the major geological features of the Greater Burgan field. This Very Coarse model can be used for fast-track screening and sensitivity analysis, as well as for computer-aided history-matchingexercises. Areal scaleup, or upgridding, is needed for the model. In most reservoir-simulation studies, scaling up is performed only in the vertical direction be-
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State of Kuwait
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Wara Formation
Fig. 1Greater Burgan field, Kuwait.
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cause areal grid size of the geological model is already suitable for simulation. However, the immense size of the field, the depositional-environment variation within each stratigraphic unit, and the major differences in the degree of heterogeneity between different reservoir zones require the geological model to retain geological features at the highest possible level of detail, which results in small grid-cell sizes of 5050 m. Special attention must be given to reservoir connectivity. The degree of heterogeneity differs significantly from one stratigraphic unit to another, particularly when comparing the two main reservoir units: Wara sand and Burgan Third Middle sand. Burgan Third Middle sand is associated with a channel belt and is a clean massive sand, well-connected both laterally and vertically. The Wara sand has features of depositional environments from distributary channels to the tidal shallow marine with individual sand bodies with less width and often separated from their neighbors by tidal flats and shales. However, in a structured grid, the same areal dimensions must be used for the entire productive interval, which links the choice of the areal grid-cell size with the possible effect it may have on reservoir connectivity of heterogeneous reservoirs in a scaled-up model.
Model-Size Determination
The size of the master (Coarse) model was linked directly to the simulation model run on the operators hardware. Requirements for the model run time were formulated upfront. To meet the deadline, it was agreed that turnaround time of a history-match simulation run should be within 1 day. This requirementtranslates to a run time between 15 and 20 hours, with additional time for post-processing and analyses. It is worth mentioning that the start of model scaling up coincided with the deployment of the operators new PC cluster. To estimate the optimal size of the Coarse dynamic model, a series of benchmarking runs was performed withdifferent numbers of CPUs on the new cluster using the 2009 Greater Burgan parallel model (1.6 million cells). The resulting run time was used to estimate the run time required for the Coarse model, assuming scalability of run time with model size and CPU use. Benchmarking indicated that the optimal choice was 32CPUs, which corresponds to a model size of 23 million cells. The sizes of the Finer and VeryCoarse models were derived from the numbers accepted for the Coarse model. Thus, the Finer grid had approximately 30 million cells, while the size of
the Very Coarse grid does not exceed 0.2millioncells.
Upgridding
Although three grids of different resolutions (Coarse, Finer, and Very Coarse) were generated, the focus here is on the Coarse model because it was chosen as the master model for the study. Areal cell size of the dynamic grid was selected on the basis of simple practical considerations. Ideally, while coarsening the grid, one should fit as many grid cells as possible between two neighboring wells. However, there will always be a compromise between lateral and vertical resolution of the grid. Areal grid-cell size of the geological model is 5050m. Therefore, the choice of areal grid-cell size for the Coarse dynamic model was restricted to between 100100 m and 300300 m. The average distance between wells in the field is approximately 500 m; thus, use of 300300-m grid cells was not recommended because it leaves a maximum of one cell between two wells. A 100100-m grid resulted in at least four cells between two neighboring wells. However, to comply with a model size of 3 million cells, the 100100m grid would require sacrificing vertical resolution. In the process of upgridding, every 15 geological-model layers had
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Fig. 2Streamlines showing water-saturation distribution 15 years after start of the waterflood, with slices of the 3D grid superimposed on the streamlines. Fine grid on the left and coarse grid on the right.
to be merged into a single layer of the Coarse grid. The vertical resolution of such a grid was deemed unacceptable for adequate representation of field geology, especially in the more-heterogeneous reservoirs such as the Wara. Therefore, use of the 200200-m grid appeared to be a reasonable compromise. It allowed at least two cells between most of the neighboring wells, but did not require significant coarsening of the grid in the vertical direction. On average, areal grid-cell dimensions of the Coarse grid would be 200200 m, with a cell thickness of approximately 12 ft. Lateral coarsening of the grid was performed by rerunning the pillar-gridding process with the areal size set to 200 m. For vertical coarsening, a variabilitybased approach was used (i.e., layers were merged together on the basis of the similarity of property distribution within the layer). A reservoir-quality index (RQI) was used for variability analysis. The RQI distribution within each finegrid layer was presented as a proportion to the grid cells falling inside predefined bins of RQI and was visualized in the form of vertical-proportion curves for each zone of the model grid. Layers that demonstrate similar distribution of RQI then were selected for merging. Technically, remapping was required for zones in the Coarse grid such that each of the new zones contained only layers intended for merging. In an attempt to preserve the conceptual depositional framework reflected in the geological-model layering, layer lump
ing was performed that used exactly the same layering scheme (i.e., proportional, follow top, or follow base) as was used originally for this zone in the geological model. Grid coarsening thereby preserved pinch outs and dipping angles defined by geological modelers in each of the particular stratigraphic units of themodel. Before scaling up, the team conditioned the geological-model properties. First, two cutoffs were introduced to differentiate between reservoir and nonreservoir cells in the geological model. Any cell with porosity less than 2 porosity units or permeability less than 0.1 md was considered nonreservoir. Then, a binary-distributed (0 or 1) net-to-gross (NTG) property was created: All nonreservoir cells were assigned a zero NTG, while the rest of model cells had a unit NTG. Subsequently, NTG was used as a weighting factor for scaling up porosity, permeability, and saturation. Permeability and saturation-computation properties were given special attention in the property scaling-up process. Different algorithms were examined, and choice of the most-suitable algorithm was made subject to validation by streamline simulation on a sector model, as shown inFig. 2. Regarding water saturation, the team considered several ways of transferring saturation values from the geological model to the simulation model. In the geological model, water saturation
was populated by use of three relationships derived from core-analysis data: Irreducible-water saturation as a function of RQI Maximum capillary pressure as a function of RQI An equation that links water saturation with normalized capillary pressure and with RQI Multiple possibilities were available for repopulating water saturation in the scaled-up model, from direct scaling up of geological-model water saturation to calculating water saturation from the scaled-up rock properties. The complete paper details the permeability and watersaturation scaling-up process.
Scaling Up Model Properties
Quality Check
Quality checks were performed at each step of the scaling-up process. First, gridcell geometry needed to be checked during the upgridding, This was necessary because areal upgridding requires reperforming the pillar-gridding step, which may result in irregular cell geometries. The inside-out check resulted in negative volumes and unfavorable cell angles, leading to highly twisted and distorted cells. Cells with irregular geometry needed to be identified and fixed, or flagged to be deactivated during simulation, to prevent potential problems. Second, areal scaling up coarsens the grid and, consequently, reduces the resolution of the zigzagged faults. Part of the fault plane could be shifted slightly. If a well penetrated the fault plane or
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was in the vicinity of a fault, the well could appear on the incorrect side of the fault because of the fault shifting. The result would be incorrect formation markers or perforated intervals. This problem had to be fixed during scaleup. To fix the problem, wells were shifted slightly to the correct location relative to the fault. Third, validation of the volumetric and flow-property conservation was needed. Of the multiple approaches to determine water saturation, the best approach was selected on the basis of volumetric validation. Flowproperty conservation was validated by running streamline simulations on both fine and upscaled sector models to check whether reservoir connectivity was preserved. Because of the substantial heterogeneity in the Wara formation and
significant scaling up, this check became very important.
Conclusions
To succeed, the scaling-up process required the use of an elaborate approach for grid coarsening and scaleup/transfer of the properties from the fine-scale static model to the coarse simulation grid. The following solutions were used. Multiscale approach (i.e., scaling up to dynamic models of different size). Upgridding that combinedboth areal and vertical (variabilitybased) coarsening. Use of the original (geologicalmodel)layering scheme thatallowed preserving geological input into the griddingprocess.
Translating fine-scale water-saturation values to the coarsemodel, ensuring necessary preservation of modelvolumetrics. Use of mechanistic modeling at different stages of the scalingupprocess. The Burgan geological model was scaled up successfully to a dynamic model at three different scales. The approach chosen for the scaling-up procedure proved its value by demonstrating small-to-negligible discrepancy in volumetric comparisons between the fine and coarse models. This holds true for the results of the permeability validation that used streamline simulations on sector models. JPT
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Quality-Assured Initialization Optimizes the Value of Reservoir Simulation
nitializing a reservoir simulator requires populating a 3D dynamicgrid-cell model with subsurface data and fit-for-purpose interrelational algorithms. In practice, these prerequisites rarely are satisfied fully. Implementation of four key points has enhanced the authentication of reservoir simulators through morereadily attainable history matches with less tuning required. This outcome is attributed to a more-systematic initialization process with a lower risk of artifacts. These benefits feed through to more-assured estimates of ultimate recovery and, hence, hydrocarbonreserves.
Introduction
Initialization is the process of rendering a subsurface-rock/fluid model into a representative starting point for reservoir simulation within the constraints introduced by imposing a 3D-grid array. The effectiveness of a hydrocarbon- reservoir simulator depends on the reliability of its initialization, which, in turn, is governed by the quality of the underpinning reservoir description. The classical view of initialization establishes the correct volumetric distributions of fluids within the grid cells that represent the subsurface reservoir when it is at initial conditions of an assumed hydrostatic equilibrium. Yet a functional reservoir must store fluids and allow them to flow. Therefore, an initialization process that is based on static data must render these data dynamically conditioned
so that the ensuing dynamic model can have the greatest possible meaning. It is prerequisite that the reservoir description be realistic and representative and that its conditioning for simulation be carried out in a manner that retains reservoir character in a workable format. These requirements are rarely satisfied in practice. Shortcomings can be traced to ambiguous terminology, inconsistent definitions of reservoir properties, inappropriate parameter selection, incomplete data sampling, inconsistent scaling up, cross-scale application of interpretative algorithms, erroneous identification of net reservoir, unrepresentative fluid analyses, and incorrect application of software options. The objective is to improve the synergy between static and dynamic reservoir models. The subject matter is derived from the authors studies of challenging field situations (i.e., from real solutions). The proposed refinements are directed at obviating the shortcomings stated previously. They are restricted to water-wet systems within which intergranular flow predominates.
namic simulation as part of a term in the fluid-flow equations, to estimate fluid volumes in place, to indicate rock type, or to indicatepermeability.
Initialization Philosophy
Pivotal Role of Porosity
Analysis of core-calibrated well logs usually delivers total or effective porosity according to the adopted petrophysical model. Therefore, if total porosity is imported from a static model, as is common practice, knowledge of either the shale-volume fraction or the electrochemically-bound-water saturation is needed to convert total porosity to effective porosity. Porosity is used in dy-
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 160248, Optimizing the Value of Reservoir Simulation Through QualityAssured Initialization, by Paul F. Worthington, SPE, Gaffney, Cline & Associates, and Shane K.F. Hattingh, SPE, ERC Equipoise, prepared for the 2012 SPE Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, Perth, Australia, 2224 October. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
The simulation exercise should focus on those volumes that contain net-reservoir rock. This means excluding those volumes of rock that do not contribute to reservoir functionality in terms of a significant capability to store fluids and allow them to flow. The rationale is that dynamic modeling of the behavior of rocks that do show net-reservoir character is difficult without including nonreservoir rock for which proper groundtruthing of model elements is unlikely. It is good practice to keep a dynamic model as simple as possible and to make it only as complex as is necessary for it to represent fluid storage and flow. Net-reservoir rock should be identified by cutoffs of shale volume, effective porosity, and free-fluid permeability, where the latter is determined independently of porosity. The cutoffs should be conditioned dynamically. Beyond this, the philosophy has four key elements. The first key element concerns the representativeness of data from the standpoints of reservoir description (i.e., parametric averages) and the generation of interpretative algorithms. The second key element is directed at synthesis of these data and their interrelationships for input into a simulation model. It is important to distinguish net reservoir with dynamically conditioned discriminators as a basis for identifying flow units. Reservoir properties should be averaged over the net reservoir at the grid-cell-height scale, and relational algorithms should be established at this same scale for seamless incorporation into the simulator.
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The third key element calls for assured internal consistency of transitional and irreducible capillarybound-water saturation, residual- and free- hydrocarbon saturation, and freefluid permeability as a component of relative permeability. This consistency must be established at initial- pressure and -stress conditions and over the net- reservoir volumes. The process is intrinsically related to dynamically driven data partitioning, such as flow-unitclassification. The final element is concerned with the nonuniformity of net-reservoir rock and the directional dependence of netreservoir properties and their interrelationships. Here, nonuniformity refers to spatial variations in those characteristics that control reservoir quality. Nonuniformity can be ordered geologically by gravity and sedimentation processes, as in the case of a layered sand/shale sequence, or it can be disordered, perhaps because of erosion, sediment reworking, or tectonic disturbance. Anisotropy refers to those properties that have different values in different directions. Anisotropy can have an indirect effect in which a scalar quantity is predicted from a directionally dependent measurement (e.g., the use of a collimated densitylog measurement to evaluate porosity). A formation can be homogeneous and yet anisotropic. All these matters are affected by the scale of measurement. For example, heterogeneity and anisotropy might be important at the core-plug scale but have little effect at the grid-cellheight scale.
Data Representativeness
Most data used to initialize a simulation model are drawn from core analysis, core-calibrated log interpretation, well or formation tests, and production data where these are available. The key question is: Are there sufficient data to do the job? Here, the job is twofold. First, it concerns the meaningfulness of average parametric values over a predetermined interval or aggregate of intervals that have been penetrated by at least one well. The interval may relate to a facies object, an architectural layer, a petrophysical rock type, or a flow unit. Note that such classifications can coexist severally within a given reservoir system.
Stage 3Dynamic Conditioning. After a static reservoir model has been preData Synthesis pared for dynamic simulation and iniEssentially, data synthesis refers to tialization has been completed successscaling up input data to the reservoir- fully, the model is tuned and history simulator scale as determined by the matched. This step involves adjusting adopted grid-cell height. The treatment a variety of parameters, including resis threefold. First, reservoir properties ervoir properties, so that the simulamust be scaled up. Second, predictive al- tor estimates fluid-flow rates and presgorithms that will be applied to net-res- sures similar to historical observations. ervoir volumes within a reservoir zone Complete historical-production data and must be established at the larger scale. properly interpreted pressure measureThe treatment occurs in each of two ments are prerequisites for a reliable stagescore to log and log to grid cell. history match that has predictive capaHere, it is applied to porosity and per- bilities. Dynamic data in the form of well meability and to the prediction of the production and pressure data often are latter from the former, but the princi- considered to be independent of the conple can be extended to other core and struction of the static model and the inilog measurements. The third aspect is tialization processes. Efforts to integrate concerned with the need to render the production and static data are aimed at output data as dynamically conditioned. reducing the adverse consequences of This last requirement applies to all scales what has become entrenched as a twoof measurement. step process. The quality of a dynamic model can be improved if dynamic data Stage 1Core to Log. Conventional core are used to influence the model at the plugs usually are cut every 30 cm, with static construction phase, leading to the some geological license where the mea- concept of reversible workflows. sured sampling point is close to a boundary between layers. It is recommended Internal Consistency of Data that in a key well, this sampling interval Static-model construction often is conbe reduced to 15 cm so that it matches fined to analysis of geological data to the standard sampling interval of well define the structure and faults and to logs. Otherwise, the assumption is made distribute reservoir properties (e.g., that each core plug is representative of a porosity, permeability, and net-/gross- 30-cm layer within which it is centrally reservoir ratio), which in turn are linked positioned. Where core inspection in- to geologically derived facies. Initializing dicates that this assumption is invalid, the dynamic model involves integrating some other method should be consid- data such as fluid contacts, fluid pressure/volume/temperature (PVT) properered (e.g., whole-coremeasurements). ties, capillary pressure profiles, and relStage 2Log to Grid Cell. For ref- ative permeability curves. Many of these erence, a grid-cell height of 1.5 m is data elements are linked and should be adopted. This height is of the order of analyzed together. For example, PVT ta the grid-cell height adopted in many full- bles of reservoir-fluid properties include field simulators. The method detailed in fluid densities, which partially govern the complete paper can be used for other capillary pressure as a function of height
Second, it concerns the accuracy and precision of predictive algorithms that are used to estimate a reservoir property from one or more data inputs. The latter may themselves be reservoir properties or they may be other parametric measurements that are known to be related to the target reservoir property. Predictive algorithms usually are set up and applied over net-reservoir intervals identified through application of dynamically conditioned cutoffs to core-calibrated downhole measurements.
purposes, such as scaling up to the welltest scale for purposes of comparing petrophysically derived and test-derived permeability estimates. Frequently, different geocellular models are constructed with different degrees of scaling up. Hydrocarbon-in-place volumes often are calculated on finely gridded models that are too detailed for simulation purposes, thus requiring further scaling up to a simulation-grid scale.
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above a mean free-water level, which is used to distribute the initial water saturation. Relative permeability curves, relative permeability endpoints, saturation endpoints including minimum and maximum saturations, minimum moveable saturations, and other properties are often different for different flow units or facies. Many reservoir engineers regard the initialization process as one of calculating initial-fluid-saturation distributions, estimating initial fluid-in-place volumes, and comparing these with volumes obtained through static modeling. Discrepancies are reconciled when the reservoir model is debugged before running the simulator. While this paper advocates a broader perception of initialization, traditional checks that are carried out under a narrower definition of the term are vitally important. They include initial fluid saturations, equilibrium, saturation endpoints, relative permeability endpoints, relative permeability curves, sequence of permeability modeling, and sequence of assigning the net-/gross-reservoir ratio.
Heterogeneity and Anisotropy
In geoscience, heterogeneity often refers to variations in the composition and texture of rocks. For purposes of initialization, a broader interpretation must be adopted that takes into account variations in pore characteristics, reservoir fluids, and the wetting phase because all of these properties affect displacement efficiency and fluid storage and flow. These matters affect the previously described procedures at three levels: the representativeness of core data, log data, and grid-cell data. Anisotropy. Because permeability is a tensor, it generally is anisotropic, with different magnitudes in different directions. The most significant anisotropy usually is in the contrast between permeability measured perpendicular to
bedding planes (commonly called vertical permeability) and permeability measured parallel to bedding planes (horizontal permeability). Permeability is the only reservoir property to which anisotropic considerations apply directly; all other properties (i.e., porosity and net-/ gross-reservoir ratio) are scalar quantities, although there may have been some directional dependence in their determination (e.g., collimated density measurements for porosity, dynamically conditioned cutoffs for net-/gross-reservoir ratio). Moreover, the gradient of a scalar property, a proxy for heterogeneity, is directionally dependent and, therefore, is subject to anisotropic considerations. For example, the porosity variability in a vertical sense is different from the porosity variability in a horizontal sense. Only fluid properties (i.e., viscosity and density) appear directly as gradient terms in the fluid-flow equations. Porosity and net-/gross-reservoirratio are not gradient terms, a fact that greatly facilitates the scaling up of these properties, the objective of which should be to conserve volume. Anisotropy may also exist within the horizontal plane itself (e.g., where sedimentary deposition has taken place under the influence of unidirectional forces, such as for highly channelized systems). However, this type of anisotropy usually is less pronounced than the contrast between vertical and horizontal permeability and it often is ignored for simulation purposes. Furthermore, horizontal anisotropy is seldom quantified through core analysis. Anisotropy is most easily dealt with by orienting the grid directions parallel to principal axes of the permeability tensor, obviating the need to deal with subdiagonal terms in simulation algorithms. Where horizontal anisotropy exists, the principal directions usually are controlled geologically and they can be accommodated by use of a geologically influenced gridorientation.
Vertical-/horizontal-permeability contrasts can have a significant effect on actual and predicted reservoir performance. At the core-plug scale, anisotropy manifests itself through flow paths of different tortuosity, resulting from sedimentological phenomena such as grain orientation and fine clay-mineral layers. On a larger scale, shale bands affect anisotropy. Here, the vertical-/horizontal-permeability ratio depends greatly on the degree of scaling up. Permeability anisotropy must be quantified both at the grid-cell-thickness level, for input directly into the fluid-flow equations, and at a scale much finer than that of the grid cell, to enable generating appropriate pseudo relative permeability curves, which are affected by permeability anisotropy.
Workflows for Initialization
The workflows selected for initializing a reservoir-model/-simulation study are influenced strongly by the purpose of the study. Complex workflows that include detailed stratigraphic and facies constraints do not necessarily provide better results than simple workflows that focus on functionality. The emphasis should be on correct representation of reliable data rather than oncomplexity. The authors emphasize the value that can be added to any procedure that involves processing data by ensuring that the data are quality checked and by using them in conjunction with complementary data sets from independent sources. The worflow leading up to initialization involves large volumes of data covering diverse disciplines. The authors focused on a subset comprising those key areas. It is believed that followingthe correct sequence and integrating diverse data sets appropriately can improve the initialized model. Workflows for conventional and special core analysis, log analysis, scalingup, and dynamicconditioning are presented in Tables2 through 6 in the completepaper.JPT
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TECHNOLOGY
Shauna Noonan, SPE, is a staff production engineer for ConocoPhillips, where she works as an artificiallift specialist in the Completions and Production Technology group. Noonans responsibilities include development and validation of artificial-lift and completion systems for thermal applications and improving artificiallift reliability. She has worked on artificial-lift projects worldwide at ConocoPhillips and previously at Chevron for more than 18 years. Noonan has been chairwoman of industry forums and committees and has authored or coauthored numerous papers on artificial lift. She serves as a member of the SPE Production and Operations Advisory Committee, as an Associate Editor for the SPE Production & Operations journal, and as a member of the JPT Editorial Committee. Noonan began her career with Chevron Canada Resources and holds a BS degree in petroleum engineering from the University of Alberta. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 164382 ESP Surveillance and Optimization Solutions: Ensuring Best Performance and Optimum Value by Abdulmonam Al Maghlouth, SaudiAramco, et al. SPE 162006 Development and Application of Small ESPs for Efficient Development of Remaining Reserves inPoorly Drained Parts of Reservoirs inSamotlor Field by B. Akopyan, OJSC TNK-BP Management, et al. SPE 161648 Production Optimization and Zonal Allocation for Auto Gas Lift Wells: A Case Study From Oman by Sharifa Al-Ruheili, Petroleum Development Oman, et al.
ARTIFICIAL LIFT
Artificial-lift reliability is strongly influenced by how well the equipment is selected, designed, and operated for its particular application. The required artificial-lift knowledge is more than simply entering data into a software program or taking one class on the subject. We have a new generation of production engineers entering the industry who need to learn about artificial lift. How do we transfer our collective artificial-lift knowledge to them? How can we convince management that you cannot typically buy reliability from a vendor catalog and that investing in the training of their personnel is the better way to effect artificial-lift reliability? Several challenges hinder the collection and dissemination of artificial-lift information. Our fundamental knowledge of existing technology has grown immensely over the past decade. The industry has continued to push the operational envelope, resulting in modifications or new-technology development that we are just starting to implement and understand. Training materials, textbooks, and design software that were created more than 10 years ago may be outdated and no longer relevant. A wealth of artificial-lift knowledge exists that has not been well documented or is not easily assessable. Many conferences for the artificial-lift community do not publish papers; thus, the knowledge that was shared becomes lost to the rest of the industry. Operating companies have much to share with the industry on their artificial lift applications; however, many engineers are being deterred or restricted by their company communication policies. This leaves manufacturers to fill the knowledge-sharing void, but their attempts to publish the information without the support of the operating companies is often perceived as a sales pitch. Our artificial-lift community needs to be active in documenting and sharing our collective knowledge so the next generation of production engineers can start higher on the learning curve than my generation did 20 years ago. This includes supporting SPE Artificial Lift activities (e.g., conferences, papers, online seminars, course development, online discussion groups, and PetroWiki) that are working toward the creation of resources needed to educate our future artificial-lift experts and champions. The papers highlighted in this feature are excellent examples of test programs developed to increase our artificial-lift knowledge and ultimately increase efficiency or reliability. To keep updated on the latest SPE artificial-lift events and discussions, join the SPE Connect online technical community for production at www.spe.org/network/ connect.php. JPT
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High-Reliability Gas Lift Flow-Control-Device Technology and Erosion/Endurance Tests

igh-reliability gas lift flow-control devices (GLFCDs) enable gas lift for wells with the potential for H2S in the produced gas and where casing is not qualified for H2S service. Valve specifications are such that no leakage is allowed at both high (8,000-psi) and low (1-psi) differential pressures across the valve. A series of tests was designed using the environmental-stress-screen (ESS) concept and a harsh test standard that greatly exceeds API specifications for GLFCDs.
Flapper
O-ring
Flow tube
Introduction
GLFCDs are usually incorporated into the production conduit and used to inject high-pressure natural gas from the injection conduit to the interior of the production conduit. Commercially available GLFCDs typically contain oneway check systems comprising a ball, hemisphere, or cone, which is pressed against a valve-seating ring by a spring. Unfortunately, many GLFCDs are prone to wear and damage because of fluid cut during the operation. Some of Shells Gulf of Mexico deepwater wells commonly produce sour fluids, which the casing program was not designed to tolerate. When sour production enters casing that is not qualified to National Association of Corrosion Engineers standards, the wells cannot be produced. Therefore, a family of high-reliability GLFCDs has been developed for use in deepwater/subsea associations. This technology is viable for any gas lift well because of significant
Spring Valve in closed position Valve in open position
Fig. 1High-reliability GLFCD with flapper and flow-tube technology.
Shell specifications and qualifications. Shells test program for these GLFCDs comprises three parts: factory acceptance, qualification, and endurance. Every individual GLFCD that has passed all factory- acceptance tests would be deemed accepted for installation and service. If the prototype of a GLFCD has High-Reliability-GLFCD passed Shell tests, it is deemed qualified to be a high-reliability GLFCD. CurrentDesign Validation and ly, three gas lift manufacturers have deQualification Procedures A series of design validation and quali- veloped GLFCDs and products that have fication tests has been established and been tested using Shells test program; executed to determine whether high- these test results are described in the reliability GLFCDs meet the acceptance following sections. criteria of API or ISO standards and
cost savings in change-out of GLFCDs and the ability to maintain well integrity. Fig. 1 presents schematics of the GLFCD through which liquids are unloaded from the casing annulus into the tubing, while Fig. 2 details several types of high-reliability GLFCDs.
Erosion Tests With Fresh Water
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 159848, High-Reliability Gas Lift Flow-Control-Device Technology and Erosion/Endurance Tests, by Jun Xu, Stuart L. Scott, SPE, and Wayne Mabry, SPE, Shell E&P, and Jose Gamboa, SPE, The University of Tulsa, prepared for the 2012 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 810 October. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
The purpose of the erosion test is to evaluate erosion-resistance performance and reverse-flow-check capacity of the GLFCD. In this test, city water will be pumped through the fixture and the test sample at 1 bbl/min until the total flow volume reaches 4,000 bbl or the
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Flapper and flow tube
Improved check dart
Sliding flow tube and metal/ metal check
Metal/metal seal barrier valve
Flow tube
O-ring Flow
Sliding tube
gas flow was gradually increased from zero to the maximum flow rate (approximately 2.7 MMscf/D). The flow was kept stable for 1 minute before shut-in and valve closure. This cycle was repeated 1,000 times, and the valve was removed from the test fixture for leak testing, although results were unable to determine whether the valve passed the leakage test. The Shell requirement of zero bubbles over a 3-minute period was met at all pressures after the valve had been set with 2,000 psi. Test of Improved Check-Dart GLFCD: Valve C. The last devices tested were GLFCDs with two external check valves and one orifice valve with check darts and seal rings as a primary reverseflow-check system. The GLFCD passed the initial leak test per the Shell qualification of zero bubbles. After the chatter test, all the devices had no visible damage to any valve component.
Flapper
Flow
Check dart
Valve in close position Fig. 2Types of high-reliability GLFCDs.
Valve in opening position
test sample fails a periodic reverse-flow test. When the accumulated flow volume reaches 400, 2,000, and 4,000bbl, the flow test is paused and the reverse-flow leakage is performed with nitrogen or air at five differential pressures from the normally downstream side of the valve: 1, 5, 50, 100, or 1,000 psig. If the measured leakage rate is 0 cm3/min at differential pressures at these values after flowing a total volume of 4,000 bbl, the valve passes the erosion test. If it fails, the test sample will be disassembled and the internals photographed for the root-cause-of-failure analysis. The comparison of the tests demonstrated that high- reliability GLFCDs dramatically outperform standard ones in terms of reliability andperformance.
Endurance Tests
Test of High-Reliability GLFCD: Valve A. The flow loop has a 2-in. line tied into a 2-in. natural-gas line that comes into the facility at approximately 40 psi. Once the system is full, the supply line is closed and booster pumps/compressors are used to increase the available test pressure to approximately 1,200 psi in the loop. Two high-reliability GLFCDs using flapper and flow-tube technology were installed in parallel, and one orifice valve was installed into the pocket of the test fixture. The system was then flowed for approximately 1.5 hours
for the temperature to reach a desired 8085F. When the chatter test started, the flow rate through the devices was dropped incrementally to .01 MMcf/D from the initial highest flow rate, and no chatter was heard by ear or stethoscope. The second trial was made by increasing pressure incrementally to 2.38 MMcf/D; here, too, no chatter was heard. The cycling test consisted of raising the flow rate by fully opening the downstream valve. The cycles were controlled by an electronically controlled motor valve. Each cycle took approximately 3 minutes until 1,000 cycles had been reached. The test took approximately 50 hours total. The valve did not leak within a wide range of pressures. The 24-hour continuous test began immediately after the cycle test. The upstream pressure was held at approximately 1,100 psi, with a downstream pressure of approximately 960 psi, for a differential of approximately 150 psi at a rate of approximately 2.4 MMcf/D. After the GLFCDs were returned to the manufacturer, they were disassembled and no damage was found. Test of GLFCD: Valve B. First, gas flowed through the valve until a metallic chattering noise was heard, at which point the flow rate for chattering was determined. Next, in the cycling test,
Barite-Endurance Tests
The purpose of barite-endurance tests is to determine whether the gas lift barrier valve can meet Shell high- reliabilityGLFCD qualification requirements of the bubble-tight leak criterion after a mixture of barite and water has been circulated through it. The downstream pressure, the mixture density, and the mixture flow rate are kept constant, while the upstream pressure varies freely. Once the test is concluded, the gas lift barrier valve is retrieved from the loop, cleaned, and installed in a leakage-test facility for conducting the reverse-flowtest. Barite Test: Modified Valve A. Valve A was modified with the installation of a tungsten carbide check dart for the barite test. On the basis of the new test protocol, this valve was tested for 9.38 hours over 2 days (the test was stopped during the night shift) until completing a total volume of 1,151 bbl. The flow rate was kept constant at 2.040.033 bbl/min for an equivalent density of 10.060.028 lbm/gal. The modified valve was retrieved from the facility after completing 1,153 bbl. No substantial deposit of dried barite was found in the valve or the check dart. Because no sign of erosion was observed
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in the check dart and seals, the valve was reassembled and installed in the reverse-flow-test facility. The gas-leak test was carried out at 1, 15, 50, 500, 1,000, and 1,900 psig, with no gas leakage at any of those pressures. After the test, the modified Valve A was then retrieved from the flow loop and cleaned to remove barite residue. No significant erosion damage was observed in the valve inlet port. Some dried barite was found in the valve, which was flushed as part of the cleaning process. A preliminary gas-leak test was performed at 1,900 psig. Excessive gas flow was then observed, which was higher than the maximum that can be measured by the water- displacement method. Similar results were obtained at other pressures. On the basis of this result, the modified Valve A did not meet API 19G2 or Shell high-reliability-GLFCDspecifications. Barite Test at 10 lbm/gal: Modified Valve B. This test was conducted until a total of 2,050 bbl of barite mixture had
been flowed in 20.82 hours. The mixture density was kept at 10.02 lbm/gal, varying within a range of 0.054 lbm/ gal. Although the flow rate was kept constant during the test, it varied between days, ranging from 1.55 to 1.69 bbl/min. There was no visible structural damage on the valve body. The manufacturer ran a gas- leakage test on the valve after the flow test. The valve stayed sealed at 5, 100, 500, and 1,000 psig. This result shows that the valve passed the barite test at 10 lbm/gal. The manufacturer noticed severe erosion around the inlet port; however, it was concluded that the check system wasstill functioning. During the valve disassembly, the manufacturer found that large amounts of barite had accumulated around the tube and spring housing. The manufacturer found that the valve flapper and flapper spring did not show any sign of erosiondamage.The valve teardown also revealed that neither the seat Orings nor the seat was damaged during thetest.
Barite Test at 10 lbm/gal: Modified Valve C. The barite mixture was flowed through Valve C until completing 2,110 bbl of accumulated total volume. The pressure drop across the valve and the flow rate varied across the days. The manufacturer conducted a visual inspection of the valve, reporting moderate erosion on the valve exterior side of the inlet port. The damage was on one exterior side of the valve port between the packing stacks, and was associated with erosion caused by barite abrasion. The valve leaked during the leakage test, and was then dismantled for further inspection. The valve teardown revealed no significant damage in the valve-check system. The gas leakage was then attributed to barite deposits that caused the check dart to stick in an off-seat position. Therefore, the valve was reassembled using the same components. The valve was then tested at 100, 500, 1,000, and 2,000 psig. No gas leakage was observed at any of those pressures, and therefore the valve was proved to meet Shellspecifications. JPT
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Measured Plunger-Fall Velocity Used To Calibrate New Fall-Velocity Model

all velocities for various plungers have been measured under many different field and simulator conditions. A new theoretical plunger-fall-velocity model uses a specific pressure and temperature for calibration. The model can then be used to calculate fall velocity at other conditions for the same plunger or can be used to show how changing a feature such as plunger weight can affect fall velocity.
100
Slower 120 Plunger Fall Velocity, ft/min

140 160 180 200 220
Falling Through Gas Gradually Slows From 240 to 135 ft/min
1,600
3,200
4,800
Faster 240
Normal Fall-Velocity Profile (1) Tubing Is OK (2) Liquid in Bottom
Falling Through 6,400 Liquid

8,000 60.764
Introduction
260 Bottom of Tubing7773.00 ft 0.000 8.691 17.361
Plunger Hits Liquid7313.59 ft
26.042
34.722
43.403
52.083
Conventional plunger lift is a low-cost method for lifting liquids (water, condensate, or oil) from gas and oil wells. Lifting liquids from the well is achieved by closing a surface valve to store energy in the well during a shut-in time period, which is followed by opening the surface valve for a time period so liquids are unloaded as gas flows to the surface. During shut-in, the gas flow is stopped when the controller closes the surface motor valve. The plunger leaves the lubricator to begin its fall from the surface because of a tubingpressure increase that is caused by closing the motor valve or begun when the plunger is released from a catcher. The plunger falls through gas until entering the accumulated liquid at the bottom of the tubing. Once the plunger is on bottom and sufficient unloading energy is stored, the controller opens the surface valve into the l o wer-pressure flowline. High-pressure gas in the tubing above the liquid column flows down the flow-
Fig. 1Plunger depth and plunger fall velocity for a typical plunger well.
line, and the high-pr essure gas in the casing begins to decrease by expanding to fill the tubing, displacing the plunger and most of the liquid above the plunger to the surface. This plunger-operation cycle is repeated continually to produce the well. An operator can produce from the well efficiently if the plungers fall rate and location and the time taken to fall to the liquid and bottom of the tubing are known accurately. The distance to the plunger and the rate of fall can be determined by examining the acoustic signal created by a falling plunger. The acoustic pulse generated at the tubingcollar recess travels through the gas to the surface to be detected by a microphone, and the change in pressure can be detected by a tubing pressure transducer. These acoustic pulses are normally detected as a plunger falls down the relatively dry tubing interior above the
gaseous liquid column at the bottom of the well. Processing this acoustic signal allows the depth and fall velocity of the falling plunger to be determined. Fig. 1 shows the plunger-fall velocity decreasing smoothly as a function of time. Although there seems to be some scatter of velocities on the plungerve locity trace, note that the left vertical scale is amplified and that the general trend of the velocity is to consistently decrease as time (plunger depth)increases.
Theoretical General PlungerFall-Velocity Model
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 164495, Measured Plunger-Fall Velocity Used To Calibrate New Fall-Velocity Model, by O.L. Rowlan and J. McCoy, Echometer Company; J. Lea, PLTech; and R. Nadkrynechny and C. Cepuch, T-RAM Canada, prepared for the 2013 SPE Production and Operations Symposium, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, 2326March. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
A new theoretical general plunger-fall velocity model has been developed that can be used to predict plunger-fall velocity in a well at any pressure and temperature condition. If the fall velocity for a particular plunger is measured in a well at a specific pressure and temperature, then the general model is used to determine the calibration constant C. Using a measured fall velocity at a known pressure and temperature to calibrate the general model enables the general plunger-fall-velocity model to calculate the plunger fall velocity at other pressures and temperatures.
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Depth to Plunger, ft
Elapsed Time, minutes 0 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 240
Fall Velocity for Each Cycle
100
Fall Velocity, ft/min
200 300
160
120 80
Tubing Presure, psig
255.8 ft/min 163.0 Tbg-psig 319.8 ft/min 130.7 Tbg-psig 355.9 ft/min 102.0 Tbg-psig 394.8 ft/min 73.3 Tbg-psig 478.1 ft/min 41.6 Tbg-psig Tubing Pressure-psig
200
stick the plunger is a fluid level shot down the tubing. The pressure wave from the gas gun discharged at the surface travels down the tubing and often will exert sufficient force to free a stuck plunger. When the plunger gets stuck and does not fall to the bottom, damage to the surface equipment is possible. Dangerous conditions can be avoided when such problems areidentified.
400
Fall Velocity of Different Types of Plungers
500 Dual-Pad Plunger Fail Velocity Faster 1.75 ft/min 600 With Each 1-psi Decrease in Pressure
40 0
Fig. 2Plunger-fall velocity increases as tubing pressure decreases.
Two equations were considered to be representative of the conditions that control the plunger fall through the gas in the tubing. For the first, the drag model, the plunger weight is set equal to the drag force acting on the plunger. At a certain pressure, temperature, and gas gravity, the density of the gas is determined. In the orifice model, the plunger/tubing seal acts as a choke, allowing a specific amount of gas to be pushed past the plunger as the plunger falls through the tubing. From field measurements, it has been observed that all plungers fall slower at higher pressure and faster at lower pressure. Field observations during shut-in confirm the general- model predictions of plunger-fall-velocity slowing that is inversely proportional to the square root of the density of the gas through which the plunger is falling.
Plunger-Fall-Velocity Function of Gas or Fluid Density
The data from field testing usually show that the plunger fall velocity decreases as the plunger gets closer to the bottom of the tubing. This behavior agrees with the general plunger-fall model because the increasing pressure increases the gas density inside the tubing. Fig. 2 shows the measured fall velocity for the same dual-pad plunger in the same 2.375-in. tubing string in the same gas well for five consecutive shutin time periods. Gas flow into the wellbore from the damaged formation was
severely restricted, so for each cycle, the well pressure decreased because the gas inflow did not replace the gas used to unload the well. The average tubing pressure for the five different tests continually decreased. For this padded plunger, there is an almost linear 1.75-ft/ min increase in the fall velocity per each 1-psi drop in tubing pressure. When the pressure is low, the p lunger-fall velocity is much faster than is considered normal, but when the pressure is higher, the plunger-fall velocity is measured at a rate that is considered normal. Slow fall velocities caused by high pressure also have an effect on plungers that are considered to fall fast, such as the dual-pad bypass type of plunger. In general, the fall velocity through gassy fluid is approximately 40 ft/min. But when a well is treated with surfactant, the gassy fluid is less dense, and the plunger-fall velocity is near 80 ft/min. When a plunger-lifted well is treated with surfactant, the gaseous liquid column may stand three times taller than a normal untreated gaseous liquid column for the same differential tubing and casing pressure. The plunger falls approximately twice as fast, and the height of the surfactant-treated gaseous liquid column is approximately three times higher. When a plunger-lifted well is treated with surfactant, additional shutin time may be required to allow time for the plunger to fall to the bottom. If the plunger becomes stuck in the tubing, all that may be required to un-
As the diameter of the plunger increases, the fall velocity of the same type of plunger decreases. As the diameter of a plunger increases, the weight of the plunger increases. Friction between the plunger and the tubing increases as the diameter increases, because the increase in diameter causes a larger surface area of the plunger to contact the tubing. The cross-sectional area of the plunger increases by the square of the diameter, and less differential pressure is required to resist the fall of the plunger. The larger-diameter plunger increases the friction, and the larger area increases the force from the differential pressure applied to the plunger crosssectional area, which results in slower fall speed. The presence of pads on a plunger results in slower fall velocities when compared with solid plungers of the same diameter. The slower fall velocity of the pad plunger is caused by the better seal and the additional friction between the tubing and plunger caused by the springs behind the pads. If rubber or neoprene is placed between a set of pads and the plunger body, the improved seal results in a much slower plunger fall. The bypass type of plunger has a valve that opens to reduce restriction of gas flow past the plunger. The bypass creates a large opening through the plunger, and this large opening allows fluids to flow with less restriction past the plunger. The ability to bypass fluids through the plunger results in higher fall velocity. Brush plungers have the largest range of fall velocities for any type of plunger. A new brush with soft bristles that fill the area between the plunger and tubing will exhibit a very slow fall velocity (and therefore an efficient
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plunger). Other brush plungers have stiff nylon bristles that do not contact the tubing wall; this type of brush plunger falls much faster, having a poorer seal. A worn-out brush that appears to be smooth and shiny because of paraffin clogging the bristles, or that has worn bristles that do not contact the tubing, can fall very fast. If a worn plunger is replaced, then the resulting increase in gas production can quickly pay off the cost of the new plunger. Solid types of plungers that have spiral grooves at the top and bottom of the plunger spin as they fall during shutin. This spinning motion of the plunger results in slower fallvelocities.
Conclusions
Knowing the plunger-fall velocity for specific well conditions will ensure that the plunger will reach the bottom of the tubing by the end of the shut-in period. Use of an acoustic instrument is an effective method to determine the fall velocity during the shut-in time period and provides a calibration point to enter into the general fall-velocity model. Maximum production from the plunger-lift installation will be obtained by having the shortest possible shut-in time equal to the time required for the plunger to reach bottom, as long as sufficient casing pressure exists to return the plunger and accumulated liquid to the surface. JPT
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Foamer Technology Optimizes Artificial Lift in the Alliance Shale-Gas Field

ecently, Quicksilver Resources and Eni E&P, through its subsidiary Eni US Operating, began a common effort to optimize production and lift costs in the Alliance shale-gas field in the prolific Barnett shale play in Texas. Such efforts included a deeper analysis of artificial-lift performance and exploitation of other deliquefication technologies. Previously, foaming agents had been seldom deployed, but now a comprehensive assessment of their technical and economic performance has been conducted.
Water Rate, B/D
4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 Apr-11 May-11 May-11 Jun-11 Jul-11 Aug-11 Sep-11 Csg, psi
2000 1750 1500
Gas Inj. Rate, Mcf/D
Gas Injection
1250 1000 750 500 250 0 Oct-11 Tbg, psi
Net Gas Rate, Mcf/D
Water Rate, B/D
Inj. Gas, Mcf/D
Introduction
Hydraulic fracturing is the key technology in unlocking production of shale-gas wells. The production of huge amounts of pumped water affects the life of a shale-gas well; the first phase and de watering methods have to be considered as crucial aspects of a shale-gas development. In fact, as a consequence of reservoir depletion, the gas rate decreases to a point at which the water cannot be transported out of the wellbore and starts toaccumulate. Methods such as gas lift and plunger lift and the use of smaller tubing dia meters, pumps, and foaming agents are commonly adopted to control this situation. Foaming agents do not need downhole modification, can be tested easily on existing wells and facilities, and are chemically compatible with corrosion inhibitors, so the same injection points and devices can be used.
Fig. 1Production profile for a well with a lateral length of 3,000 ft and 2.375in. tubing.
Shale-Gas Production Wells and Liquid Loading: Alliance Field. As of March 2012, gas production for Alliance is approximately 176 MMcfD. The field counts more than 200 wells spread over an area larger than 65 km and clustered in more than 60 well pads, each enclosing a variable number of wellheads. Most wells are horizontal and packerless, with a vertical depth of approximately 7,400 ft, and are stimulated by hydraulic fracturing. To stimulate the entire lateral length, hydraulic-fracturing treatments are performed by isolating smaller portions of the lateral, called stages. The number of stages depends on the length of the horizontal drain and the spacing of each treatment. In the Alliance field,
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 160282, Artificial-Lift Optimization With Foamer Technology in the Alliance Shale-Gas Field by Lisa Farina, Claudio Passucci, Alberto Di Lullo, and Emanuele Negri, Eni; Osvaldo Pascolini, Eni US Operating; and Shawn Anderson and Stan Page, Quicksilver, prepared for the 2012 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, San Antonio, Texas, USA, 810 October. The paper has not been peerreviewed.
a spacing of approximately 400 ft is usually considered, with up to 20 stages. For each stage, approximately 10,000 bbl of water is injected, so a typical well of 6,000 ft of horizontal length with 15 stages implies a water volume close to 150,000 bbl. Almost all the wells have gas lift valves (typically 9 to 12), with the last one set at the deepest injection point in the tubing. During the first development phase of the field, lift gas was fed by a multistage gas compressor installed at the well pad. At the beginning, the well produces through the annulus [outer diameter (OD) of 5.5 in.], with a gas-production peak of 4 MMcfD and a water production between 1,000 and 2,000 B/D. As the reservoir pressure decreases and gas production drops to approximately 2 MMcfD, production is switched to the tubing to increase flowvelocity. Finally, as a consequence of gasrate reduction below the critical lifting rateusually approximately 1 MMscfD for a 2.375-in. tubing per Alliance experiencethe well starts to load and gas lift injection is performed. A production
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Pressure, psi
Gas Inj. Rate, Mcf/D
5000 4500
Csg Production
2500
Tbg Production
2250
profile for a well with a lateral length of 3,000 ft and 2.375-in. tubing is shown in Fig 1. Use of Foamer To Reduce Gas Lift and Increase Gas Production. The multiphase-flow behavior in a vertical conduit is categorized through several basic flow regimes. A gas well with high rate (high velocity) is able to continuously lift liquids to the surface in an annular mist-flow regime. Tubing walls are coated with a liquid film, but the pressure gradient is determined predominantly by the gas flow. With decreasing gas velocity, the flow regime becomes a slug annular transition flow. Further decline of the gas production causes the slug-flow regime, where gas bubbles expand as they rise into larger bubbles and slugs. Liquid transported with these slugs can fall back in the wellbore and increase the pressure gradient. A gas well in this situation can still produce a high amount of gas as long as there is enough energy provided by the reservoir to lift fluids, but production may become unstable and a small increase in the backpressure can kill the well. If no actions are taken when the well reaches the bubble-flow regime, the fluid column in the wellbore builds up until the liquid hydrostatic head kills the well, completely stopping production. Foamers reduce the critical velocity by changing the physical properties of the liquid being transported: The surface activity of the foamer reduces the surface tension of the liquid, facilitating the dispersion of gas bubbles in the liquid and thus decreasing the overall liquid density. Field Trial: Surfactant Application by Continuous Injection. The first candidates for the foamer application have been selected from wells with a water production of less than 50 B/D. If the wells were already treated with lift gas, the goal of the application was to reduce the artificial-lift costs, perhaps while increasing the net gas production; for candidates where gas lift was not available, foamer injection was tested to obtain a better water recovery and to optimize well performance. For wells without a production packer, the foamer has been pumped continuously into the tubing/
casing annulus through a chemical- injection line already installed for antiscale and anticorrosion treatments. This method is very flexible and inexpensive, requiring at the surface only a chemical-injection package consisting of a surface pump and tank. In wells with a production packer, a capillary string has been introduced into the tubing. Capillary strings are very small stainlesssteel tubings, with an OD of 0.25 in. for Alliance field application, installed with a slickline truck down to the desired depth. This solution is more expensive, but it has the advantage of applying the optimum dosage of foamer at the optimum downhole injection point. Field Trial: Preliminary Laboratory Tests. To select the best product and dosage for foamer candidates, multi phase software and laboratory tests with different foams and field- produced fluids were used. The two standard test methods performed for measurement of foam and evaluation of surfactant included the foam-in-aqueous-media test (blender test) and the column/cylinder test (dynamic test). Liquid samples have been dosed with different concentrations of surfactants and put into a 1-L measuring cylinder. In the blender test, the solution is placed in the unit and foamed by the high-shear blender, while in the column test, a gas source is used to reproduce field conditions. The goal of these tests is to provide information about the maximum height of foam and the time it takes for that maximum height to collapse. Field tests are also performed. In this case, 100 mL of produced water is added with different foamer concentrations with the aim of optimizing the dosage: The starting point is usually 1 ppm, increased to 2,00010,000 ppm according to gas characteristics. The fluid is then put in a 1000-mL graduated cylinder, and a rotometer is used to add a flow of gas. Displaced foam and liquid are collected through a discharge tube into a 500-mL graduated cylinder, and the time required for the foam to reach the maximum height is recorded. Foam and liquid are collected in the 500-mL graduated cylinder until the liquids no longer flow from the 1000-mL cylin-
der. Foamer products are evaluated by the time taken to complete the test, the volume of fluids removed, foam density and bubble-size characterization, emulsion tendency, and water/condensate dispersion. Well 1: Annulus Foamer Injection and Gas Lift. The well has a lateral length of approximately 2,100 ft. The completion is packerless, with 2.375-in. production tubing and 10 gas lift valves. Before the foamer test, it produced close to 300Mcf/D of net gas, with a water production of 1520B/D and a lift-gas rate of approximately 500 Mcf/D. Foamer was injected into the annulus at an initial rate of 6gal/D and optimized to 4 gal/D. During the treatment, the gas lift rate was reduced progressively to 25 Mcf/D, with no changes in water recovered and a benefit in gas net production since the beginning of the treatment of approximately 50 Mcf/D. O perating-expense (OPEX) results were also positive: the average reduction of OPEX in the period was approximately 15%. Well 2: Annulus Foamer Injection, No Gas Lift. This well has a lateral length of approximately 2,300 ft. It has been completed with a 2.875-in. tubing with no packer; gas lift valves have been installed. Before the foamer treatment, gas production was approximately 500 Mcf/D with a water production of 10 B/D. Foamer injection started at a rate of 6 gal/D, then was optimized to 4 gal/D to sustain production, helping the well deliquefication. The injection of chemical in this case caused an increase in the OPEX, because before foamer treatment, the well was treated only with a less expensive injection of anticorrosive and antiscale products. The results in terms of production, however, were positive, with an average gas-production increase of 130 Mcf/D. Well 3: Capillary-String Injection. This well has a lateral length of 2,600ft with no packer. It has been completed with a 2.375-in. production string and 12 gas-lift valves. In this case, foamer was pumped through a 0.25-in. capillary string installed to the tubing bottom, at the lowest possible injection
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point. Before the treatment, well performance was rapidly declining because of the inability of the well to produce water despite a gas- injection rate of approximately 400Mcf/D. As soon as the foamer injection started, gas and water production were re-established, and gas injection could be reduced to less than 100 Mcf/D. The average gas net increase from the beginning of the treatment was
approximately 80 Mscf/D, with an average gas lift reduction of 360 Mcf/D that caused a 57% OPEX reduction.
Conclusions
Foamer technology was implemented in the Alliance field in several ways, achieving generally positive outcomes.For this reason, foamer deployment has been progressively extended to approximate-
ly 30% of the wells. Since the beginning of the application, an average net gasrate increase of 5.7 MMcfD has been observed, with a lift-gas-rate reduction of approximately 10 MMcf/D. Foamer injection offered an OPEX savings of approximately 13% owing to gas lift reduction and good deliqueficationperformances, often resulting in a production increase.JPT
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TECHNOLOGY
Simon Chipperfield, SPE, is manager of special projects at Santos. During the past 17 years, he has held positions in petroleum engineering (drilling, completions, and stimulation) and reservoir engineering. Chipperfield previously worked for Shell International E&P. He was awarded the 2007 SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal. Chipperfield has authored more than 20 technical publications in the areas of hydraulic fracturing, reservoir engineering, completion technology, and sand control. He holds a petroleum engineering degree with honors from the University of New South Wales. Chipperfield serves on the JPT Editorial Committee and the SPE International Awards Committee and has served as a reviewer for the SPE Production & Operations journal.
unconventional resources
Unconventional gas is poised to enter its Golden Age and to effect positive global change if it can meet three challenges. Consider the 7 billion people on Earth who use energy each day. Consider the World Health Organization statistic that 3% of all world health issues are related to indoor burning of fossil fuels. Consider the potential effects of global warming and the fact that gas emits less greenhouse gas than coal, currently the most prevalent energy source. As you consider this global perspective, you will recognize the biggest driver of energy demandnamely, the human desire to sustain and improve the well-being of ourselves, our families, and our communities. You will also notice the positive effect gas can have. Through 2040, we will see enormous population and economic growth that will increase energy demand by more than 40%, according to an ExxonMobil study, with gas projected to surpass coal demand in the next decade. Gas-driven changes have already begun. In fact, the use of gas instead of coal in the power-generation sector is already helping slow global carbon dioxide emissions, and, in the United States and other developed economies, emissions are actually falling. Again, unconventional gas will drive further transformation if we can overcome three critical challenges. The first is our ability to deliver the technologies necessary to unlock the vast global unconventional gas potential of more than 14,000 Tcf. For example, horizontal, hydraulically fractured wells have been a key to unlocking the shale potential in North America, but are they the ideal technology in other parts of the world, and are they ideal for coal and tight gas? The second is our ability to deliver a cost-effective, reliable, and timely energy option for the world. For upstream engineers and geoscientists, cost-effective, efficient delivery includes the development of smart, streamlined factory processes and technologies in the field and office throughout the appraisal and development phases. The third challenge is our demonstration of social responsibility, measured by the public. This will be based on our capability to leave the environment better than we found it, by providing jobs, supporting local investment, and maintaining the highest environmental standards. If we can deliver in these three areas, the Golden Age of unconventional gas will occur and make a better world. And I am confident that we will. JPT
Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

IPTC 16608 Integrating an LNG Plant With an Unconventional Gas Supply by Chris Langley, Arrow Energy, et al. SPE 162777 What Dont We Know About Self-Sourced Oil Reservoirs: Challenges and Potential Solutions by Steve Larter, University of Calgary, et al. SPE 163987 Optimizing Remote Unconventional Gas Exploration by Martin Rylance, BP SPE 149872 Stimulation Unlocks Coalbed Methane: Lessons Learned in India by Shahvir Pooniwala, Baker Hughes
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Focus on Unconventional Reservoirs Requires Advancements in Technology
n the current high-oil-/low-gas-price North American environment, and considering the new options available for well-completions technology in unconventional reservoirs, recent industry activities have turned their focus to the areas of liquid-rich shale (LRS) and light tight oil (LTO) along with unconventional tight and shale gas. Integrated workflows are important to the successful execution of this portfolio, and cutting-edge integrated technologies must be viewed as keyenablers.
Geophysical Technologies for Exploration and Development of Unconventional Resources: Airborne Surface Borehole Laboratory
Gravity Magnetic Electromagnetic (EM)
2D, 3D, and 4D seismic Microseismic Gravity EM
Vertical seismic profile Microseismic Acoustic logging
Static and dynamic mechanical rock properties
Fig. 1Main geophysical technologies in exploration and development of UG, LTO, and LRS plays.
Introduction
Commercially and economically viable shale plays require the presence of some key conditions, which fall into two groups: reservoir quality/productivity and fracability (i.e., the ability to place effective and conductive stimulations). Factors that affect reservoir quality and productivity are the matrix porosity and permeability, organic carbon content, maturity and kerogen type, and fluid composition and pressure/volume/ temperature properties. Two key factors that affect fracability are mineralogy and local in-situ-stress magnitude, orientation, and distribution. To develop unconventional gas (UG), LTO, and LRS plays more effectively, significant advancements in understanding geological, geophysical, geochemical, geomechanical, petrophysical, reservoir, and stimulation properties have been
made in the last decade. However, we are still just scratching the surface, and rapid integration across disciplines is required for success. In addition, continuous learning from exploration through to the end of field life must occur.
Geophysical Practices and Technologies
Geophysical technologies have always played a crucial role in the exploration and development of unconventional resources. They are used to define subsurface properties and to detect and monitor microseismic activities in the subsurface during completion and production. The recent, rapid increase in unconventional appraisal activity and the large diversity of geological settings require continuous innovation in geophysical-data collection, processing, and interpretation. Engineering activities, such as well and completion design, hydraulic- fracture
This article, written by Editorial Manager Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper SPE 163988, Practical Insights and Benefits of Integrating Technology Into Exploration, Appraisal, and Development of Unconventional Gas and LiquidRich Shale Reservoirs, by Bora Oz, SPE, David Braun, SPE, Sanjay Vitthal, SPE, Viannet Okouma, SPE, Mathieu Molenaar, SPE, Chandran Peringod, SPE, Sergei Kazakoff, SPE, Yongyi Li, Michele Asgar-Deen, and David Langille, SPE, Shell Canada, prepared for the 2013 SPE Middle East Unconventional Gas Conference and Exhibition, Muscat, Oman, 2830 January. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
monitoring, and production analysis and forecasting, are the major drivers for geophysical technologies. The three most common geophysical technologies are surface seismic, nonseismic methods (mainly potential-field methods), and microseismic or other downhole acoustic techniques (Fig. 1). For exploration and appraisal, a large number of 2D-seismic lines, with limited 3D-seismic surveys, are required data sets. In the development stage, 3D- seismic data are crucial for reservoir characterization and well placement (as well as engineering-related applications). Advanced interpretations have become an essential part of understanding play complexity, optimizing well placement, and mitigating drilling geohazards. Seismic data also play an important role in providing geological boundaries for building geological frameworks and geomechanical models. Seismic inversion is another workhorse in the subsurface evaluation of unconventional plays. It provides invaluable quantitative reservoir information for well- and areal-based delineation of sweet spots. Seismic-derived geomechanical rock properties are recognized as invaluable in understanding and analyzing completion and production results. This type of data set may also be
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Fig. 2Example of an effective-stress map.
Fig. 3Pad layout for an unconventional reservoirfive horizontal wells with multiple fractures.
used for production prediction. Poststack and prestack seismic attributes are particularly useful in mapping and characterizing natural-fracture systems. The most commonly used seismic attributes include curvatures, semblance, ant track, and fracture intensity and orientation. Nonseismic methods are mainly referred to as potential field methods, which include gravity, magnetic, and electromagnetic. There is a new role for these traditional technologies to play in derisking unconventional resource plays because, in comparison with seismic data, potential field data are less expensive to collect and often cover an area significantly larger than that covered by seismic surveys. Microseismic has become a routinely used technology for monitoring stimulations and analyzing completion efficiency in unconventional plays across the globe. This technology enhances our understanding of hydraulic stimulation and provides information for optimizing stimulation design.
Geomechanics, Fracability, and Effective-Stress Estimation
Rock geomechanical properties play a key role in unconventional-reservoir appraisal and development because they influence the dimension and configuration of the stimulated rock volume (SRV), as well as wellbore stability during drilling operations. Geomechanical characterization consists of determining the in-situ stress regime, stress magnitude, rock mechanical properties, and porepressure. Even in reservoirs that have laminations, which can be vertically connected using hydraulic-fracture stimulation, it is often difficult to place a durable, conductive fracture that will maintain hy-
draulic conductivity and continuity over time. Therefore, the landing depth of the horizontal lateral within the pay section is critical. Because most shale reservoirs are laminated, it is critical to design and execute hydraulic-fracture jobs that maximize effective vertical fracture growth. However, if overburden is the minimum principal stress (even in only a few laminations), the vertical coverage may be limited because hydraulic fractures would tend to grow horizontally. Fracability is another key parameter that dictates how hydraulic fractures initiate, extend, and develop to establish an effective and conductive SRV. Fracability is a function of both static properties and dynamic reservoir behavior throughout the exploration and development phases. It is a function of the reservoir structure, reservoir properties, and in-situconditions. Estimating dynamic properties, through limited static data, early in play development is difficult at best and is not even possible in most cases. An alternative approach is to quantify/estimate selected key parameters from static data and provide a range of dynamic behaviors that is based on these parameters, which include Stress anisotropy Brittleness Pressure-dependent leakoff Rock-mechanical-property contrast Material- (shear-) failure potential Fracture and matrix compliance
Effective-Stress Estimation and Mapping
The estimation of effective stress (i.e., total stress minus pore pressure) is cru-
cial to the success of many unconventional plays. Pressure prediction, the most common parameter in geomechanical modeling, is more complex in unconventional plays because measurements during drilling are not reliable because of the very-low- or no-flow conditions often encountered. Two field-proven test methods generally used to estimate unconventional pore pressure are diagnostic fracture injection tests (DFITs) and shut-in pressure-buildup tests. Through extensive data collection and careful reinterpretation of a number of DFITs, important relationships between effective stress and productivity have been discovered for reservoir layers in unconventional plays. It is clear that production is limited for wells that have high effective stress and that production improves substantially as the effective stress decreases. Thus, early screening and sweet-spotting efforts will benefit from including an analysis of effectivestress. To this end, a modeling scheme was developed that first calculates strain resulting from 3D faulting and extension/ compression of individual geological layers under different tectonic conditions and then combines these to locally estimate total deformation. The primary goal of this modeling scheme is to identify areas of low net stress, which will likely be more productive and more optimal for hydraulic fracture initiation and propagation and for the ultimate production. An example is presented in Fig. 2, which shows the effective-stress map for a particular reservoir layer in an unconventional play. Lighter colors show potential areas where effective stress is low, and warmer colors highlight the areas having higher net stress and, therefore, low estimated production rates.
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Unconventional Well Completions and Stimulation
Unconventional wells require stimulations that are orders of magnitude larger than those for conventional wells. This is often achieved by drilling horizontal wells and pumping many hydraulic fractures along the lateral length. In UG, LRS, and LTO development, horizontal wells with laterals of 3,000 ft or more and 30100 individual fractures are not uncommon. Even with this high stimulation intensity, typical recoveries per well range from 2 to 10% of the resource in place. Therefore, many closely spaced wells, often directionally drilled from pads, are required to reach the desired recovery. Fig. 3 shows an example of a typical pad layout in an unconventional asset. Completions and stimulations of unconventional wells typically account for 4060% of the total well cost, so optimizing these operations is critical. Completion and Fracture Diagnostics. Fracture diagnostics refers to techniques that provide direct and indirect measurements of the parameters that influence fracture geometry and performance. Examples of diagnostics include Microseismicto estimate fracture geometry and orientation DFITsto measure minimum stress, pore pressure, and reservoir transmissibility Production-logging toolsto measure production from each fracture stage Liquid-soluble, solid, and other tracersdifferent types are used to measure, for example,
fracture-height growth or to estimate which fractures are contributing in a multifracture environment Optical fiberto measure wellbore temperatures and noise over time Pressure-monitoring wells dedicated wells to measure pressure depletion over time and that can be used to history match the fracture geometry and reservoirpermeability
Optimizing Diversion of Hydraulic Fractures
Diversion of hydraulic fractures along a horizontal or vertical well to maximize stimulation effectiveness is important for field-development success; how ever, this is an economic balancing act. In the one extreme case, each fracture could be pumped individually, resulting in an extremely high well-completion cost but the highest possible stimulation efficiency. The other extreme case is to stimulate all zones at the same time with no concern for diversion of the fluid; this notionally results in the lowest possible well-completion cost but also the least effective stimulation. The best economic solution lies somewhere in the middle; to this end, different techniques for diverting fluid have been tested. Two such techniques are limitedentry perforating and sliding sleeves/ fracture ports. Limited-Entry Perforating. When wells are cased and cemented, the simplest way to connect to the reservoir is to perforate. Consequently, for many unconvention-
al reservoirs, companies often use the limited-entry, plug-and- perforate technique. Even though limited-entry design is relatively straightforward, its effectiveness depends on the rigor of the design, the fracture-fluid and proppant properties, appropriate zone grouping practices, and the perforation strategyitself. In addition to optimizing limited entry, it is also critical to optimize the entire completion system for shorter fracture cycle time. For example, the entire completion can be optimized by using one-run wireline-conveyed millable composite bridge plugs and multistage perforation guns to reduce cycle time. This technology is particularly suitable for multiwall-pad completions. Other enabling technologies include High-pressure, sand-tolerant composite fracture plugs Pump-down wireline and flowthrough bridge-plug systems Limited entry perforating charges and techniques Downhole mills run on production tubing using snubbing rigs Fracture-Sleeve Diversion. A relatively recent innovation, which is highly optimized for horizontal-well completions, is the ball-drop, sliding-fracture-sleeve system, as shown in Fig. 4. In these systems, a series of graded balls is pumped between fracture stages to open successive sleeves, from the toe to the heel. This system eliminates the need for setting plugs and perforating. As a result, the fracture operation is a continuous one, which saves considerable time and costs. Openhole systems are limited in
Fig. 4Schematic of a ball-drop/fracture-port system.
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the number of fracture stages by the ball sizes. Current systems that use balls with 1/16-in.-diameter gradation can deliver up to 35 stages. However, maximum stimulation pump rates are limited through the smaller ports and there can be incremental drilling costs because of borehole-size and -quality requirements. These systems can be installed in open holes and cemented in place to eliminate the need forpackers.
Fracturing Fluids and Proppants
Selection of fracturing fluids and proppants is important for maximizing conductive fracture lengths and heights. Shells philosophy is that the optimal fracturing fluid and proppant is dependent on the subsurface properties and completion design. Each field pumps fracturing fluids that are tailored to the specific subsurface and operational conditions. In general, most fracturing fluids for UG, LRS, and LTO must meet the following criteria: Minimize health, safety, and environmental effects.
Prevent clay swelling, fines migration, and emulsions or incompatibility with reservoir fluids. Maximize fracture cleanup. Achieve desired fracture height andlength. Be able to recycle and reuse fluids and reduce pumping costs. Field-specific geochemical and geomechanical data are analyzed, and each field is matched to an optimized fracturing fluid. Fracturing fluids pumped in various fields include slickwater, gelled water, gelled oil, gelled propane, nitrogen-foamed water, polycarbon di oxide foam, pure carbon dioxide, and acid (including viscosity-diverted acid). Proppants are chosen on the basis of formation-specific rock mechanical and chemical properties and the resulting fracture conductivity, estimated ultimate recovery (EUR), and cost. The full well life cycle is considered to maximize long-term production without overcapitalization. Proppants pumped include high-strength ceramics for deep wells,
5023cMP_2.125x4.375 JrnlPetrolTech
resin-coated sands to control proppant flowback and fines migration, natural sand, and ultralightweight high-strength plastics with a density close to that ofwater.
Conclusion
UG, LRS, and LTO plays will be a major part of the global energy industry for many years to come, and we are just scratching the surface of this unique and complex challenge. To meet this challenge, more than ever, rapid integration across all disciplinesfrom subsurface to wells and facilitiesis required for success. Furthermore, technology should be considered a key enabler for reducing exploration and development costs, increasing well EUR, and mitigating health, safety, and environmental risks. The sooner technology is deployed in the exploration and development life cycle, the more substantial the effect from major economies of scale will be, considering that the benefits are multiplied by hundreds to thousands ofwells. JPT
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Holistic Appraisal Strategy Aims To Get the Most Out of Unconventional Reservoirs
his paper presents a pragmatic approach to frame, evaluate, and compare appraisal strategies in resource plays. The unique approach starts with framing the overall field-appraisal plan, holistically, and then progresses to evaluating the most commonly encountered individual appraisal decisions, enabling teams to answer the following questions: What are the key uncertainties, and which appraisal options should we consider to resolve them? Is there value in running a pilot to determine the optimal well spacing, and, if so, what is the best pilot design? Do we want to run a completions pilot, and how should we configure it? Do we need to pilot where and how to orient our laterals? Can we justify seismic to highgrade our drilling program?
NPV
1.00 0.90 0.80 Cumulative Probability 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 0.00
Fig. 1Example of a cumulative probability plot.
analysis practices to gain insight on the strategic direction. Both framing and analysis are important and necessary.
Frame and Evaluate the Development Strategy Without New Information
Introduction
Open, Structured, Auditable Decision Process. Decision analysis is designed in two key phases, framing and analysis. Framing involves defining the decision problem, setting the objectives and decision criteria, agreeing on the alternatives to be evaluated, and structuring the evaluation. The analysis involves quantifying the key uncertainties and their effect on the development, estimating the uncertainty-reduction potential for each of the appraisal options, and applying standard value-ofinformation (VOI)
Understanding the Risk Profile. Appraisal strategies are information strategies and, as such, require a VOI workflow to evaluate them. To define the value that information adds to an asset, the team must first understand the value of the asset without additional information. Therefore, VOI=(asset value with information)(asset value withoutinformation). The evaluation results generated in this phase set the baseline asset value without information that excludes collecting any new information other than what one would normally collect in the course of a development.
This article, written by Editorial Manager Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper SPE 162776, Appraisal Excellence in Unconventional Reservoirs, by M.K. Burkholder, SPE, E.M. Coopersmith, SPE, and J.H. Schulze, SPE, Decision Frameworks, prepared for the 2012 SPE Canadian Unconventional Resources Conference, Calgary, 30October1 November. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
A cumulative probability plot displays the risk profile of a development the chance of having a positive economic developmentand is generated using probabilistic analysis methods. An example cumulative probability plot is displayed in Fig. 1. Three possible zero netpresent-value (NPV) points (A, B, and C) are mapped on the plot. If the NPV zero point of the asset development is near C, there is a very low chance of achieving positive economic results (approximately 7%). In this situation, there is likely little value in appraisal because there is such an extremely low probability of finding an economic development. The reverse is true if the NPV zero point is near A. There is such a high chance of finding an economic development (approximately 91%) that there may also not be any value in appraisal. The team instead might consider stepping directly into development. When the NPV zero point is near B, there is considerable upside potential and downside risk of development and, as such, there is likely to be higher value in appraisal. Next, use a tornado sensitivity plot to identify the critical subsurface uncertainties on which to focus the appraisal
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200 Initial Rates 37.50% Liquid Content 23.60% Well Cost 16.67% EUR/Well 15.78% Infrastructure Cost 3.68% Well-Cost Learning Curve 2.67% Facilities Cost 0.09% 200
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Fig. 2Example of a tornado sensitivity plot. EUR=estimated ultimate recovery.
efforts. Fig. 2 shows an example in which three of the top four uncertainties relate to the subsurfaceinitial rates, liquid content, and estimated ultimate recovery/ well. One of the immediate insights from the tornado plot is that, if initial rates or liquid content turn out to be low, the development NPV will likely be negative.
Frame the Options for the High-Level Appraisal Roadmap
Industry is tending toward appraisal in two major phasesto find an economically viable well design and to place that well optimally in the reservoir. Both phases may include multiple wells or pilots, depending on the size or the land position, the complexity of the reservoir, and the number of well and completion designs under consideration. The benefits of a good frame cannot be overstated. Defined as a groups
bounded viewpoint of a decision problem, framing is often described as frontend loading of an evaluation. It is an efficiency process, where, for a relatively small investment of time upfront, a team can save days, weeks, and sometimes months of rework in evaluation. The steps involved in framing standard decision problems are 1. Define the problem. 2. Raise and sort issues. 3. Determine the problem focus. 4. Build a menu of alternatives. 5. Develop strategies to evaluate andcompare. In framing information strategies, one new step is inserted between Steps 3 and 4, which link uncertainties to development decisions. Additionally, in appraising unconventional assets, teams often need to frame at two levels, the high-level appraisal roadmap and the individual appraisal stage.
Observation Wells per Pilot 3
Linking Uncertainties to Development Decisions. Information tends to increase the value of an asset if it provides the team with the ability to stop a project when it is likely to fail economically or to improve a project by optimizing the subsequent development decisions. Teams must identify the development decisions that hinge upon the resolution of each key uncertainty. An uncertainty table is designed for this purpose. Uncertainty tables are invaluable tools for appraisal decision problems because they guide teams to link the uncertainties to development decisions; thus, teams begin to take a closerlook at the commercial effects of their appraisaldecisions. Developing the Menu for Potential Appraisal Roadmaps. The insights from the previous steps are used along with standard decision- framing techniques to
Strategy Full Monty
Pilot Location Two pilots, one in west and one in east
(wells/section)
Well Spacing
Pilot Duration 1 year
Other Information None
Objective Learn about EUR per well through more wells and production data Learn about EUR per well through technology and fracture resolution
Rationale Regional variation will be better understood, before sanction Area to the west has fewer wells to date; prove technology for future applications
West Is Best
One pilot in west
6 months
Microseismic Distributed temperature sensors Core
Fig. 3Example strategies for a well-spacing pilot.
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develop a strategy table representing the options under debate for the high-level roadmap, or areaappraisalstrategy. This is used like a menu where options from each columncan be selected in combination to form an individualstrategy. Strategy tables are used when the number of alternatives under debate and the combinations thereof become too large to track. There are many instancesin appraising conventional assets where strategy tables are not required because the list of appraisal alternatives is small. This is rarely the case in appraising unconventional reservoirs.
Evaluate Individual AppraisalStages
Frame Individual AppraisalStages
The frame for each individual appraisal stage is a next-level frame in that it is derived from the main appraisal roadmap but contains more detail. The highlevel frame represents what we are going to do, and the next-level frame represents how we plan to do it. The framing steps are the same as those outlined earlier in this paper, with a focus on a particular individual appraisal stage. Strategies are developed with an eye to solving the problem using different approaches that are as diverse as possible. Fig. 3 illustrates two strategies. Both are well-spacing pilots, but they are designed to resolve the uncertainty on recovery per well through different actions. The first strategy, Full Monty, aims at understanding recovery per well through a greater number of wells spread out in two different areas of the reservoir. This pilot, if run, would help the team understand the regional variation better. The second pilot strategy, West Is Best, aims at understanding recovery per well through fewer wells and the use of more technology. This pilot would be placed in the western section of the reservoir where fewer wells have been drilled to date. It also makes use of microseismic (to determine the extent of each fracture treatment), distributed temperature sensors (to determine which of the fractures are producing), and core (to understand the local rockcharacteristics). A comparison of the analysis of the two strategies will lead to insights to help the team select an even better hybrid strategy for the spacing pilot.
Early in the life of conventional petroleum reservoirs, teams are appraising to determine if the in-place volumes are large enough to justify a development. At this stage, the key development decision is often a go/no-go decisionfor example, Should we continue to appraise the asset or walk away? In unconventional resource plays, in-place volume is not the issue. Early on, the issues center on understanding fluid type, potential for commercial rates, and materiality of the acreage position. Soon after, the team redirects the focus onto well design. The underlying development decisions tend to be go/ no-go atfirst, andthey transition to how to go decision problems soon thereafter. The steps to complete an a nalysisof an individual appraisal stage are asfollows. Value the Asset Without Information. A decision tree for the spacing-pilot evaluation is used to estimate the value of the full-field development for different potential well-spacing plans: four, six, or eight wells per section. The NPV of each of the nine possible outcomes is calculated individually. Assess the Reliability of Information for the Individual Appraisal Stage Strategies. The reliability of information refers to the accuracy of the information and the teams ability to interpret the true state of nature correctly from a given information source. Once assessed, information reliability is applied, using Bayes rule, to estimate how much the team might reduce their uncertainty (i.e., upgrade or downgrade their probabilities) after collecting and analyzing the appraisal information. Value the Asset With Information. These probabilities are carried into the analysis of the value of the asset with the spacing-pilot information. The full decision tree shows the well-spacing decision policies depending on the interpretation from the pilot. The rolled-back expected value of the development with the Full Monty spacing pilot is USD 759 million. The value of the development without further appraisal is USD 720 million. The value of the information, therefore,
is USD 39 million (759 million720 million). This additional value is possible because the reliability of information of the Full Monty appraisal pilot is high enough to help the team optimize the well spacing in the development. Gain Insight and Look for Hybrid Appraisal Strategies To Consider. The insight in the preceding paragraph is an example of the importance, again, of moving up and down the branches of the decision trees to gain insight and develop potential hybrid strategies. These insights almost always lead to new ideas that improve the value of the asset, often incrementally better and sometimes significantly so. In all cases, the analysis leads to clearer decision making.
Agree on the High-Level Appraisal Roadmap
With all the evaluations completed, the team can return to the high-level roadmap to structure the area uncertaintyreduction plan. The process is everevolving as the team completes each new evaluation and collects new information from the reservoir. It is a team tool designed to spur ideas and challenge conventions in an open and auditable way. Most importantly, it stimulates a focused dialogue between the team members and decision makers, ultimately resulting in improved decisions.
Conclusions
Workflow steps and tools that are particularly useful in unconventional-resource appraisal include Probabilistic analysis of the development, to highlight the risk profile and identify the effective decisions on which to focus appraisal efforts Influence diagrams, to display the relationships between subsurface uncertainties to highlight the interdependencies Uncertainty tables, to identify key project uncertainties, the development decisions they affect, and the information sources to consider to reduce the uncertainties Strategy tables, to brainstorm and define different area appraisal strategies and
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individual appraisal stage strategies to consider Next-level frames of individual appraisal information stages (such as pilots), to break the problem into detailed elements for insight VOI analysis and uncertaintyreduction forecasting of individual appraisal informationstages
A high-level uncertaintyreduction roadmap, to guide appraisal and or uncertainty reduction efforts from start tofinish Each step is designed to generate an open conversation among team members and decision makers, with the ultimate aim of producing useful and interesting insights that improve decisions. JPT
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Drilling and Completion Technique Selection for Coalbed Methane Wells

any different completion techniques, such as vertical-well multiseam completions and multiple lateral wellbores drilled into a single coal seam, have been used to develop coalbed methane (CBM) reservoirs. Stimulation techniques include openhole underream, cavity creation, and hydraulic fracturing. This paper reviews the various techniques that have been used, providing rationales for use of each and commenting on their commercial success, and proposes a general selection-criteria approach that may be useful in the selection of a drilling and completion technique.
Fundamental Reservoir Parameters
Factors to be considered in the selection of the drilling and completion techniqueinclude Reservoir thickness Coal cleat/fracture permeability Coal cleat/fracture porosity Reservoir pressure Gas saturation and gas composition Number of seams Geologic complexity Minimum completeablethickness Dip Coal competency/hole integrity/ risk of collapse Surface access Economics, capital, and operating costs
In general, the following principles are suggested: Coal seams withlower permeabilityrequireagreater degree of stimulation,suchas hydraulic fracturingorcavitation, to achieve economic production rates and cumulative recovery. Thick, highly permeable coal seams require relatively little stimulation, while lowpermeability coal seams may require stimulation techniques or horizontal drilling. Large numbers of coal seams or highly structured, geologically complex coal seams may limit the optimal candidates to verticalwell-completion options only. Surface access or limitations in local services may drive the drilling and completion decision.
achieved because the resulting underreamed hole diameter is larger than the original hole diameter. This type of technique is best suited for thick, vertically continuous, highly permeable coal seams. The primary advantage of this technique is that it is very inexpensive relative to other options. Disadvantages for this technique are that caving of the formation may cause fill, which, in turn, may cause production problems; completion of deeper coal seams is nearly impossible; and completion of upper coal seams may be difficult and complicated.
Vertical Well, Cased and Openhole, Underream and Perforate Completion, Multiseam
Vertical Well, Openhole Underream Completion, SingleSeam
The major steps for this drilling and completion technique are Drilling the production hole to the top of the coal seam Running and cementing casing Drilling a hole through the coal seam Increasing the diameter of the hole by a technique known as underreaming (Fig. 1) From a reservoir-engineering perspective, the stimulation effect is
This technique is a variation of the preceding technique. In this technique, a hole is drilled to the top of the main target coal seam and casing is run and cemented as before. After underreaming, a bridge plug is set above the primary completion interval, and additional coal seams are completed according to typical plug-and-perforation techniques.
Vertical Well, Openhole Cavity Completion, Single Seam
This article, written by Editorial Manager Adam Wilson, contains highlights of paper IPTC 17153, Drilling and Completion Technique Selection Methodology for Coalbed Methane Wells, by J. Caballero, SPE, ExxonMobil Development Company, prepared for the 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Beijing, 2628 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission.
This drilling and completion technique (Fig. 2) is similar to the vertical-well openhole single-seam underream completion in that a hole is drilled to the top of the coal seam, where 7-in. casing is run and cemented. After the coal seam is drilled, instead of performing the underream technique, air compressors are used to inject air (and sometimes water and air) into the coal seam at a high rate and pressure. After injection, the well is opened to the atmosphere and the highpressure air is allowed to escape from the coal seam. This process causes individual pieces of coal to cave into the wellbore, after which they are circulated out
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Interbeds Borehole Drillstring
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Fig. 1Vertical openhole underream completion.
which increases the aperture of the cleat system, creating an additional stimulated zone.
Interbeds
Vertical Well, Cased and Perforated Hydraulic-Fracture Completion, Multiseam
Coal seam
810 ft Interbeds Cavity completion
Fig. 2Vertical openhole cavity completion.
of the wellbore. This process is repeated many times (perhaps 15 times or more). The latter injection cycles cause less coal to cave than the earlier cycles, and cuttings returns are monitored to determine when injection cycles no longer yield adequate caving to warrant further cycles. At the completion of the cavity process,
the well may be left open hole or a perforated liner may be installed. The stimulation achieved by the cavitation process can be attributed to two main mechanismsfirst, the increased diameter of the wellbore caused by the cavitation process; second, coal cleat relaxation in the area beyond the cavity,
This technique is by far the most common technique for drilling and completing CBM fields, especially where multiple completable seams are encountered and many or most of them need to be hydraulically fractured to achieve economic flow rates and cumulative recoveries. The technique involves drilling the production hole to 50100 ft below the lowest coal seam to be completed and running and cementing production casing. Typical total depths may extend to 4,000 ft. Zones are completed sequentially from bottom to top. The first zone to be completed is perforated (several individual coal seams may be included in each stage) and hydraulically fractured. The zone is then isolated, and the next zone is perforated and hydraulically fractured. Zonal isolation can be accom-
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Interbeds
1 km
Coal seam
Surface to inseam horizontal Fig. 3Surface-to-inseam horizontal well.
After cleanout of the openhole section of the vertical well, artificial-lift equipment is installed, with the pump typically set in or just above the underream section. Advantages of this technique are that a high recovery of gas in place can be achieved in a short period of time relative to that achieved by vertical wells, and it can be used in areas where hydraulic-fracturing capability is lack ing. Disadvantages include an inability to complete more than one coal seam with each set of inseam wells. Inseam-wellstability issues can cause partial or complete loss of an inseam-well section.
plished by several techniques such as plug-and-perforation, ball-and-baffle, or multizone- stimulation technology. Advantages of this technique are that all desired coal seams can be sequentially completed in stages, leaving nothing behind pipe. Coal particles and fines are generally well-controlled behind pipe, minimizing formation caving and associated production problems such as pump and equipment plugging and hole fill-up. Disadvantages may include somewhat higher costs and longer completion times, depending on the number of hydraulic-fracture stages. Wells may ex perience initial well-cleanup issues, such as sand and coal-fines production. Operators may control the initial rate of waterlevel reduction to manage these problems.
Vertical Well, Openhole Underream With Intercepting Single or Multiple Surface-to-Inseam Openhole Horizontal Wells, Single Seam
Vertical Well, Openhole Underream With Intercepting Surface-to-Inseam Openhole Multilateral Horizontal Wells
In this technique (Fig. 3), a vertical well is drilled with the vertical well, openhole underream, single seam method described earlier. A target is then placed in the underream section, and the surface-to-inseam horizontal well is drilled, typically from 1 km away, and intersects the underreamed section of the vertical well. Sensors in the drillstring are used to detect the target. Two or three passes may be required to hit the target. Typically, a perforated or slotted plastic liner is inserted into the open and unstimulated horizontal well to prevent collapse of the coal.
Interbeds
0.7 km
This technique is similar to the preceding technique in that a vertical well is drilled to the top of the coal seam and production casing is run and cemented. The coal seam is then drilled and underreamed. At this point, a nearby surfaceto-inseam well is drilled to a depth near the top of the coal seam. A tight-radius turn is made, and a horizontal inseam well intersects the underreamed portion of the vertical well (Fig. 4). The inseam well is then drilled through the coal, typically for approximately 0.7 miles. The drillstring is then retracted, and lateral wells are drilled into the coal seam in a pinnate pattern. Production is by pump in the vertical well. This type of drilling and completion technique has the same advantages and disadvantages as the surface-to-inseam technique previously discussed, with two additional disadvantages. It is not possible to install plastic liners in the multiple lateral well sections, and, in relatively thin coal seams and where geologic complexity exists, core-hole drilling may be required to locate the inseam-well sections properly.
Coal seam
Process for Determination of Proper Completion Technique
Surface to inseam multilateral Fig. 4Surface-to-inseam multilateral well.
In general, ranked from high to low permeability (from greater than 50 md to less than 0.1 md), appropriate drilling and completion techniques may be suggested as follows:
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Vertical well, openhole underream, single seam Vertical well, openhole cavity, single seam Vertical well, cased and perforated hydraulic fracture, multiseam Surface-to-inseam horizontal wells with vertical-well intercepts, single seam Multilateral with vertical-well intercepts The author suggests the following general workflow as a guide to developing the optimal drilling and completionstrategy. Gather Critical Reservoir Parameters. No attempt to develop an optimal drilling and completion strategy for a CBM resource can succeed unless it takes into consideration all of the critical reservoir parameters. Time and care should be taken to compile as accurate a description of the CBM resource as possible, using all the available data. Where parameters are unknown, best estimates must be made on the basis of experience and use of the best ana-
log available. Each parameter should be ranked with respect to certainty and economiceffect. Using Reservoir Simulation, Perform Spacing Optimization Study for Each Style of Completion To Be Considered. Some drilling and completion techniques may be ruled out immediatelyfor example, it will be difficult to develop a stack of 10 to 15 relatively thin coal seams with horizontal wells. Thus, with experience, it may be possible to use general guidelines to screen likely techniques. Once the likely drilling and completion techniques have been identified, reservoir simulation should be used to study and optimize spacing between wells or inseam laterals. For each case, incremental economics should be run to determine which spacing is optimum for each drilling and completion candidate. Run Field-Development Economics for Each Completion Style Based on Optimized Spacing. With optimal spacing estimated, full field-development scenarios can be studied for each drilling and completion technique. The de-
velopment plan should give consideration to total number of wells, location of pipelines, and central processing facilities. Net present value economics should be run, including capital and operating cost, gas prices, and reasonable timing assumptions. Perform Incremental Economic Analysis To Determine the Best Completion Technique. Once development scenarios have been economically evaluated, incremental economics can be run to compare one drilling and completion technique to another. For example, an area that would require two surface-toinseam wells intersecting a vertical well may require four vertical wells. Each surface-to-inseam well is more expensive, but fewer of them are required. The production profiles for the two drilling and completion techniques are different; therefore, one may have better net present value than the other. The surfaceto-inseam option may develop only one seam, but the vertical-well scenario can develop an additional small seam, with the resulting additional resource having an effect on project economics. JPT
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TECHNOLOGY
John D. Rogers, SPE, is vice president of operations at Fusion Reservoir Engineering Services, a SIGMA3 Integrated Reservoir Solutions Company, emphasizing petrophysics, rock physics, and reservoir modeling and simulation. He has more than 30 years of diversified experience, having previously worked as a production/ operations engineer for Amoco, as a research scientist for Petroleum Recovery Research Center of New Mexico Tech, and at the US Department of Energys National Energy Technology Laboratory in the oil and gas researchand-development program. Rogers holds BS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from New Mexico State University and an MS degree in petroleum engineering from Texas Tech University. Rogers has contributed to more than 30 publications in varied technical areas and has served on various SPE editorial and conference committees. He currently serves on the JPT EditorialCommittee.
CO2 APPLICATIONS
Research-and-development modeling has shown that CO2 can diffuse a small distance into the thick shale caprocks above brine aquifers used for sequestration and cause migration of siderite (iron carbonate), magnesite (magnesium carbonate), calcite, and other precipitates back into the target zone, which is what is wanted for mineral sequestration of CO2. I bring this up because, eventually, the industry may want to enhance the oil recovery from fractured shale oil (e.g., Bakken, Niobrara, and Monterey). A keynote speaker at the 2013 SPE Unconventional Reservoir Conference in The Woodlands, Texas, suggested that the industry may eventually want to improve recovery of the Bakken by waterflooding. CO2 might also be an enhanced-oil-recovery direction for shale oil and effect a dual benefit of storage of CO2. Shale (and other mudstones) has significantly more mineral components with iron and other metals (e.g., clays and pyrite) than do typical clastic and carbonate oil reservoirs. As a result, the geochemical reactions and adsorption will be more complex than the typical CO2 floods have shown over the last 30-plus years. A university laboratory effort was published in this focus area in 2011 and also in the SPE Journal on using organic-rich shale for CO2 storage. Today, reservoir simulators are robust and give the user great comfort in predicting how recovery performance will be affected by CO2 injection and, to a limited degree, geomechanical alterations. However, the industry currently has no functional true 3D reactive transport simulator that can help engineers efficiently model the CO2 flooding in shale where geochemical reactions and thermodynamic phase transitions take place simultaneously. Reservoirs that have rock assemblages consisting of a few mineral components have been modeled to a limited degree but are difficult to simulate beyond a teaching/research-and-development level. Very few truly reactive transport reservoir simulators exist. The few reactive reservoir simulators that are available are fairly good at 1D, possibly 2D, models but fail as a fast robust general engineering tool when large mineral assemblages with large orders-of-magnitude differences in kinetic reaction rates are to be modeled in three dimensions. A fast reactive transport simulator tool will need to be in place for engineering purposes for CO2 storage, as well as for EOR engineering studies, in shale. As an additional side note, the 2014 US presidents budget submitted to the US Congress has cut the carbon-storage program by approximately 47% but has increased the carbon-capture research side of the program (by approximately 43%), which is the economic bottleneck of the carbon capture, utilization, and storage process, especially for power plants. Whether the US Congress will go along with this is yet to be determined because there is some opposition, especially from congress members from coal states. JPT
Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

SPE 157136 Evaluating a Depleted Oil and Gas Field in the East Coast of Trinidadfor Disposal of Carbon Dioxide by D.J. Jaggernauth,Petrotrin SPE 156983 Enhanced CO2 Storage inDeep Saline Aquifers by Nanoparticles: Numerical-Simulation Results by Harpreet Singh, The University of Texas at Austin, et al. SPE 157396 Sustainable Production of Biochemicals and Biofuels Based on Biofixation of Carbon Dioxide by Microalgae by W.A.P. van den Bos, TNO, et al.
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Controlled-Freeze Technology for Processing Sour-Gas Resources

single-step cryogenic-distillation process that removes carbon dioxide (CO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), and other impurities from natural gas has been developed by ExxonMobil. Rather than avoiding the freezing of CO2 at cryogenic temperatures, solidification is allowed to take place in a very controlled fashion. The technology has potential to separate CO2 and other impurities from natural gas and to discharge these contaminants as a high-pressure liquid stream.
Meeting the demand for natural gas will require new resources. Many of those new resources will contain substantial amounts of CO2 and H2S that must be managed properly at the surface along with the produced hydrocarbons. Returning the CO2 and H2S to the subsurface for geosequestration or for use in enhanced oil recovery is emerging as a preferred option for management and disposal. A controlled-freeze technology can help meet that goal.
Introduction
Acid-Gas Injection
When acid-gas injection is required for processing sour-gas resources, the treatment-process options shift toward releasing the acid gases from the natural gas at a relatively high pressure and as a liquid. Natural-gas fractionation can be designed to recover acid gas at high pressure and, at least partially in some cases,
as a liquid. This method minimizes the power required for compression or pumping for reinjection of the waste acid gases. Fractionation-based processes rely on the relative volatility of the components in the sour-natural-gas stream. Bulk fractionation uses a single refrigerated tower for the bulk removal of acidgas compounds, but the overhead sweet product still has a high residual-CO2 content of 15% or more. Higher purities would require lower temperatures, which in turn would lead to CO2 solidification occurring in the distillation column. Therefore, further treatment, usually with a solvent process, is needed to achieve the quality specifications normally required for natural-gas sales to transmission systems. The Ryan-Holmes process can achieve the required high-purity natural gas by use of a multiple-tower fractionation operation. This process uses a heavier-hydrocarbon liquid additive to suppress CO2 freezing during the distillation process. This hydrocarbon additive lowers the freezing point of CO2 in the first column and is recovered in later columns and recycled. While effective, this process requires that the recovered acid gas be vaporized during recovery of the hydrocarbon-liquid additive. Like the Ryan-Holmes process, the controlled-freeze process (CFP) is a singlestep cryogenic-distillation process that is capable of achieving a high- quality salesgas product. However, no hydrocarbon additive is required for the desired sepa-
ration, so the second distillation step to recover the additive is not required. Also, the acid gas can be recovered as a highpressure liquid, so pumping can be used for reinjection. The CFP is a cryogenic process for singlestep separation of CO2 and H2S from natural gas and involves controlled freezing and subsequent melting of CO2. A schematic of the process is shown in Fig. 1. Rather than avoiding the solidification of CO2, as with conventional cryogenictreating processes, the CFP allows CO2 to freeze, though under carefully controlled conditions and in a specially designed section of an otherwise conventional distillation tower. High-purity methane and a byproduct liquid acid-gas stream with low methane content are produced by combining traditional distillation techniques with the CFP section. To separate methane at high purity from acid-gas compounds (i.e., CO2 and H2S), a CFP tower normally will use three zones: the specially designed CFP section that addresses the solidification region in the phase equilibrium (pressure/ temperature/composition) envelope and two conventional distillation sections for rectifying and stripping, which cover the vapor/liquid areas above and below the CO2-solidification region. In the lower portion of the tower, below the CFP section, methane is recovered or stripped from the bottoms-liquid stream, which contains CO2 and other acid-gas contaminants, by conventional distillation. Above the CFP section, the CO2 content of the methane-product stream is reduced further as needed to meet the required export-sales criteria, again by conventional distillation, this time in a rectifying section. Liquid (from the upper c onventionaldistillation section) that is about to enter solidification conditions is sprayed into
CFP Technology
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper IPTC 16848, The Controlled-Freeze-Zone Technology for the Development of Sour-Gas Resources, by J.A. Valencia, SPE, and S.D. Kelman, SPE, ExxonMobil Upstream Research, prepared for the 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Beijing, 2628 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission.
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Methane to sales Conventional distillation
Refrigerant lowers temperature to approximately 50F
CFP section Injection wells
Production wells
Feed gas
Conventional distillation
Liquid CO2 and H2S
Gas from fields, methane/CO2/H2S
CO2 and other gases sequestered and injected into dedicated wells
Fig. 1CFP schematic: wellhead to market.
the CFP section, which is designed to provide an unobstructed space for solid CO2 to form and fall. As the sprayed liquid droplets fall, they encounter warmer temperatures. Methane and any lighter components such as nitrogen, if present, vaporize. The residual concentration of CO2 in the droplets increases, leading to solidification. The solids that form then fall onto a liquid layer at the bottom of the CFP section that is maintained above solidification temperatures. A liquid, now warmer than the threshold solidification temperature, emerges from the bottom of the CFP section and is fed into the stripper section below to recover the methane fraction still dissolved in the liquid as it leaves the CFP section. Vapor from the bottom conventionaldistillation (stripper) section rises
through the CFP section and encounters colder temperatures. CO2 condenses or frosts onto the falling spray droplets or solid crystals. The solids formed in the CFP section are pure CO2, thus providing greater separation factors and higher efficiency for this section than conventional vapor/liquid distillation could achieve. Their removal from the vapor stream results in a product exiting the top of the CFP section that is significantly depleted of CO2, and which can be fed to an upper distillation section, if further reduction of residual CO2 is needed. A test program of the CFP began in early 2012 and was anticipated to last approximately 1 year. This test program aimed at gathering necessary data to design and operate commercial facilities of up to 1 Bscf/D in capacity confidently. At
the time this paper was written, the CFP unit had successfully processed gases containing 25 to 71% CO2, reducing the CO2 content in the product stream to much below the targeted 2% pipeline quality, and frequently to less than 1% CO2. Similarly, sufficient methane has been recovered such that residual methane in the bottoms stream is below the targeted 1%. At 550 psig, the temperatures are colder, the solidification envelope expands, and purities improve. The CFPsection temperatures of 75 to 119F cover the broader solidification conditions at this pressure. At the same time, vapor emerges from the CFP section with a lower CO2 content, 2.7% CO2, which could meet some pipeline- quality specifications and avoid the
Fig. 2Liquid CH4 sprayed into 15% CO2 /85% CH4 vapor.
Fig. 3Solid CO2 deposited within the spray chamber.
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frequently requires the use of molesieve dehydration. Previous CFP-pilotplant experience had indicated potential viability of alternative, less-stringent dehydrationsystems. Laboratory measurements were undertaken to understand the water- holding capacities of methane, CO2, and Effect of Operating Pressure their mixtures better at pressures, temThe performance of the stripping sec- peratures, and compositions representation, controlled-freeze section, and rec- tive of conditions at the demonstration tification section was evaluated exten- plant. For example, at 51F, pure liquid sively as a function of pressure. The CO2 can hold 50 ppm of water, approxiCO2 content in the vapor leaving the mately 2.4 lbm/MMscf. This temperacontrolled-freeze section changes from ture is close to the CFP-feed temperature. approximately 4.5% CO2 at 625 psig to Once fed to the CFP tower, the liquid CO2, the range of 2 to 2.5% CO2 at 525 psig. being the heavier component, moves toThese content values are dictated by ward the bottom of the column toward operating approaches to the thermo- warmer temperatures where the carrydynamic solidification-envelope condi- ing capacity increases to 300 ppm at tions. The CO2 content in the vapor leav- 23F, or approximately 14 lbm/MMscf; ing the rectifier is, in essence, the sales thus, the hold on the water is more firmly product. The CO2 content ranged from undercontrol. approximately 1.5% CO2 at 625 psig, At the demonstration plant, feed to 0.5 to 2.0% CO2 at 600 psig, to less moisture was maintained between 10 and than 10ppm CO2 at 525 psig. The recti- 20 ppm for 1 month with no adverse effier CO2-content values were controlled fects on the feed refrigeration system by the rectifier- packing height and the or in the CFP tower. These are moisture equivalent number of stages at any given levels that could be achieved with a glypressure and by the reflux rateused. col-based dehydration system. The feed stream contained 66% CO2. Previous Dehydration Requirements shorter-duration tests had shown similar Liquid CO2 has a significant water- results for feeds containing at least of carrying capacity that can be used advan- the CO2 dehydrating agent. tageously in reducing the dehydration requirements for the CFP. Typically, feed Visualization Tests to a cryogenic process is dehydrated to a A laboratory cryogenic spray chammoisture dewpoint relative to the cold- ber was built to view (through viewing est temperature in the process, which ports) spray-nozzle behavior and to view
need for the rectifying section. At the CFP section, a f inal-product purity averaging 60 ppm, close to liquefied- natural-gas quality (50 ppm CO2), was obtained at 550 psig. Overhead purities of better than 50 ppm were obtained at 525 psig.
solid-CO2 formation in a controlled environment at conditions (i.e., pressure, temperature, and compositions) similar to those experienced in the controlledfreeze section of the demonstration plant. Observing the spray nozzles operating in a cryogenic environment provided understanding of the fluid dynamics within the controlled-freeze section and helped guide nozzle selection. Fig. 2 is a photo of a nozzle spraying liquid CH4 at 130F into a vapor containing 15% CO2 at 500 psia and 90F. Spray-nozzle behavior at conditions similar to those of the CFP section shows that liquids are sprayed as a dense plume, and the spray-droplet concentration appears to be even across the nozzle-spray area. Similarly, visualization of solid-CO2 formation was undertaken at 500 psia and 95F. Fig. 3 shows the solid CO2. At these conditions, the solid CO2 appeared to be fluffy in texture, similar to snow. Visualization of solid CO2 enhances the understanding of CO2 characteristics within the CFP section and helps guide operating conditions.
Conclusions and Forward Plans
The CFP technology is a single-step process for separating acid-gas components from methane in sour-natural-gas resources. This is ExxonMobils proprietary technology for developing increasingly sour gas reserves around the world. There is no technical limit on the amountof CO2 or H2S in the sour natural gas for treating with CFP technology. JPT
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Simulating the Chemical Interaction of Injected CO2 and Carbonic Acid

he M4-field reservoir is approximately 2000 m below sea level in a water depth of approximately 120 m. A carbon dioxide (CO2) geological-storage study was carried out to determine the feasibility of injecting and storing CO2 in the depleted M4 carbonate gas reservoir. The study used 3D coupledgeomechanical modeling. The water level in the reservoir has risen close to the caprock, which implies a strong aquifer. Laboratory tests were carried out on core samples before and after injecting CO2-saturated brine solution, and the results were used to determine material-strength and elasticproperty degradation caused by acid/ carbonateinteraction.
Controlling the trapping of CO2 in the subsurface is fundamental for safe geological storage of CO2. Rock formations can be impervious enough to act as flow barriers to CO2 over geological periods of time. Delineating such a seal, safeguarding its integrity under operational conditions, and verifying its isolation effectiveness are key objectives in achieving a successful CO2-storage project. During CO2 injection, the increasing fluid pressure, temperature variation, and chemical reactions between
Introduction
the gas and rock will inherently affect the stress state of the reservoir and its surroundings. Also, the rock mechanical properties may be altered by exposure to CO2 or by pressure and stress changes. Further, rock mechanical properties, pore pressure, in-situ stresses, and the stress evolution under injection conditions control reactivation of a fault and, therefore, risk of fault-seal breach. The effect of the resulting stress and pressure change, the associated caprock deformation, and the fault-seal integrity must be assessed to manage containment performance and leakage-related risks properly. To address these issues, a good understanding of the flow dynamics, insitu stresses, pore pressure, and rock mechanical properties in the field is necessary. The fracture initiation, propagation, and containment in the injection zones, and caprock and fault-seal integrity, are related to the in-situ stresses and the coupled pressure/thermal behavior while injecting.
sult in a change in mechanical properties of the rock materials and affect CO2 storage and containment. Shale samples from two core depths and limestone samples from three core depths were tested. The study consisted of comprehensive evaluation of nearidentical sets of samples from each core depth. One set of samples was tested without being treated with CO2, while the other set of samples was tested after CO2 injection to simulate reservoirinjection conditions. A standardized CO2-injection procedure was used in an effort to quantify the potential effect that CO2 injection has on shale and limestone properties under controlled testconditions. Pre-CO2-injection porosity was determined for correlation purposes in conjunction with the pre-CO2 pore-volumecompressibility tests for the limestone samples. Identical samples were used to determine porosity and permeability following treatment with CO2-saturated brine for preinjection-treatment comparison and for correlation purposes with the post-CO2-treated pore-volumecompressibility tests. Porosity of the limestone samples was determined, following cleaning, by measuring the pore volume at a nominal stress and at effective mean in-situ stress conditions. Then, permeability to gas was measured at the same stress conditions. Uncleaned samples were used for the pore-volume-compressibility tests conducted under uniaxial-strain conditions. For each test, porosity was corrected for the volumetric deformation that occurred during reapplication of the net effective mean in-situ stress. Pulse-decay permeability tests were carried out on two samples from each shale-core depth. One sample from each depth was subjected to CO2-injection
Petrophysical Properties
Rock-Property Tests
A comprehensive program of mechanical- and petrophysical-property tests was conducted on selected overburdenshale and reservoir-limestone cores from Well A-2. The tests evaluated potential interaction between injected CO2 and the reservoir rock and caprock that could re-
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper IPTC 16703, Simulation of the Chemical Interaction of Injected CO2 and Carbonic Acid Based on Laboratory Tests in 3D Coupled-Geomechanical Modeling, by Rahim Masoudi, SPE, and Mohd Azran Abd Jalil, Petronas; Chee Phuat Tan, SPE, David Press, SPE, John Keller, and Leo Anis, SPE, Schlumberger; and Nasir Darman and Mohamad Othman, SPE, Petronas, prepared for the 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Beijing, 2628 March. The paper has not been peerreviewed. Copyright 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission.
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Model: M4AG : 1/5/1992 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Materials - Youngs_modulus Min: 0 Max: 2.68203e+07 kPa
Model: M4AG10 : 1/1/2000 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Materials - Youngs_modulus Min: 0 Max: 2.5e+07 kPa
Materials - Youngs_modulus
Y Z X 6.0333e+06 1.0750e+07 1.3500e+07 1.6250e+07 1.9000e+07 Z Y X
Materials - Youngs_modulus
6.0333e+06 1.0750e+07 1.3500e+07 1.6250e+07 1.9000e+07
Fig. 1Youngs-modulus degradation between 2017 (left) and 2028 (right): Scenario 1.
treatment, followed by a pulse-decay permeability test for comparison with the untreated sample. High-pressure mercury-injection porosimetry tests were performed on two samples from each shale-core depth. One test was carried out on an untreated sample, and the same test was repeated on an adjacent sample following CO2-injectiontreatment.
Coupled Modeling
After the initial stress state had been established in the 3D geomechanical model, analysis was continued with the evolution of pore-pressure changes caused by production and CO2 injection. Several stress steps were selected during the schedule at which the pore pressures calculated by the reservoir simulator were passed to the stress simulator and equilibrium was re-established. In addition to the calculation of stress at each step, volumetric strains were calculated and related to a change of porosity.
These porosity changes led to modifying the permeability in accordance with pore-volume-compressibility tests carried out on three samples in the laboratory. The laboratory tests were carried out in compression only; however, because the reservoir was likely to expand during CO2 injection, the exponential curve was extended to include tensile volumetric strains. Increases in permeability resulting from the effects of acid/carbonate interactions were accounted for on the basis of the results of pre-CO2- treated and post-CO2-treated samples. Permeabilities were enhanced by 30% of their initial values, scaled to the increase in CO2 saturation predicted by the reservoirsimulator. To account for the effects on the elastic and strength parameters of acid/ carbonate interactions resulting from the injection of CO2, the material properties were continually updated as the cou-
pled analysis proceeded. The mechanical material parameters were updated in accordance with the results of laboratory tests on specimens saturated with a brine/CO2 solution. Brine/CO2 flooding of the samples was considered to have produced 95% CO2 saturation. The magnitude of material-parameter degradation was scaled to that determined from laboratory tests on the basis of the CO2 saturation predicted by the reservoir simulator. After a materials elastic and strength properties were deemed to have degraded, the change was considered permanent. There was no subsequent increase in elastic/strength properties should the CO2 saturation be reduced during theschedule. The initial average reservoir pressure was 3,850 psi in May 1992, which declined to 2,890 psi in 2015 with production, in accordance with the reservoir-simulation schedule. Two CO2-
Model: M4AG : 1/5/1992 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Time (3.62), Stress 3D (equiv) - Time (165), Stress 3D (equiv) Min: 52.8634 Max: 46.4501 bar
M04_102
Model: M4AG : 1/5/1992 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Time (610), Stress 3D (equiv) - Time (165), Stress 3D (equiv) Min: 60.7644 Max: 2561.32 bar
M04_102
Calculation
Y Z X 10.000 5.0000 0.0000 5.0000 10.000 Z Y X 10.000
Calculation
5.0000 0.0000 5.0000 10.000
Fig. 2Change of shear stress caused by injection. Scenario 1 (left) and Scenario 2 (right).
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Model: M4AG : 1/5/1992 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Time (3.62), Total_displacement (y) Time (165), Total_displacement (y) Min: 0.253858 Max: 0.0768986 m
M04_102
Model: M4AG : 1/5/1992 Timestep: INPUT : 0 days Scalar: Time (610), Total_displacement (y) Time (165), Total_displacement (y) Min: 16.792 Max: 0.716295 m
M04_102
Y Z X
Calculation
0.0000 0.075000 0.15000 0.22500 0.30000 Z
Y X
Calculation
0.0000 0.075000 0.15000 0.22500 0.30000
Fig. 3Total vertical displacement (in meters) at the top reservoir level caused by injection. Scenario 1 (left) and Scenario 2 (right).
injection scenarios were considered. Scenario 1 included four injection wells, each injecting at a rate of 50 MMscf/D to 2028 whereby the reservoir pressure was brought back to the initial, preproduction condition. Scenario 2 considered two injection wells, each injecting at 100MMscf/D continuously to 2065. The variation in predicted gas saturation for Scenario 1 was used to control the degradation of material properties for an upper reservoir layer. CO2 injection was initiated in 2018, and the saturation increased to a maximum value in 2028 and then declined during the monitoring period. The resulting variation in derived CO2 saturation reduced the elastic and strength properties. The reduction in
Model: M4AG : 2/5/1992 Timestep: 610 : 1 days Scalar: Total_Plastic_Strain 3D (equiv) Min: 0 Max: 9.28087 dimensionless
Youngs modulus between 2017 (end of production stage) and 2028 (peak injection) for Scenario 1 on a section through the reservoir is shown in Fig. 1. Further degradation of material parameters was calculated during Scenario 2 in which the injection rate and injected CO2 volume was considerably higher. A major objective of the study was to determine whether caprock integrity would be breached during CO2 injection. An examination was made of the increased shear stresses within the caprock during the injection period. Large increases in shear stress could cause material failure in the form of shear bands or fracturing. This failure must be avoided to prevent injected CO2 being vented to the atmosphere. Fig. 2 shows the in-
creased shear stress within the caprock caused by injection. Shear-stress changes in the caprock generally were not significant, although they were considerably larger for Scenario 2 because of an isotropic change in effective stress caused by injection. Shear-stress magnitudes for both scenarios were not large enough to overcome the shear or tensile strengths of the overburden formations. Corresponding vertical displacements at the top of the reservoir are shown in Fig. 3. Changes in stress caused by both production and injection within the reservoir for Scenario 1 were small enough that the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion was not reached at any point, indicating that the injection pressures could be withstood. However, the large injection pressures in Scenario 2 produced shear and tensile failure within the reservoir. Fig. 4 shows the development of large plastic shear strains of more than 3% in the vicinity of the injecting wells in 2055. Plasticity occurred over almost the entire width of the reservoir, indicating a complete breakdown of the intact rock for this volume of injected CO2.
M04_102
Conclusions
Y Z X 0.0000 0.0075000
Total_Plastic_Strain 3D (equiv)
0.015000 0.022500 0.030000
Fig. 4Plastic shear strain near the top of the reservoir in 2055: Scenario 2.
On the basis of the rock mechanicaland petrophysical-properties test program, it was observed that there is a reduction in Youngs modulus, unconfined compressive strength, angle of internal friction, and tensile strength, while there is an increase in Poissons ratio and permeability for the post-CO2-treated testsamples.JPT
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Lacq Carbon-Capture and -Sequestration Pilot
arbon capture and sequestration (CCS) holds promise for use on an industrial scale. Total has been involved in CO2 injection and geological storage for more than 15 years, in Canada (Weyburn oil field) for enhanced oil recovery and in Norway (Sleipner and Snohvit fields) for aquifer storage. In 2006, the company decided to set up an experiment for CO2 capture, transportation, and injection in a depleted gas reservoir. The pilot is in the Lacq basin in southwestern France, 800km from Paris, and has been on stream since January 2010.
This CCS project entailed converting an existing air/fuel-gas combustion boiler into an oxygen/fuel-gas combustion (oxycombustion) boiler using oxygen delivered by an air-separation unit (ASU) to obtain more-efficient combustion and a more-concentrated flue-gas-CO2 stream. The 30-MW oxy-combustion boiler can deliver up to 38 t/h of steam to the highpressure steam network of the Lacq sourgas-production and -treatment plant. After quenching the flue-gas stream, the rich CO2 stream is compressed to 27 barg, dried, and transported in gaseous phase by use of existing pipelines to a depleted gas field, 29 km away, where it is injected into the deep Rousse reservoir. Over a 3-year period, up to 90 000 t of CO2 could be injected. The main objectives in this experiment were: To demonstrate the technical feasibility and reliability of an
Introduction
integrated chain comprising steam production and CO2 capture, transportation, and injection into a depleted gas reservoir. To acquire operating experience and data to scale up the oxycombustion technology from pilot scale (30 MW) to industrial scale (200 MW) while reducing costs. To develop on-site monitoring methods and technologies to serve future onshore storagemonitoring programs that will be larger in scale, longer in term, and economically and technically viable (i.e., microseismic and environmental monitoring).
Technical Description
The CCS pilot installation, shown in Fig.1, consists of an ASU, an oxy-combustion boiler, a direct-cooling contactor, a CO2 compressor, a dryer system, a transportation pipeline, and an injection site (i.e., compressor, injection well, reservoir, and a subsurface-seismicnetwork). ASU. A dedicated ASU, the oxygenproduction unit, was installed on the Lacq gas-treatment complex to produce 240t/d of low-pressure oxygen (1.8 bara) at 95 to 99.5 vol% purity. Only 99.5% pure oxygen is used to feed the oxy- combustion boiler. The nitrogen rejected by the ASU is partially used for regenerating the dryer system. Oxy-Combustion Boiler. At Lacq, one of the five air-combustion boilers built
in 1957, which provides steam and electricity necessary for the industrial complex, was retrofitted as an oxy- combustion boiler with pure oxygen replacing air for the combustion of commercial gas. This technology is designed to manage heat transfer inside the combustion chamber, without requiring special construction materials, and to adapt the combustion characteristics to a conventional heat-exchanger design. The existing air-fired boiler was adapted to oxy- combustion, mainly by improving seals to limit air ingress, and by implementing a flue-gas recycle duct and fan, through which flue gas will be partially recycled to the inlet of the oxygen burners to dilute the oxygen flames and maintain the temperature at an acceptable level inside the combustion chamber. After this revamping, the boiler pressure was slightly higher than atmospheric pressure. This 30-MW oxy-combustion boiler started operation in 2009 and can produce up to 40 t/h of high-pressure steam (60 bar and 450C) to feed the high- pressure network of the Lacq industrial complex. The flue gas leaving the boiler contains 3134 vol% CO2 and 6265 vol% H2O along with other components such as nitrogen, argon, andoxygen. Direct-Cooling Contactor. The flue gas leaves the oxy-combustion boiler at approximately 220C and is cooled to 50C in a direct-cooling contactor, removing most of the water by condensation. The dry-CO2 stream moves to the Lacq CO2 compressor, a three-stage reciprocating compressor with 1-MW power, designed to compress the CO2 stream from 1 to 27 barg. Dryer System. The dryer system has two molecular sieves that remove the residual water from the CO2 stream. The
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 157157, The Lacq CCS Pilot, a First, by Jacques Monne, SPE, Total, prepared for the 2012 SPE/APPEA International Conference on Health, Safety, and Environment in Oil and Gas Exploration and Production, Perth, Australia, 1113September. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
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CO2 injection
CO2 transport
CO2 capture
Natural gas production
Compression CO2 injection CO2 transportation Utilities Oxy-combustion boiler Steam CO2 storage 4500 m Purification/ CO2 dehydration Compression Oxygen Production Unit CO2 Rousse reservoir Lacq gas production 4000 m Natural gas Commercial gas Lacq gas treatment plant
Natural gas inlet
Industrial scale: 30-MW oxy-combustion integrated within existing facilities

Lacq deep gas reservoir
Fig. 1Schematic of the Lacq CCS pilot.
ystem yields a maximum concentration s of 30 ppm, which eliminates any condensation in the transportation pipelines. Transportation Pipeline. The CO2 stream is sent to the Rousse injection compressor through a 29-km pipeline. Ten emergency-shutdown valves are installed along the pipeline to minimize consequences in the event of pipeline leakage. Depressurization devices also are available. The pipeline is made of carbon steel and was used for more than 30 years to transport natural gas produced at Rousse to Lacq. It was subjected to an in-depth inspection before beingreused. Injection Site. The injection site at Rousse is in an unpopulated rural area, 5 km south of Pau. The Rousse compressor is a one-stage reciprocating compressor, designed to compress the CO2 stream from 27 to 51 barg for injection into the reservoir. The CO2 is injected through an existing well, Rousse 1, which produced wet sour gas from 1972 to 2008. Well Rousse 1 was selected after cement and corrosion logging were undertaken in 2006. A workover in early 2009 converted the well to injection. It was equipped with four pressure sensors, four temperature sensors, and three microseismic sensors
fitted along a fiber-optic cable at the bottom of thecompletion. The Rousse field, now depleted, is a deep, isolated Jurassic horst reservoir at a depth of 4500 m below ground level. Cores were taken from 70 m of its 120-m thickness along with part of the Cretaceous caprock. The initial reservoir pressure was 485 barg. The average downhole temperature is 150C. The initial gas in place contained 4.6 vol% CO2 and 0.8vol% H2S. A system is in place to identify any mechanical effects of the injection on the reservoir and on the caprock that might affect the integrity of the storage. The system comprises seven shallow wells (200 m deep), each with four microseismic sensors. Six of the wells are within a 2-km radius of the injector well, and the seventh is on the Rousse well pad. There are three microseismic sensors at the bottom of the Rousse injection well (42004400 m below ground level). In addition, a seismometer at the Rousse well pad, near the seventh well, detects and records natural Earth tremors.
Monitoring Program
The monitoring program was designed to provide key information and data from the injection well and the reservoir and
from deep-subsurface, near-surface, and surface levels. The initial program planned for 3 years of injection (until July 2013) followed by 3 years of postinjection observation (from July 2013 to July 2016). Then, because a new permitting procedure will be necessary to obtain authorization for permanent storage of the injected CO2, a long-term monitoring program will be designed on the basis of technical and economic lessons learned from the previous 6 years and from research-and-development results. The following parameters are monitored: CO2-stream composition, concentration, and flow (continuously) CO2 atmospheric concentrations at the injection-well pad (continuously) Well-annulus pressure (continuously) Pressure and temperature along the injection well (continuously) Injection-well reservoir pressure and temperature (continuously) Reservoir and caprock integritymicroseismic monitoring (continuously) Soil-gas concentration and fluxes (periodic campaigns)
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Reservoir- and Caprock-Integrity Monitoring. The seven shallow-well sensors have been running since March 2009, allowing 9 months of baseline surOperating Feedback vey. This permanent monitoring is senThe total quantity of CO2 injected into the sitive enough to detect seismic events Rousse reservoir by the end of May 2012 corresponding to a displacement of was 43 000 t. After commissioning and 0.05 mm for a 1-m-length fault (magnifine tuning of each piece of equipment, tude of 2) with a localization uncerthe whole pilot plant, with its retrofitted tainty of 250 m. During the baseline oxy-combustion boiler, was fully opera- survey, mainly natural seismic events tional in January 2010. Overall operation caused by deep tectonic activity of the of the pilot plant has proved satisfactory. Pyrenees mountain range were recorded. The choice of having the oxy-combustion Since March 2010, four microseisboiler start up in air mode and switching mic events have been detected around to oxygen mode, with load variations up Rousse besides natural earthquakes reto full capacity, was found to be robust lated to activity in the Pyrenees. The and in line with the predicted behavior. four microseismic events may be linked The flue-gas treatment is working as de- to natural microseismic movements of signed. The molecular-sieve dryers effec- the basement faults below Rousse linked tively lower the dewpoint of the CO2-rich to tectonic compressive stress of the stream to protect the carbon-steel trans- Pyrenees, to the 30-year depletion efportation pipe from corrosion. No corro- fects of Rousse, or to injection. sion has been recorded along the pipeThe three microseismic sensors at line. The transportation system works as the bottom of the well completion have per design. been operating since March 2011. InterThe only piece of equipment in the pretation of the record of microseismic CCS pilot plant that proved challeng- events is ongoing. Since injection started, ing was the Lacq CO2 compressor. The only low-magnitude (<0) microseismic main parts of this three-stage reciprocat- events have been recorded, incapable of ing compressor are made of corrosion- producing any effect on the caprock or resistant material, except for the cylin- reservoir integrity. ders, which are in molded cast iron. The suction chamber of the third-stage cylin- Soil-Gas Concentration and Fluxes. der soon came under severe attack from Soil-gas monitoring measures CO2 and acidcorrosion. CH4 concentrations 1 m below the ground surface, and CO2 and CH4 fluxes at the CO2 Atmospheric Concentration at the soil/atmosphere interface at 35 locations Rousse Well Pad. Permanent catalytic around the injection site. The gas fluxCO2, CH4, and H2S sensors were placed es are monitored by the accumulationaround the injection wellhead on the chamber method, using external recirRousse injection pad to detect any ab- culation, which is intermediate between normal concentration of these gases that static and dynamic principles. might indicate a leakage. CO2 sensors Before CO2 injection in the Rousse are installed specifically for monitor- reservoir, baseline monitoring was pering such an injection site. Since injec- formed to define soil-gas behavior as tion began, no abnormal detection has a function of time. Quarterly data acbeenrecorded. quisitions were made from September 2008 to December 2009. The data colWell-Annulus Pressure. Annulus-pres- lected during the baseline survey showed sure monitoring is common for tracking broad heterogeneity between the locawell integrity. A pressure increase may tions. However, seasonal variations were correspond to leakage through the tub- observed clearly, corresponding to the ing or casing. The well-annulus pressure intensity of biological activity in the soil is recorded continuously in the different (high in summer and low in winter). The
Groundwater quality (periodic campaigns) Surface-water quality (periodic campaigns) Ecosystem biodiversityfauna and flora (annual inventory)
annuli, but no increase has been recorded since injection began.
CO2 concentrations vary from 0.04 7.0% in winter to 1216% in summer. The soil-gas concentrations and fluxes are measured during the injection period, in winter and autumn when biological activity is low. No deviation from the baseline has beendetected. Groundwater Quality. Four perched aquifers above the deep storage reservoir are monitored. Four parameters (pH, water conductivity, and carbonate and bicarbonate concentrations) are analyzed twice yearly at four natural springs in the vicinity of the injection site. The resulting indicators are compared with the baseline reference data from the surveys performed in 2009 (spring, summer, autumn, and winter) before injection began. So far, no change in water quality has been recorded, affirming the absence of CO2 leakage from the reservoir. Surface-Water Quality. Surface-water monitoring consists of checking two standardized bioindicators every 6 months (in spring and in autumn). The indicators are the French standardized diatom index and the French standardized benthic invertebrate index. The water-chemistry and mineral-content parameters (i.e., pH, water conductivity, and carbonate and bicarbonate concentrations) are checked at three locations of the Arribeu brook that drains the Rousse area. Locations on two other brooks are used as distant references. The results of the biannual analyses of all the indicators are compared with the baseline reference data from the two surveys performed in spring and autumn 2009, in the preinjection period. To date, no change in water quality has been recorded, affirming no CO2 leakage from the reservoir. Ecosystem Biodiversity. The biodiversity of the ecosystems around the R ousse injection site is checked every year. An annual inventory is drawn up at 33 places around the injection location for the flora of representative ecosystems and at 50 places around the injection location for several amphibian and insect species. So far, no change has been recorded, indicating no leakage of CO2 from thereservoir. JPT
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CO2-Sequestration Projects Adding Value
arbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS) in geological media can be an important means for reducing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emissions. Several geological settings are appropriate for geological storage of carbon dioxide (CO2), including depleted oil and gas reservoirs, deep brine-saturated formations, CO2flood enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) operations, and enhanced coalbedmethane recovery. The US Department of Energy is pursuing a program to demonstrate CCUS technology through its Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (RCSP) program.
and -storage (CCS) feasibility project and the Bell Creek CO2-EOR/CO2- storage project. Fort Nelson. The PCOR partnership and Spectra Energy Transmission are investigating CCUS to mitigate CO2 emissions produced by the Fort Nelson Gas Plant (FNGP) as a waste stream from natural-gas processing. FNGP is near the town of Fort Nelson in northeastern British Columbia, Canada (Fig. 2). The gas stream will include up to 5% hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and a small amount of methane (a sour-CO2 stream). The goal is to capture the stream of sour CO2 that is separated by the current gasprocessing operations and store it long term in a deep saline formation. Currently, this sour CO2 is processed in an existing sulfur plant to recover elemental sulfur, and the residual CO2 and sulfur dioxide (SO2) are passed through an incinerator before venting to the atmosphere. This demonstration project provides an opportunity to develop a set
The Plains CO2 Reduction (PCOR) partnership, led by the Energy & Environmental Research Center, is one of seven regional partnerships established under the RCSP program. The PCOR partnership region includes all or part of nine US states and four Canadian provinces (Fig. 1) and is made up of many private- and public-sector groups working to identify the most-suitable CO2-storage strategies and technologies, aid regulatory development, educate the general public, and investigate appropriate infrastructure for CCUS commercialization within its region. The Phase-III program includes two commercial-scale projectsthe Fort Nelson carbon- capture
Introduction
Fig. 1Outline of the PCOR partnership region within North America.
This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper IPTC 17089, The Plains CO2-Reduction Partnership: CO2-Sequestration Demonstration Projects Adding Value to the Oil and Gas Industry, by Charles D. Gorecki, Edward N. Steadman, John A. Harju, James A. Sorensen, John A. Hamling, SPE, Lisa S. Botnen, Scott C. Ayash, and Katherine K. Anagnost, Energy & Environmental Research Center, prepared for the 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference, Beijing, 2628 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2013 International Petroleum Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission.
of cost- effective risk-based monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) protocols for large-scale (>1106 t/a) storage of sour CO2 in a deep saline formation. The likely injection target will be a carbonate formation in the Devonian Presquile reef complex, with the 500-mthick shale of the overlying Muskwa and Fort Simpson formations serving as a seal. The effectiveness of MVA activities will depend partly on developing a thorough geological-characterization, modeling, and risk-assessment effort. The results of these activities will provide insight regarding the behavior of densephase sour CO2 in a deep brine- saturated carbonate-reservoir environment; the effect of dense-phase sour CO2 on the integrity of sink and seal rocks; the effects of large-scale sour-CO2 injection and storage on wellbore integrity; the ef-
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Fig. 2FNGP and proposed CCS project.
fectiveness of selected MVA techniques; and the use of an approach that combines iterative geological characterization, modeling, risk assessment, simulation, and MVA planning to inject and store large volumes of sour CO2 safely and cost effectively.
Fig. 3Lost Cabin gas plant and Bell Creek oil field in Wyoming and Montana, respectively.
Bell Creek. The PCOR partnership is working with Denbury Resources to determine the effect of large-scale injection of CO2 into a deep clastic reservoir for simultaneous CO2 EOR and CO2 storage at the Bell Creek oil field. A technical team will determine baseline characteristics, perform risk assessment of the injection site and surrounding areas, and establish long-term monitoring protocols for injecting CO2. The CO2 source will be the Conoco Phillips Lost Cabin gas-processing plant in Fremont County, Wyoming, which currently generates approximately 50 MMcf/D of CO2 (Fig. 3). The CO2 will be transported to the site and injected into an oil-bearing sandstone reservoir in the Lower Cretaceous Muddy (New castle) formation at a depth of approximately 1372 m. An estimated 1.1 million tons of CO2 will be injected annually, much of which will be storedpermanently. Similar to the Fort Nelson CCS project, the Bell Creek demonstration project will provide an opportunity to develop an MVA plan for a large-scale CCUS project. In this case, the project will be combined with a CO2-EOR project. The baseline geological characterization conducted over the course of the project will provide data to support design and
implementation of an injection/production scheme for large-scale CO2 EOR and storage at the Bell Creek oil field.
Applicability
These projects focus on reducing the CO2 emissions from large point sources, in these cases natural-gas-processing facilities. The benefits of CCUS applied to the Fort Nelson project include: The ability to store the CO2 generated at the processing plant reduces the operators overall emissions to the atmosphere. The geological storage of the produced CO2 and H2S will reduce or eliminate the need for the current sulfur-processing plant, effectively eliminating the need for surface storage of elemental sulfur from this plant and eliminating the flaring of SO2. The physical footprint required for gas-processing activities at the Fort Nelson site would be reduced. For the Bell Creek project, the benefits are twofold: The overall CO2 emitted from the Lost Cabin processing facility will be reduced.
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Oil production from the Bell Creek field will be increased. The Fort Nelson and Bell Creek projects have detailed geocellular modeling and simulation programs. The knowledge gained from these activities has direct application to the oil and gasindustry: Increased knowledge of geocellular modeling helps characterize hydrocarbon reservoirs and the subsurface in general. Increased understanding of how injection and production affect stress regimes within the reservoir and the overlying and underlying formations will provide a better understanding of the potential for induced fracturing and faulting and for induced seismic activity. Knowledge of the processes by which fluids migrate and become trapped within the reservoir rock will be gained. The understanding of sweep efficiency and CO2 retention for
CO2-EOR applications will be increased. The understanding of factors that influence the CO2-storage capacity of hydrocarbon reservoirs and saline formations will be increased. A major component of these demonstration projects is developing a sitespecific MVA program. The goal of MVA is to provide critical data that can be used to verify site security; evaluate reservoir behavior during the injection program; determine interactions between oil, water, and CO2 within the reservoir; determine the fate of injected CO2; and investigate mechanisms that affect CO2storage efficiency within the EOR process. If the MVA program identifies a significant variance from anticipated performance, a targeted characterization effort then could be deployed to evaluate the effect and source of the event.
Conclusions
The overarching philosophy for these demonstration projects involves an in-
tegrated approach of site-specific characterization, modeling, simulation, risk management, and MVA. Risk management, modeling, predictive simulation, and MVA are interrelated processes in which the results of one become the input of the others. For example, as knowledge is gained from site characterization, it reduces uncertainty in geological reservoir properties. This reduced uncertainty can propagate through modeling, risk assessment, and MVA efforts. As an EOR or storage project moves forward, it will advance through several phases (e.g., feasibility, design, injection, closure, and post-closure) and this integrated approach creates a dynamic iterative process that can be used to monitor and review changes as the project progresses. This integrated approach provides insight into the ability to predict and assess subsurface technical risks associated with EOR and CO2 storage. The development and validation of this methodology through these demonstration projects can enable benefits from this integrated approach by applying it to futureprojects. JPT
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CONFERENCE PREVIEW
SPE Offshore Europe 2013 Conference and Exhibition Showcases The Next 50 Years
Mika Stepankiw, JPT Staff Writer
The SPE Offshore Europe Conference and Exhibition will be held in Aberdeen from 3 to 6 September 2013 with a focus on the continuingsuccess of the regional oil and gas industry and maintaining future production and a strong supply chain. The theme for this years conference is The Next50Years. It will present an opportunity for members of the oil and gas industry to come together to reflect on achievements, debate current challenges, and develop ideas for the future. This biennial conference is the largest upstream oil and gas event outside NorthAmerica.
Technical Program
Two years ago, Offshore Europe unveiled the Deep Water Zone, a technical program dedicated to innovative technologiesdriving advancement in one ofthe worlds most challenging environments. As more discoveries are being made within deepwater and ultradeepwater fields, the role of deepwater E&Pisincreasing. This years Zone will feature demonstrations of the latest technologies, showcase existing and new projectsfrom leading deepwater operations, and provide presentation areas to foster discussion and exchange regarding the latest industry trends and challenges. The 2013 Zone will focus on projects within deepwater fields by organizations specializing in the deepwater industry to highlight the challenges and expertise necessary to operate within this highly specializedarea.
Panel Sessions
Eleven panel sessionsmore than double the number in 2011are sched-
uled during the conference. Two panel sessions will be held Tuesday afternoon: Oil and Gas in the Future Energy Mix, introduced by Glen Cayley of Shell, and Exporting Oilfield Goods and Services, chaired by Malcolm Brinded, ambassador of UK Trade & Investment. Oil and Gas in the Future Energy Mix will include representatives of the InternationBRINDED al Energy Agency, the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership, IHS Energy, and the Dutch government to discuss the global energy outlook, the future of transport fuels, the unconventional gas revolution, and the role of technology and partnerships in the future of the Europeanoffshoreindustry. Wednesday morning panel sessions consist of Planning for Long-Term North Sea Drilling, chaired by Mark Stephen of BBC Radio Scotland, and The Independent Oil CompanyMighty Oaks From Little Acorns Grow, chaired by James Paton of ADIL. Panelists in the first session will debate what can be done to sustain the current uptrend in the oil and gas industry offshore Europe. In the second session, panelistsTony Hayward of Genel Energy, Simon Flowers HAYWARD of Wood Mackenzie, Tom Reynolds of Bridge Energy, Simon Toole of DECC, Graham Stewart of Faroe Petroleum, and Marcus Richards of Dana Petroleum
will discuss and debate the role of independent oil companies in stimulating regional explorationactivity. Panel sessions will continue Wednesday afternoon, with Taking Operations to Frontier Areas, chaired by Norrie McKay of KCA Deutag, which will discuss the challenges and opportunities that frontier areas offer, and Industry Progress Since Macondo, chaired by Gordon Ballard of Schlumberger, which will discuss the technical and regulatory framework that resulted from the Macondoblowout and spill. On Thursday morning, Louise McKenzie of ExxonMobil will introduce Decommissioning and Value Extraction for End of Life. Panelists James Edens of CNR International, Edward Heerema of Allseas, Austin Hand of Brent Decommissioning Project, and Atle Rettedal of Statoil will share key considerations and opportunities for maximizing overall asset value and minimizing decommissioning costs. Journey From Procedure to Practice will be chaired by Archie Kennedy of Nexen and will discuss why procedures are important, the psychology behind them, and how they can best be used. Thursday afternoon panel sessions consist of Financing Investments in the Oil and Gas Industry: Challenges and Opportunities, led by John Martin of Standard Chartered Bank, and The Technology ImperativeCollaborating Today to Realize the Next 50 Years of North Sea Potential, introduced by Trevor Garlick of BP. Panel sessions will conclude on Friday morning with Oil & Gas SkillsYour Future Today, chaired by Jim House of Apache North Sea. The first half of this panel
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will focus on the needs of the present and future and explore what the industry is doing to ensure sufficient trained resources are available. The second half of this panel will be a follow-up debate over questions gathered at the Skills breakfast earlier that day. WEBB
The Offshore Europe technical committee is headed by leaders of the E&P sector. Conference chairman Malcolm Webb, chief executive of Oil & Gas UK, will lead the opening plenary session with a panel of four high-profile industry and government figures. Each day will begin with a Breakfast Briefing to provide participants with the opportunity to join colleagues and peers to network and hear
leadingindustry figures. Topics include Chamber of Commerce, The UKs Energy Policy: Will It Deliver and What Might It Mean for Oil and Gas, Step Change in Safety, and Oil and Gas SkillsYour Future Today. This years lunch session topics include The Role of the Independent/IOC/NOC Over the Next 40 Years, Women in Industry, and Energy Marketsthe Short and LongTerm.JPT
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PEOPLE
Dewayne Atwell, SPE, was named president of Shores Lift Solutions Pumping Unit division. Atwell brings 15 years of experience at Lufkin Industries, having served in multiple operations, sales, and marketing leadership positions. Previously, he worked 12 years for Occidental Oil & Gas. Atwell earned a BS degree in business management from East Central Oklahoma State University and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School general managementprogram. Ben Bamford, SPE, was appointed managing director of Geoprober Drilling, which specializes in innovative engineering solutions. He joined the oil & gas industry in 2006, first in finance and then in engineering. In 2011, he joined Geoproberto head the business development team, which identifies operator, service company, and original equipment manufacturer requirements and works with the innovations team to generate new concepts for downhole and subsea equipment. He has several patents pending for well control systems and enhanced drilling technologies. Bamford earned an honorsdegree in theoretical physics from the University ofDurham, UK. Robert Bates, SPE, was named vice president of global business development for Gulfstream Services. Based in Houston, Bates will oversee global business development, account management, and global expansion of all product lines. Bates worked 35 years at Halliburton Energy Services in varying roles, including operations management, sales management, and global account management. Peter Duncan, SPE, was recognized as an entrepreneur in energy at the Houston Technology Centers 10th annual A Celebration of Entrepreneurs gala. Duncan is the founding president of MicroSeismic. Hebegan his career as an exploration geophysicist with Shell Canada before joining Digicon Geophysical, first in Calgary and then in Houston.In 1987, he helped Digicon found ExploiTec, an exploration andproduction consultancy, and was later named president of ExploiTech when it became a subsidiary of Landmark Graphics. In 1992, he was one of three founders of 3DX Technologies, an independent oil and gas explorationcompany,where heserved as vice president and chiefgeophysicist. Duncan earned a PhD in geophysics from the University ofToronto. Dean Forrester, SPE, managing director in Accentures energy industry group, has been elected to Energistics board of directors. Forrester has more than 15 years of experience in theupstream oil and gas industry at all organizational levels. He worked with several upstream oil and gas operators, including integratedcompanies, independents, and national oil companies, to develop technical and business architectures for delivering measurable value and return on investment through the intelligent and appropriate use of technology. Forrester earned a BS inphysics and instrumentation with a post-graduate degree inIT systems analysis and design and an MBA from NapierUniversity. Matthias Hartung, SPE, vice president of technical data for Shell, has been elected to serve on Energistics board of directors. At Shell, Hartung is responsible for providing global functional leadership in technical data management and improving the quality and utilization of technical data globally. Hartung served in many leadership roles across Shell, in multiple countries including the UK, the US, Russia, and the Netherlands. Hartung is a member of the European Association of Geoscientists & Engineers, and is an alumnus of the German National Scholarship Foundation. He earned a BS in geophysics from the University of Hamburg. Steve Jacobs, SPE, chief marketing officer of Decision Strategies, has been appointed to the advisory board of the Energy Institute, a new high school dedicated to the study of energy, formed in partnership with the Houston Independent School District, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, and the Petroleum Equipment Suppliers Association. Jacobs brings more than 30 years of experience in the oil and gas industry to the advisory board. He began his career as a roughneck for Noble Drilling and now consults with oil companies, oil service companies, and investors to evaluate market opportunities for new and existing technologies and companies around the world. Jacobs earned BS degrees in psychology and education from Oklahoma StateUniversity. Dave Jones, SPE, was appointed president of the Shores Lift Solutions Rod Lift Consulting division. He has more than 30 years of experience in artificial lift, specializing in systems analysis and recommendations for optimizing rod-lifted oil and gas
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wells. Jones has been a member of SPE and the American Petroleum Institute for 25 years. He earned a bachelors degree in business management from Texas TechUniversity. Jeff Kapustka, SPE, was appointed vice president of CareerSMITH. He has more than 23 years of executive search experience and will be involved in client management and search execution across a wide range of market sectors, including energy and oil and gas, on a domestic and international basis. Kapustka earned a BA degree in English from St. Meinrad College in Indiana. Stewart Maxwell, SPE, was appointed technical director of Aquaterra Energy. He will be responsible for riser systems, offshore structures, and hydraulic systems, based at the companys Norwich, UK, office. His global oil and gas industry career includes positions in Asia Pacific and the UK. He spent 13 years with the Acteon Group of companies, first within UWG, where he advanced from senior
design engineer to technology manager for risers, and finally to regional manager for the companys Asia Pacific operations. He then moved within the group to 2H when the companies merged and took on the role of regional director of Asia Pacific and then global manager of conductor systems. He also worked at Nio Petroleum and Enquest as well as his own engineering consultancy in riser and conductor analysis, well integrity, and project management. Maxwell earned an honors (BS) BEng in mechanical engineering from the University ofAberdeen. JPT
Member Deaths
Gerald W. Born, Houston, Texas, USA Harry G. Byars, Dallas, Texas, USA Patrick J. Collins, Anchorage, Alaska, USA Oliver E. Harris, Evansville, Indiana, USA Bill H. Ledford, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA Richard M. Morrow, Chicago, Illinois, USA Jennifer M. Rotramel, Denver, Colorado, USA Robert W. Sneed, Engelwood, Colorado, USA
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SPE NEWS
SPE SERVICE DIRECTORY

SPE Online www.spe.org Awards Program Tom Whipple, twhipple@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.9452 Book Sales Phone: 1.800.456.6863 or 1.972.952.9393 books@spe.org Continuing Education/Training Courses Chiwila Mumba-Black, cmumba@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.1114 Distinguished Lecturer Program Donna Neukum, dneukum@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.9454 Dues, Membership Information, Address Changes, Copyright Permission Phone: 1.800.456.6863 or 1.972.952.9393 service@spe.org Insurance/Credit Card Programs Liane DaMommio, ldamommio@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.1155 JPT Professional Services Evan Carthey, ecarthey@spe.org Phone: 1.713.457.6828 JPT/JPT Web Advertising Sales Craig Moritz, cmoritz@spe.org Phone: 1.713.457.6888 JPT John Donnelly, jdonnelly@spe.org Phone: 1.713.457.6816 Peer Review Stacie Hughes, shughes@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.9343 Professional Development Services Tom Whipple, twhipple@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.9452 Section Service Phone: 1.972.952.9451 sections@spe.org SPE Website Tisha Jones, tjones@spe.org Phone: 1.972.952.9321 Subscriptions Phone: 1.800.456.6863 or 1.972.952.9393 service@spe.org
Members Recognized as New Faces of Engineering Winners

SPE members Jenny Cronlund, Flavia Mara Guzman Villarroel, and Abhijeet Kulkarni were nominated by SPE for the 2013 New Faces of Engineering Award sponsored by the National Engineers Week Foundation. Kulkarni was selected as the 2013 winner and appeared in a USA Today advertisement along with 12 additional winners KULKARNI MAHAMAH from participating organizations. SPEs Energy4me Program and the National Engineers Week Foundation worked together to provide this opportunity for SPE members. The annual program highlights the interesting and unique work of young engineers and their positive impact on society, focusing on engineers who have been out of school from 2 to 5 years. The foundation is a coalition of engineering societies, major corporations, and government agencies and, every year, it asks its members to nominate colleagues age 30 and younger as one of the New Faces of Engineering. The program began in 2003. Kulkarni, who works as a reservoir engineer for A/S Dansk Shell, said he wished he had known more about engineering at an early age. The potential that engineering holds to impact people and define the future is something I only realized after I experienced it myself. I wish I had a more macro view of this fascinating profession early in life. SPE members Kayode Oluwadairo, Mubarak Mahamah, and Scott Baker were nominated by SPE for the 2013 New Faces of Engineering College Edition. Mahamah, who attends Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Ghana), was recognized as SPEs College Edition winner and will be awarded a USD 500 scholarship. Fifteen engineering students in their third, fourth, or fifth year of studies were selected. The winners are recognized for academic excellence, leadership in student organizations, outstanding communication skills, nonengineering-related community service, and involvement in the engineering industry. For more information on the New Faces of Engineering College Edition program, visit www.facebook.com/CollegeEdition. For more information about the New Faces of Engineering program, go to www.eweek.org. For more information about SPEs Energy4me, visit www.energy4me.org.
Americas Office 222 Palisades Creek Dr., Richardson, TX 75080-2040 USA Tel: +1.972.952.9393 Fax: +1.972.952.9435 Email: spedal@spe.org Asia Pacific Office Level 35, The Gardens South Tower Mid Valley City, Lingkaran Syed Putra, 59200 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Tel: +60.3.2182.3000 Fax: +60.3.2182.3030 Email: spekl@spe.org Canada Office Eau Claire Place II, Suite 900521 3rd Ave SW, Calgary, AB T2P 3T3 Tel: +403.930.5454 Fax: +403.930.5470 Email: specal@spe.org Europe, Russia, Caspian, and Sub-Saharan Africa Office 1st Floor, Threeways House, 40/44 Clipstone Street London W1W 5DW UK Tel: +44.20.7299.3300 Fax: +44.20.7299.3309 Email: spelon@spe.org Houston Office 10777 Westheimer Rd., Suite 1075, Houston, TX 77042-3455 USA Tel: +1.713.779.9595 Fax: +1.713.779.4216 Email: spehou@spe.org Middle East, North Africa, and India Office Office 3101/02, 31st Floor, Fortune Tower, JLT, P.O. Box 215959, Dubai, UAE Tel: +971.4.457.5800 Fax: +971.4.457.3164 Email: spedub@spe.org Moscow Office Perynovsky Per., 3 Bld. 2 Moscow, Russia, 127055 Tel: + 7.495.268.04.54 Email: spemos@spe.org
AIME Donates to SPE Programs
The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgy, and Petroleum Engineering (AIME) has donated a total of USD 12,000 to SPE through its Hayden Fund and Douglas Library Fund to support member programs and services. One of the most important ways AIME supports its member societies is through access to project and program funding opportunities and the distribution of legacy fund income. AIME donated USD 8,000 to SPE for the OnePetro electronic library and USD 4,000 to The Way Ahead magazine, which is distributed to SPE young professionals.
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SPE EVENTS
WORKSHOPS
2728 August HoustonApplication of Petroleum Resources Management System (PRMS) 2728 August San AntonioEagle FordShale 45 September BogotaPetroleum and Unconventional Resources Reserves: Understanding the Economic, Technical, Environmental, and Regulatory Aspects 811 September ChengduShale Gas Exploration and Development in Asia Pacific 1012 September San Diego Performance and Design of Water Injector Wells Requiring Sand Control 1113 September Rancho Palos VerdesHydraulic Fracture Mechanics Considerations for Unconventional Reservoirs 1518 September QueenslandWater Management for Unconventional Hydrocarbon Development 1617 September DohaMature Fields: Leveraging Experience for Future Value 1718 September CairoMarginal Fields: Challenges and Opportunities 1920 September GenevaSPE Symposium on Empowering Women in the Energy Industry for Value and Professional Development in Co-Operation with UNCTAD and UNECE 2426 September MumbaiDeepwater Development 69 October Kota KinabaluChemical Flooding 79 October MuscatEnhancing Profitability Through Total Process Reliability in Maturing Oil and Gas Assets 1618 October BanffProduction Forecasting 2122 October DubaiPetroleum Reserves and Resources Estimation and its Impact on Business DecisionsPRMS Applications Guidelines Document 2223 October GalvestonWater Lifecycle 2730 October Ho Chi MinhReservoir Modelling and SimulationChallenges and Latest Development 2830 October DubaiAddressing and Solving the Petrophysical Challenges Specific to Middle East Reservoirs 57 November LisbonNorth Sea and Europe Area Stimulation 67 November San AntonioHydraulic Fracture Flowback
FORUMS
2126 July AshevilleThe Quest to Reduce the Environmental Footprint 49 August Coeur dAlene2020 ForesightEnsuring Educational Excellence for Upstream Engineering Resources 1318 October The AlgarveAdaptive Well Construction for Complex Wells 2025 October The AlgarveManaged Pressure DrillingNiche Technology or the Future of Drilling? 2025 October Rancho MirageArtificial Lift in Deepwater 27 October 1 November The Algarve Zonal Isolation to the Extreme
conferences
30 July1 August LagosSPE Nigeria Annual International Conference and Exhibition 1214 August DenverUnconventional Resources Technology Conference 2022 August PittsburghSPE Eastern Regional Meeting 2627 August CalgaryProgressing Cavity Pumps Conference 36 September AberdeenSPE Offshore Europe Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition 1112 September MidlandSPE 2013 Liquids Rich Basins Conference: New Technology for Old Plays 1618 September Abu DhabiSPE Reservoir Characterisation and Simulation Conference and Exhibition 30 September2 October New Orleans SPE Annual Technical Conference andExhibition 79 October DubaiSPE/IADC Middle East Drilling Technology Conference andExhibition 710 October Kuwait CitySPE Kuwait Oil and Gas Show and Conference 1517 October MoscowSPE Arctic and Extreme Environments Technical Conference and Exhibition 2123 October AlexandriaCarbon Management Technology Conference 2224 October JakartaAsia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition 2830 October DubaiIntelligent Energy International Conference and Exhibition 2931 October Rio de Janeiro OTC Brasil 57 November CalgarySPE Unconventional ResourcesCanada 1113 November BrisbaneSPE Unconventional Resources Conference and ExhibitionAsia Pacific
CALL FOR PAPERS

Coiled Tubing and Well Intervention Conference and Exhibition The Woodlands, Texas, USA Deadline: 22 July International Symposium and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control Lafayette, Louisiana, USA Deadline: 29 July Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference The Woodlands, Texas, USA Deadline: 12 August 2014 SPE/IADC Managed Pressure Drilling and Underbalanced Operations Conference and Exhibition Madrid, Spain Deadline: 20 August SPE Bergen One Day Seminar Bergen, Norway Deadline: 9 September Offshore Technology Conference Houston, Texas, USA Deadline: 10 September SPE International Oilfield Corrosion Conference and Exhibition Aberdeen, UK Deadline: 12 September SPE EOR Conference and Oil and Gas West Asia Muscat, Oman Deadline: 5 October SPE International Oilfield Scale Conference and Exhibition Aberdeen, UK Deadline: 7 October
Find complete listings of upcoming SPE workshops, conferences, symposiums, and forums at www.spe.org. 144 JPT JULY 2013

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JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY www.spe.

well capping evolution

Middle East Sour Gas Offshore Technology Conference Coverage

18 G  uest Editorial SHALE 2.0: FROM EFFICIENT TO EFFECTIVE SHALE DEVELOPMENT

36 F  ORMATION EVALUATION-WHILE-DRILLING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES DATA DELIVERY

40 W  ELL CAPPING BECOMES AN INDUSTRY OF ITS OWN

Cover: This capping stack was one of

54 sour gas interest grows in the middle east

60 2  013 OTC MIRRORS CURRENT INDUSTRY VITALITY

72 U  NPLANNED DOWNTIME IS A SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTION LOSS MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR PRODUCERS

134 OFFSHORE EUROPE 2013 CONFERENCE SHOWCASES THE NEXT 50 YEARS

Printed in US. Copyright 2013, Society of Petroleum Engineers.

An Official Publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers.

91  High-Reliability Gas Lift Flow-Control-Device Technology and

103  Focus on Unconventional Reservoirs Requires Advancements

108  Holistic Appraisal Strategy Aims To Get the Most Out of

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Dennis Denney, JPT Senior Technology Editor

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36 F ORMATION EVALUATION-WHILE-DRILLING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES DATA DELIVERY

40 W ELL CAPPING BECOMES AN INDUSTRY OF ITS OWN

54 sour gas interest grows in the middle east

60 2 013 OTC MIRRORS CURRENT INDUSTRY VITALITY

72 U NPLANNED DOWNTIME IS A SIGNIFICANT PRODUCTION LOSS MANAGEMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR PRODUCERS

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