JPT 2019-09 PDF

S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 • VO LU M E 7 1 , N U M B E R 9 JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY
CONTENTS
Volume 71 • Number 9
12 GUEST EDITORIAL • TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYMENT:

HOW TO GET IT DONE AND MAXIMIZE OUTCOMES
Technology is an enabler. But why do some technologies get deployed
while other seemingly superior technologies struggle to get traction?
26 Q&A WITH 2020 SPE PRESIDENT SHAUNA NOONAN

Shauna Noonan will take office as 2020 SPE President during the SPE
Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition in October in Calgary. In this
interview, she shares the key issues she will emphasize during her term,
the challenges facing SPE, and the growth plan for the Society.
30 DRILLING CHANGE REQUIRES CHANGING DRILLERS

Drilling change requires training drillers. Leadership matters, as does
motivation, engaging displays, and understanding office politics. Four
different looks at the human side of drilling productivity improvement.
38 TO “RIGHT SIZE” FRACTURES, PRODUCERS ADOPT ROBUST

MONITORING AND CUSTOM COMPLETIONS
If you can see it, then maybe you can control it. This sums up the latest
quest that the unconventional engineering community embarked upon A Corva data analyst monitors
to get a better understanding of proper well spacing and how fractures many wells at a time, using
really interact. programs tracking the status
of wells and sending alerts on
potential issues. The digital drilling
48 COLOMBIA’S NEW AMBITIONS INCLUDE CARIBBEAN
advisory company regularly releases
AND SHALE DEVELOPMENT, BUT ARE THEY ACHIEVABLE? new tools to automate that job.
Colombia is walking a thin line between becoming another fading petroleum Source: Corva.
province and Latin America’s next big success story. Its aces in the hole:
unleashing its nascent offshore and unconventional sectors.
54 SPE HONORS 2019 INTERNATIONAL AWARD RECIPIENTS

AT ANNUAL MEETING DEPARTMENTS
Recipients of SPE’s 2019 International Awards will be recognized on
1 October, during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition
6 Performance Indices
in Calgary.
8 Regional Update
66 MANAGEMENT • ENHANCED RECOVERY TECHNOLOGIES 10 Comments
FOR UNCONVENTIONAL OIL RESERVOIRS 14 Technology Applications
A description of the role of effective reservoir management in increasing
the recovery factors for unconventional reservoirs, and a summary
16 E&P Notes
of the detailed review of the advances in IOR/EOR technologies for 88 SPE Events
unconventionals, as performed by the Energy Industry Partnership Team 100 SPE News
at the University of Houston. 101 Legion of Honor
102 People
103 Advertisers’ Index
104 Professional Services
An Official Publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Printed in US. Copyright 2019, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
PULSE
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
70 RESERVOIR PERFORMANCE
Silviu Livescu, SPE, Chief Scientist, Baker Hughes, a GE Company
71 Improving Temperature-Logging Accuracy in Steamfloods

73 Integrating Fractional Flow Into Reservoir Surveillance Improves
GOM Production
75 Chemical Tracer Flowback Data Help Understanding of Fluid Distribution
77 FIELD DEVELOPMENT
Maria A. Capello, SPE, Executive Consultant, Kuwait Oil Company
78 Considering Time and Space in Drilling and Completion Can Reduce

Well Interference
81 Parallel Simulation and Cloud Computing Can Optimize Large-Scale

Field Development
83 Optimization Framework Improves Mariner Field Development
85 OFFSHORE FACILITIES What if you didn’t

Ardian Nengkoda, SPE, Facilities Development Lead, Saudi Aramco
have to accept
86 Innovative Design and Execution Lead to Successful Grand Banks
Platform Operations nonproductive time
89 Evaluation of a Riser After 10 Years of GOM Service Life of 20%?
91 Extra-Long Subsea Tiebacks Reduce Deepwater Development Costs
With the digital advantage
93 OILFIELD CHEMISTRY from Exebenus, each well
Jonathan Wylde, SPE, Head of Global Innovation, Clariant Oil Services project advances the next
94 Benefits of Low-Dosage Hydrate Inhibitors Talk to us about
96 Locally Sourced, Ecofriendly Hydrate Inhibitor Effective in Simulated Exebenus Pulse
Offshore Environment
Digitalization and
98 Study Evaluates Hydrate Antiagglomerants automation for drilling
and completions
Visit us at
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free to SPE members for 2 months at www.spe.org/jpt. SPE ATCE 2019
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JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY (ISSN 0149-2136) is published monthly by the Society
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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to JPT, P.O. Box 833836, Richardson, TX 75083-3836 USA.
www.exebenus.com
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SPE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OFFICERS
2019 President
Sami Alnuaim, Saudi Aramco
2018 President
Darcy Spady, Independent Director
2020 President
Shauna Noonan, Occidental Petroleum
REGIONAL DIRECTORS
AFRICA NORTH SEA
Omowumi Iledare, University of Port Harcourt Karl Ludvig Heskestad, Aker BP
CANADIAN ASIA PACIFIC
Cam Matthews, C-FER Technologies Nasir Darman, Petronas
EASTERN NORTH AMERICA RUSSIA AND THE CASPIAN
Joe Frantz Jr., Range Resources Aizhana Jussupbekova, ExxonMobil
MID-CONTINENT NORTH AMERICA SOUTH AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN
Chris Jenkins, Chesapeake Energy Cesar Patino, Ecopetrol
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA SOUTH, CENTRAL AND EAST EUROPE
Faisal Al-Nughaimish, Saudi Aramco Jean-Marc Dumas, Aedes Energy International
NORTH AMERICA SOUTH ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Barry Hanson, Sproule Tapas Kumar Sengupta, ONGC (Ret.)
Steve Cheung, SteveIOR Consultants
TECHNICAL DIRECTORS
DRILLING COMPLETIONS
Jeff Moss, ExxonMobil Terry Palisch, CARBO Ceramics
HEALTH, SAFETY AND ENVIRONMENT PRODUCTION AND FACILITIES
Johana Dunlop, Sponsored by Schlumberger Hisham Saadawi, Baker Hughes, a GE Company
MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION RESERVOIR
Birol Dindoruk, Shell Erdal Ozkan, Colorado School of Mines
DIRECTOR FOR ACADEMIA

Ramona Graves, Colorado School of Mines
AT-LARGE DIRECTOR
Helena Wu, Santos Ltd.
JPT STAFF The Journal of Petroleum Technology® magazine is a

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PERFORMANCE INDICES
WORLD CRUDE OIL PRODUCTION+‡ HENRY HUB GULF COAST NATURAL GAS SPOT PRICE‡
THOUSAND BOPD
6
2019
O PEC JAN FEB MAR APR 5 USD/million Btu
Algeria 1190 1280 1290 1280
4
Angola 1594 1484 1494 1454
Rep. of Congo 326 341 331 340 3
Ecuador 524 533 530 529
2
Gabon 210 200 200 180
Iran 3401 3401 3351 3251 1
2018
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
2019
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
Iraq 4865 4795 4635 4715
Kuwait1 2800 2800 2770 2770
Libya 920 950 1180 1260
Nigeria 1950 1980 2010 2080
WORLD CRUDE OIL PRICES (USD/bbl)‡
Saudi Arabia1 10095 10145 9895 9895
UAE 3371 3421 3371 3371
Venezuela 1261 1131 885 875 2018 2019
DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL
TOTAL2 32653 32597 32098 32156
Brent 57.36 59.41 63.96 66.14 71.23 71.32 64.22 63.92
THOUSAND BOPD WTI 49.52 51.38 54.95 58.15 63.86 60.83 54.66 57.35
2019
NON-OPEC JAN FEB MAR APR
Canada 4121 4181 4222 4129
WORLD ROTARY RIG COUNT†
China 3812 3780 3895 3823
Egypt 638 632 619 626
Mexico 1647 1724 1714 1698 2019
REGION JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL
Norway 1487 1420 1420 1398
US 1065 1049 1023 1012 986 969 955
Russia 10973 10931 10895 10835
Canada 176 230 151 66 70 114 121
UK 1051 1130 1123 1082
USA 11860 11679 11916 12162 Latin America 195 182 188 190 179 189 201
Europe 86 94 95 98 186 193 200

TOTAL 82681 82400 82267 82012
Middle East 402 398 395 412 410 413 424
INDICES KEY
Africa 109 113 127 126 123 116 111
The EIA’s Monthly Energy Report no longer contains a separate section on Asia Pacific 232 240 234 236 228 227 226
international petroleum data. All historical data starting in 1973 that were
formerly presented in MER Section 11 are now available on EIA’s International
Energy Statistics browser: https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/ TOTAL 2265 2306 2213 2140 2182 2221 2238
† Source: Baker Hughes.
+
Figures do not include natural gas plant liquids.
1
Includes
approximately one-half of Neutral Zone production.
2
Countries are classified as “OPEC” or “non-OPEC” in all years based on
their status in the most current year. WORLD OIL SUPPLY AND DEMAND‡
‡
Source: EIA.
MILLION BOPD 2018 2019

Quarter 3rd 4th 1st 2nd
SUPPLY 101.45 102.24 100.02 100.33

DEMAND 100.47 100.41 99.79 100.29
Supply includes crude oil, lease condensates, natural gas plant liquids, biofuels, other liquids,
and refinery processing gains.
6 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2019

VISIT US AT
SPE ATCE
30th – 2nd October
BMO Centre at Stampede Park #1213
Calgary, Alberta
Canada
www.interwell.com
YOUR GLOBAL
PARTNER
www.interwell.com
REGIONAL UPDATE
well. Arcticgas is a joint venture of Novatek 40,000 B/D by the end of 2019, according
AFRICA
and Gazprom-Neft. to ADNOC and Korea National Oil
◗◗ BP and Kosmos Energy discovered Corporation (KNOC). The onshore field
30 m of net gas pay in good-quality Albian ◗◗ Novatek began commercial production is 60% owned by ADNOC, 30% by KNOC,
reservoir in the Greater Tortue development from its 1-billion m3/year South- and 10% by South Korea’s GS Energy. Their
area, offshore Senegal. The Greater Tortue Khadyryakhinskoye natural gas field in the joint venture, Al Dhafra Petroleum, started
Ahmeyim-1 was drilled to a TD of 4884 m Purovsky district of Russia’s Yamal-Nenets an extensive appraisal program in Haliba
in 2500 m of water on the eastern anticline autonomous region. The field is in the that enabled it to discover 1.1 billion bbl
within the unit development area. Other South-Khadyryakhinskiy license area near of original oil in place.
partners are SMPHM and Petrosen. Novatek’s North-Khancheyskoye field.
◗◗ SDX Energy encountered 134 ft of net
◗◗ SDX Energy discovered oil at its ◗◗ Hibiscus Petroleum drilled and heavy oil pay across the Lower Miocene
Rabul‑7 development well in the completed the first of three wells for the Yusr and Bakr formations at the Rabul‑7
West Gharib concession in Egypt. The St Joseph infill drilling project in the North development well in the West Gharib
well was drilled to TD of 5,323 ft and Sabah enhanced oil recovery production- concession in Egypt. The well was drilled
encountered approximately 134 ft of sharing contract offshore Malaysia. The to 5,323 ft TD and brought online at an
net heavy oil pay across the Yusr and SJ-105A horizontal well had a 2,400-ft average stabilized rate of 415 B/D over
Bakr formations. Five‑day stabilized rate horizontal section that encountered 1,000 ft 5 days. SDX and Dublin International
was approximately 415 B/D. SDX is joint of oil in the targeted reservoirs. Production Petroleum serve as joint operators
operator with holds 50% working interest. stabilized at just over 1,000 B/D of oil. and share equal working interest in
Dublin International Petroleum holds the operation.
the remaining 50% interest. EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA
◗◗ Invictus Energy said results of ◗◗ Equinor discovered oil at Oseberg
independent estimates strongly support Vestflanken in the North Sea, with ◗◗ LLOG Exploration brought two
the possible existence of 1.3 billion BOE recoverable resources estimated at Buckskin oil wells on stream in the
at its Cahorra Bassa Basin project in the 22 million bbl. The exploration extension deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Once fully
Muzarabani prospective area of Zimbabwe. well proved a 112-m oil column in a segment established, the project’s first phase is
Estimates are for total prospective resource that had not been tested before. The expected to reach 30,000 B/D (gross) of
of 9.25 Tcf of gas plus 294 million bbl of well will be put on stream via the new, oil. Additional phases will fully develop
conventional gas and condensate. unmanned, remotely operated H platform the field, which is estimated to contain
on the Oseberg field. nearly 5 billion bbl of oil in place. LLOG
◗◗ Eni confirmed 650 million bbl of oil in operates the field with 33.8% working
place with its Agogo-2 appraisal well in ◗◗ Aker BP and LOTOS discovered between interest. Other partners are Repsol E&P
Block 5/06, offshore Angola. The well was 80 and 200 million BOE in the Liatårnet USA (22.5%), Beacon Offshore Energy
drilled to total depth of 3949 m in 1700 m exploration well in license 442 in the North Buckskin (18.7%), Navitas Buckskin US
of water, where it encountered 58 m of of Alvheim and Krafla-Askja (NOAKA) (7.5%), and Ridgewood Energy 1 (17.5%).
31 °API oil. The result confirms the extension area of the Norwegian North Sea. Up to
of the Agogo reservoir to the north of the 700 million BOE are in place overall at the SOUTH AMERICA
discovery well and below the salt diapirs. discovery, which is claimed as Norway’s
The block JV is composed of Eni, asset largest this year. Aker BP is operator with ◗◗ Canacol Energy discovered gas flowing
operator with 36.8% stake, Sonangol 90.26%. Lotos Exploration & Production at a rate of 30.4 MMscf/D at the Ocarina 1
P&P with 36.8%, and SSI Fifteen Limited Norge holds 9.74%. exploratory well in the Lower Magdalena
with 26.32%. Valley Basin of Colombia, in the Ciénaga de
◗◗ Production began from Equinor’s Oro (CDO) sandstone reservoir. The well
Trestakk subsea field on Haltenbanken in will be connected to the Jobo production
ASIA
the Norwegian Sea on 16 July. The field facilities through the flow lines of the
◗◗ Lukoil commissioned the eighth and has estimated recoverable oil resources of Pandereta field. Canacol Energy operates
ninth production wells at the V. Filanovsky 76 million bbl. A total of five wells will be the well with 100% working interest.
field Phase 2 development in the Russian drilled: three for production, and two for
sector of the Caspian Sea, each with daily gas injection. Trestakk is tied back to the ◗◗ Ecopetrol discovered 2,397 bbl of
flow rates of 1,000 metric tons. Åsgard A floating production vessel. Equinor 23 °API crude at a well depth of 13,932 ft
operates Trestakk with 59.1% interest. at its Boranda-2 ST well in the Middle
◗◗ The Arcticgas joint venture U2802 well ExxonMobil has 33% and Vår Energi, 7.9%. Magdalena Basin, Rionegro, Colombia.
in Urengoyskoye gas field in the northern Initial tests produced on average 960 B/D
Tyumen region of Russia flowed more than with a water cut of less than 2%. Ecopetrol
MIDDLE EAST
1 million m3/D of natural gas and 500 metric owns a 50% stake in the block. The
tons per day of condensate through an ◗◗ The Haliba oil field in Abu Dhabi started other 50% is owned by Parex, who is
8-stage, hydraulically fractured, horizontal production, with plans to boost output to the operator. JPT

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COMMENTS EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Barbara Pribyl—Chairperson, Santos
Bernt Aadnøy, University of Stavanger
Syed Ali, Consultant
Cautious Pessimism Tayfun Babadagli, University of Alberta

William Bailey, Schlumberger
John Donnelly, JPT Editor Maria Capello, Kuwait Oil Company

Frank Chang, Saudi Aramco
Simon Chipperfield, Santos
Alex Crabtree, Consultant
After the oil price downturn, operators placed renewed empha-
Gunnar DeBruijn, Schlumberger
sis on spending discipline, in drilling, project costs, and balance
sheets. For some, that was a different metric: return to share- Galen Dino, Dino Engineering
holders over production growth. During and after the prolonged Mark Egan, Retired
decline in oil prices, which bottomed in 2016, larger operators Alexandre Emerick,
did become more technologically proficient, increasing the effi- Petrobras Research Center
ciency of existing wells and learning to live with lower oil pric- Niall Fleming, Equinor
es. With anticipation that $40-60/bbl oil might be the norm for Ted Frankiewicz, SPEC Services
years to come, they had no choice. But this was easier for larger companies than small- Stephen Goodyear, Shell
er independents ramping up shale output in places like the Permian Basin. Omer M. Gurpinar, Schlumberger
This has put many independents in a tough spot. Bankruptcies are on the rise, Birger Velle Hanssen, OneSubsea
and the future of unconventional production in the US, while spectacular, has some
Greg Horton, Retired
unanswered questions going forward. The number of shale operators filing for Chap-
John Hudson, Shell
ter 11 bankruptcy protection continues to grow, the latest being Sanchez Energy and
Morten Iversen,
Halcón Resources, both of which filed for protection in mid-August. From the begin-
Karachaganak Petroleum Operating
ning of 2015 to May 2019, 172 North American operators filed for bankruptcy. Many
Leonard Kalfayan, Hess Corporation
of the bankruptcies occurred in 2015–2016, but there were more in 2018 than 2017.
Thomas Knode, Kirby Corporation
“After years of high growth, the US unconventionals sector has yet to deliver cash flow
or returns to investors across the full cycle. To achieve profitability, shale producers Sunil Kokal, Saudi Aramco
will need to transform their organizations and shift their strategic focus from growth Heejae Lee, ExxonMobil
to value creation,” consulting firm McKinsey said in a statement last month. Douglas Lehr, BHGE
During recent earnings calls, many independents in the unconventional sector Silviu Livescu, BHGE
sounded a note of pessimism about the current state of the business. US shale opera- Shouxiang (Mark) Ma, Saudi Aramco
tors need to tap the brakes on production growth and focus even more on capital dis- John Macpherson, BHGE
cipline in an oversupplied market, Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm said at a
R.V. Marathe, ONGC
recent industry conference. “Capital discipline is more important now than at any time
Stéphane Menand, DrillScan
I’ve seen it. We can oversupply the market, and we have,” Hamm said.
In August, the International Energy Agency reported that demand growth for oil Graham Mensa-Wilmot, Chevron
had hit its lowest level in more than a decade, going back to the recession of 2008. Rohit Mittal, BHGE
The demand slowdown was driven by fears of another global recession and the ongo- Badrul H. Mohamed Jan, University of Malaya
ing trade dispute between the US and China, which has hurt several industrial and Ehsaan Nasir, BHGE
manufacturing sectors. Oil prices have fallen steadily this year, about 20% since April. Ardian Nengkoda, Saudi Aramco
In a separate report, consultancy Rystad Energy said the oil market was going from Yagna Oruganti, BHGE
“gloomy to gloomier” and questioned whether OPEC and the other major producers Zillur Rahim, Saudi Aramco
that have been reigning in supply since the oil crash could do much more at this point.
Martin Rylance, BP plc
But there are bright spots in other parts of the industry. “High-impact” explora-
Robello Samuel, Halliburton
tion drilling activity increased significantly in the first half of 2019 with 51 explora-
tion wells completed, compared with just 36 in the same period last year, according to Otto L. Santos, Louisiana State University
Westwood Global Energy Group. Sixteen large discoveries have been made so far this Luigi A. Saputelli, Frontender Corporation
year, with the largest discoveries all being gas at Dinkov (∼14 Tcf) and Nyarmeyskoye Greg Stephenson, Occidental Petroleum
(4.3 Tcf) in the Kara Sea offshore Russia, and Glaucus (4.5 Tcf) in the Eastern Medi- Rosa Swartwout, BHGE
terranean offshore Cyprus. The largest oil discoveries were Yellowtail and Tilapia off- Xiuli Wang, Consultant
shore Guyana, according to Westwood. It expects that another 35–40 high-impact Mike Weatherl, Well Integrity
exploration wells will be completed by the end of 2019, resulting in more than 85 for
Scott Wilson, Ryder Scott Company
the year, a 35% increase from 2018. JPT
Jonathan Wylde, Clariant Oil Services
Robert Ziegler, Weatherford
To contact JPT’s editor, email jdonnelly@spe.org.

Inspired By the Past. Leading Into the Future.
AN EVOLUTION IN UNCONVENTIONAL PERFORMANCE
Since our first fracturing job in 1949, we have stood by your side at the forefront of unconventional
development. Today, our experience and technical ingenuity continue to provide solutions that
optimize recovery more efficiently. From cutting-edge asset visualization and characterization, to
precisely placed wellbores and fracture completions, we can help you stimulate more production,
more consistently – well to well, asset to asset. For your next big play, take advantage of all we’ve
© 2019 Halliburton. All Rights Reserved.
achieved in the past to achieve even more in the future.
hal100.com
GUEST EDITORIAL
Technology Deployment: How to Get it Done

and Maximize Outcomes
Erik Nijveld, Managing Partner, Deployment Matters
The oil and gas industry has truly pushed Simplifying Technology ities technologies). A technology has to
the boundaries over time, and delivered Selection be technically sound and fit-for-purpose.
projects that were considered unthink- As in daily life, we are far more confi- But eventually, the reason for users to
able not too long ago. Technology has dent about using technology if we know choose it—instead of one of the many
truly been an enabler. Yet, despite the about others that have successfully used other things that can be done to improve
undeniable role that technology has it. Also, it clearly helps in the decision- performance—is mostly driven by non-
played, it is also clear that there is sig- making process if we are aware of reviews technical factors.
nificant room to further accelerate the from a recognized expert or other user. With a stress test, technology is
speed of technology deployment. For these reasons, Deployment Mat- assessed against approximately 30 cri-
Although it is often believed that “risk ters launched the Technology Catalogue. teria grouped under seven themes. Only
averseness” is one of the main reasons The platform was developed based on one of the themes is technical, the other
for the lack of innovation in oil and first-hand experience because it is often six are nontechnical (Fig. 1). Based on a
gas, it is often due to other reasons, difficult for decision makers to stay up dialogue with key stakeholders around
such as: to date on available technology-driven the table, a score is given in the range of
◗◗ End users are keen, but do not improvement opportunities for their 0–5 per theme based on the current sit-
know about available technologies business. The platform helps technol- uation. As part of the dialogue, actions
or do not know where to start. ogy providers create more visibility for are discussed and agreed such that the
As a result, they stick to their technologies. In a sense, it works chances of success can be increased.
conventional practices. similar to TripAdvisor and other sites For example, the test helps assess in
◗◗ End users do not have the time that we use in our daily life, although in a structured manner whether the risks
and/or expertise to assess the an industry like ours we would likely not and rewards are fairly distributed, not
available technologies and to rely on anonymous reviews, or reviews only between supplier and end-user com-
sustainably embed technologies from strangers. pany, but also between different teams
into the business. within the end-user company. If this is
◗◗ Suppliers have difficulties getting Positioning Technologies not the case, you can be sure that there
access to the right people in the for Success will be resistance, sometimes in a subtle
end-user company and/or struggle Why do some technologies get deployed manner. Often the reason why technolo-
to make a convincing case. while other seemingly superior technologies are “stuck in the mud” is because of
By addressing these three aspects, gies struggle to get traction? A “technol- an unbalanced distribution of risks and
major hurdles for change are removed, ogy stress test” provides answers and rewards; technologies that make every-
such that the chances increase that end- gives key insights on what can be done one a winner are usually the easiest to
users are prepared to change their cur- to increase the chances of success. This get deployed.
rent ways of working, resulting in accel- stress test is based on more than 600 You must also assess the amount of
erated technology deployment. deployments (subsurface, wells and facil- change management that is required to
introduce the technology. Does the tech-
nology that you want to get deployed
make use of existing data and IT hard-
Erik Nijveld is managing partner and cofounder of Deployment
ware? Is the technology compatible with
Matters, supporting technology providers and oil and gas opera-
tors with getting technology deployed, including all related
current processes/ways of working?
change management aspects. Before starting Deployment These and other questions should be
Matters, he worked for 19 years at Shell. In his last role, he set up asked. If too much (perceived) change
Shell’s “Technology Replication Thrust for Production Excellence.” is required, then this may be a reason or
He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Twente excuse for end-users to stick to their cur-
and received an MBA from Rotterdam School of Management. rent practices.

Throughout the dialogue, it is impor- 1 – Perceived
tant to keep in mind that it is not the business impact
actual score that matters. What mat- A. Current
2 – Business
ters is the quality of the dialogue, and 7–
impact Status
the actions as a result of the dialogue Procurement
dimensions
that can be completed within the desired
timeline. It is our experience that three
to five well-defined, targeted actions 3–
6 – Technical Risk/Reward B. Status after
are often sufficient to get technology doability balance actions have
deployment going. been taken
What if your technology does not pass
5– 4 – Change
the test? It could, for example, mean Deployment management
that it is better to first target other com- references requirements
panies, or other specific assets/projects
within the company, where the chanc- Fig. 1—Assessment of technology using the stress test tool with technologies
es of success are higher. Or, for a start- assessed against approximately 30 criteria grouped under seven themes.
up company working on a novel tech-
nology, it may mean that you need to I live. Little chance that I would have Technology deployment in the oil and
think early on about the right tactics. allowed a stranger to remove the existing gas industry is challenging, but it can
This can be illustrated with an example control system and replace it with some- be done. An easy-to-digest overview in
from daily life. I was among the first peo- thing new. The startup company that pro- combination with deployment refer-
ple in The Netherlands who could control vided the smart system realized that and ences and user/expert reviews aids the
my heating system from my smartphone. teamed up with a well-established con- selection process. That, combined with
This system was provided through the tractor. A similar tactic can sometimes applying insights from a technology
same contractor that had done a great be used to get novel technology accepted stress test, can help position technolo-
job refurbishing the old house in which in oil and gas. gies for success. JPT
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TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
Chris Carpenter, JPT Technology Editor
Wellhead Fatigue figurable, low-power Subsea Monitor- tion with a single, straightforward dis-
Mitigation System ing, Analysis, and Reporting Technology play allowing the driller to control back-
Trendsetter Vulcan Offshore (TVO) has (SMART). The complete system will be pressure or choke position while drilling,
contracted with Tamarind Resources used to alleviate wellhead fatigue dur- tripping, and making connections. When
to provide its Wellhead Fatigue Mitiga- ing a planned drilling program carried additional control is required, Flex MPD
tion System. The system alleviates the out by the Prospector semisubmersible Pro incorporates rig data for a more-
effect of modern, large blowout pre- in the coming months on the Tui oil field intelligent automated response to adjust
venters (BOPs) on legacy wellheads by in the Taranaki Basin offshore New Zea- backpressure based on flow rates and bit
arresting the motion of the BOP stack land. The SMART technology monitors depth. The system can also run as a full
by four tethers anchored to the seabed. movement of the BOP and the bottom MPD solution using real-time hydraulic
The lighter and less-expensive tethered of the drilling riser and provides in-situ modeling to control downhole pressure;
BOP enables reliable operations on new data-processing capabilities. limit formation fluids from entering the
exploration wells and simplifies re-entry ◗◗For more information, visit wellbore; and help reduce lost circula-
and plug-and-abandonment operations www.trendsetterengineering.com. tion that can cause wellbore instability,
on older wells (Fig. 1). The system sub- stuck pipe, and formation damage. Each
stantially reduces wellhead cyclic stress- Scalable Managed- tier uses a smaller footprint so operators
es and enhances fatigue life. Depend- Pressure-Drilling System can reduce rig-up and rig-down time.
ing on the specific riser and wellhead Halliburton introduced the Flex The system was recently deployed in an
configuration, fatigue life has been managed-pressure-drilling (MPD) sys- unconventional field in South Ameri-
improved by as much as 1,000 times the tem, a scalable and mobile technology ca to help an operator manage down-
original unmitigated wellhead fatigue. that can be configured to address specif- hole pressure while reducing the space
An added benefit is the increased lim- ic operator challenges and deliver greater requirements on the rig for increased
its to the rig watch circle, particular- rig efficiency (Fig. 2). The tiered system surface efficiency.
ly in shallow water, where watch cir- allows operators to select the right level ◗◗For more information, visit
cles can be restrictive. The system will of service to help maximize the cost and www.halliburton.com.
be combined with a wireless monitor- benefit of MPD services. The standard
ing system based on Sonardyne’s con- MPD offering is a tablet-controlled solu- Digital Asset Inspection System
Oceaneering introduced the Inform
Inspect digital asset inspection sys-
tem to streamline nondestructive test-
ing (NDT) and inspection management.
The tablet-based technology equips
technicians, supervisors, and manag-
ers with the ability to deliver seamless,
end-to-end inspection—from planning
to review—with standardized data cap-
tured into a cloud-based system. Infor-
mation is available instantly for analysis,
enabling more-effective planning and
optimization of personnel time on-site.
Hardware is rated for onshore and off-
shore applications and is certified for
use in hazardous areas. Field trials have
demonstrated conservative productivity
gains of up to 30% in end-to-end inspec-
tion times, and the speed and scope of
the technology provides major safety
benefits, ultimately enabling personnel
to spend less time on-site in hazardous
Fig. 1—A tensioner component of the TVO Wellhead Fatigue Mitigation System environments. The software can also be
in the moonpool ready for installation. integrated with a computerized mainte-

Fig. 2—The Flex MPD system from Halliburton can be Fig. 3—Wild Well Control has added Fugro intervention
configured to address specific operator challenges and skids to its Subsea Response Kit.
deliver greater rig efficiency.
nance management system and integrity- ready-to-deploy state in both Aber-

management systems to increase effi- deen and Singapore. The equipment at
ciencies. The technology will be avail- each location includes full subsea well-
able through Oceaneering’s Asset Integ- intervention systems, including a subsea
rity business, which provides integrity, capping stack, debris removal shears,
management, analytics, maintenance hardware kits for the subsea application
and risk management, convention- of dispersant and inhibition fluids, and
al and advanced NDT, and specialist other ancillary equipment.
inspection solutions. ◗◗For more information, visit
◗◗For more information, visit www.wildwell.com.
www.oceaneering.com.
Conductor Anchor Node
Enhanced Subsea Response Kit Neodrill’s CAN (Conductor Anchor
Wild Well Control announced a new con- Node) is a combination of suction
tract with Fugro for the provision of anchor and guide pipe. The suction
blowout-preventer (BOP) intervention anchor pushes the guide pipe into the
skids and test units for inclusion in its seabed, providing top support for the
Subsea Response Kit (Fig. 3). As part of conductor. The solution was created to
the WellCONTAINED subsea capping- facilitate installation of conductors with
stack program, the new 450/150 Mark light vessels and subsea conductor driv-
3 BOP intervention skids from Fugro ing, providing operational and commer-
Fig. 4—Neodrill’s CAN-ductor drilling
are an advance in both pumping capa- cial benefits by enabling the subsea well technology was reported to have a
bility and water-depth rating and will foundation to be in place before the rig reduced environmental effect when
replace the existing equipment in inven- arrives on location (Fig. 4). A life-cycle- compared with conventional drilling
tory. This technology offers multiple assessment (LCA) analysis by Asplan techniques.
benefits to Wild Well, such as full skid Viak reported that Neodrill’s drilling
testing without the requirement of a technology has an environmental effect categories, including climate change
remotely operated vehicle (ROV), the between 21–44% less than that of a con- and human toxicity. The report found
ability to interface to most work-class ventionally drilled well. The reference that reduced rig time and need for mate-
ROV systems, and a custom-designed well used was the Cambo Well in the UK, rials, such as cement and steel in well
self-contained storage and maintenance which was drilled by Siccar Point Energy casings, were the main reasons for the
transport container. Deployments of the in 2018. The functional unit used for the reduced environmental effect of the
skid system to date have included full purpose of the study was the drilling and technology. In total, the rig time was 4
functional testing on a Fugro ROV at a casing operations for one production days shorter compared with that of the
3800-m water depth. The BOP system well. The processes for both CAN-ductor conventional technology. JPT
is depth-rated to 4000 m. The capping- and conventional drilling were detailed ◗◗For more information, visit
stack-program inventory is staged in a and results were compared across eight www.neodrill.com.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2019 15

E&P NOTES
Pemex Unveils Plan To Undo

“Failure of Energy Reform”
Pemex will implement a plan intended as 2020 and 4% for 2021. The current
“a rescue of the country’s energy industry rate is 65%.
after the resounding failure of the energy The financial relief is meant to free
reform,” said Mexican President Andrés up investment by Pemex in new proj-
Manuel López Obrador during a presen- ects that will primarily come in estab-
tation at the National Palace in Mexico lished areas onshore and near-shore
City on 16 July. as opposed to more-expensive, less-
The latest 5-year plan for Mexico’s familiar deepwater areas. Romero Oro-
state-owned oil and gas firm aims to bal- peza said the government’s goal is to
ance its budget by 2021 and increase oil support Pemex for the first 3 years of
production to almost 2.7 million B/D by Lopez Obrador’s administration to ready
the end of 2024, the conclusion of Lopez the company to help fund Mexico’s eco-
Obrador’s presidential term. Pemex has nomic growth plans during the second
more than $100 billion in debt and half of the administration.
has suffered production declines for 15 Romero Oropeza added that “public Mexican President Andrés Manuel
consecutive years. In May, it produced investment will be complemented by pri- López Obrador took office in
just under 1.7 million B/D, according vate investment through long-term ser- December 2018. Source: Getty Images.
to statistics available on the company’s vice contracts for oil production.” He
website, down from 3.4 million B/D said, “Pemex makes clear its openness to National Hydrocarbons Commission
during 2004. business schemes with the private sec- conducted several bid rounds for deep-
Octavio Romero Oropeza, Pemex chief tor under strict observance of the com- water, shallow-water, and onshore areas,
executive officer, blamed the declines on pany’s interests and with fair and trans- awarding more than 100 contracts to
a lack of investment by the company. parent agreements, leaving behind the numerous companies from both Mexico
Pemex will receive “a gradual reduc- practices in which Pemex participated at and abroad. Those contracts will contin-
tion of its fiscal burden” through tax a disadvantage.” ue to be honored.
relief, said Lopez Obrador, in which Energy reforms were signed into law However, since taking office, the Lopez
the government will present a pro- in 2014 by former President Enrique Obrador administration has canceled
posal to reform Mexico’s Hydrocar- Peña Nieto, opening up the industry to previously scheduled bid rounds and
bons Revenue Law. This would reduce domestic and foreign private sector par- Pemex farmouts in an effort to stop fur-
the shared utility tax rate by 7% for ticipation. During 2015–2018, Mexico’s ther advancement of the reform.
Eni Appraises Angola Discovery, Makes Another Off Vietnam

An appraisal well drilled by Eni offshore Eni said Agogo-2 was drilled in a “high- northwest of Agogo-1, 180 km offshore
Angola confirmed the extension of the ly deviated” manner to reach sequenc- and 23 km from the N’Goma West Hub
Agogo reservoir, while the Italian opera- es below the salt diapirs and prove the floating production, storage, and offload-
tor hit gas and condensate pay at its Ken existence of reservoir and oil charge in ing (FPSO) vessel. The well reached a TD
Bau prospect offshore Vietnam. the Agogo megastructure. Data acquired of 3,949 m in 1,700 m of water.
The Agogo-2 appraisal well on Block from the well indicate a production Eni plans to start production from
15/06 encountered 58 m net of 31° grav- capacity of more than 15,000 B/D of oil. Agogo before year end with a subsea tie-
ity oil in Miocene and Oligocene sand- The results confirm 650 million bbl of back to the N’Goma FPSO, as the com-
stones “with excellent petrophysical oil in place at the Agogo field and indicate pany continues its appraisal campaign to
characteristics,” the Italian operator further upside in its northern sector that assess the discovery’s full potential and
said. The results confirm the extension will be assessed with new appraisal wells, development size.
of the Agogo reservoir to the north of the company said. Eni is operator of Block 15/06 with
the Agogo-1 discovery well and below Agogo-2 was drilled by Transocean’s a 36.8421% stake. Partners are Sonan-
the salt diapirs. Poseidon deepwater drillship, 3 km gol P&P with 36.8421% and SSI Fifteen

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Limited with 26.3158%. Eni operates of more than 100 m. The results repre- cant additional resources. The company
both the West Hub and East Hub devel- sent “a breakthrough for evaluating the plans a drilling campaign early next year
opments, which produce a combined exploration potential in the Song Hong to fully assess the discovery’s potential.
155,000 B/D of oil. Basin,” Eni said. Eni is operator of Block 114 in a 50-50
Off Vietnam, Eni’s Ken Bau 1X explora- The well was drilled 95 m of water, partnership with Essar E&P. Eni also
tion well on Block 114 intersected sever- reaching a TD of 3606 m, and was operates with 100% interest the neigh-
al intervals of gas and condensate sand- plugged and abandoned early because of boring Block 116 and four blocks total in
stone interbedded with Miocene shale technical issues, Eni said, before reach- the underexplored Song Hong and Phu
with an estimated net reservoir thickness ing deeper levels that could hold signifi- Khanh Basins.
Aramco Advances 550,000-B/D Expansion of Marjan,

Berri Fields
Saudi Aramco has awarded 34 contracts gas with the construction of an off- The Berri program also includes a
worth a combined $18 billion for engi- shore gas-oil separation plant and water injection facility, two drilling
neering, procurement, and construction 24 offshore oil, gas, and water injec- islands, 11 oil and water offshore plat-
work on the Marjan and Berri fields off- tion platforms. forms, and nine onshore oil production
shore Saudi Arabia. The agreements are The company plans to expand its and water supply drill sites.
part of Aramco’s plans to increase pro- Tanajib onshore oil facilities and build Saipem said it was awarded $3.5 bil-
duction capacity of the two fields by a new gas plant to include gas treat- lion in contracts covering the Abu Ali oil-
550,000 B/D of crude oil and 2.5 bil- ment and processing, natural gas liq- gas separation plant for Berri field and,
lion Bscf/D of natural gas. uids recovery and fractionation, and gas at Marjan field, the gas treatment plant
Saudi-based firms took 16 of the compression facilities. A cogeneration as well as another unit for the recovery
contracts, while the rest of the con- facility, water desalination facility, and of acid gases for sulfur production.
tracts went to firms including Saipem, transfer pipelines also will be built. The Marjan and Berri contractors
McDermott International, Subsea 7, The Berri project will add 250,000 B/D are required to prioritize material and
Tecnicas Reunidas, China Petroleum & of Arabian Light crude from the off- equipment procurement from local sup-
Chemical, Larsen & Toubro, and Hyun- shore field. Planned facilities include pliers and manufacturers in support
dai Engineering & Construction. More a gas-oil separation plant on Abu Ali of Saudi Aramco’s goal to increase its
than 90 entities were invited to bid on Island to process 500,000 B/D of Ara- locally-sourced goods and services to
the packages. bian Light and additional gas processing 70% by 2021.
The Marjan project will boost the facilities at the Khursaniyah gas plant Aramco said its maximum sustained
field’s output by 300,000 B/D of Ara- to process 40,000 B/D of associated oil production capacity remains at
bian Medium crude and 2.5 Bscf/D of hydrocarbon condensate. 12 million B/D.
Petrobras to Sell Shallow-Water Campos, Santos Basin Fields

Brazil’s state-owned Petrobras has
agreed to sell shallow-water assets in
the Campos and Santos Basins to two
companies for a combined $1.5 billion.
The moves are part of the company’s
multiyear divestment program.
In one deal, London-based Trident
Energy will acquire 100% interest in the
Pampo and Enchova clusters in the Cam-
pos Basin. In the other, Melbourne-based
Karoon Energy will buy 100% interest in
the Baúna field in the Santos Basin.
The Pampo and Enchova hubs off Rio
de Janeiro include the Enchova, Enchova The Cidade de Itajaí floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel
Oeste, Marimbá, Piraúna, Bicudo, Boni- is located at the Baúna field in the shallow-water Santos Basin. The FPSO can
to, Pampo, Trilha, Linguado, and Bade- produce 80,000 B/D of oil and store 600 million bbl of oil. Source: Odebrecht.

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jo fields, which produce a combined York City private equity firm Warburg la and well interventions, the com-
25,500 B/D via the PPM-1, PCE-1, P-8, Pincus, Trident is focused on explo- pany said.
and P-65 platforms. The fields were ration and production in Africa and The field has been flowing light,
developed in the 1980s. Trident will pay Latin America. sweet crude since 2013. Karoon will pay
$851 million to Petrobras in two install- The Baúna field off São Paulo state $655 million in two installments.
ments and could pay up to $200 mil- produces 20,000 B/D via the Cidade Slated to close in first-half 2020, the
lion more depending on future crude de Itajaí floating production, stor- deal is “expected to deliver material
oil prices. age, and offloading vessel. The field operational and logistical synergies for
“During the evaluation phase, we consists of two producing oil reser- the potential development of Karoon’s
identified a large number of attractive voirs, Baúna and Piracaba, as well as existing southern Santos Basin assets,
projects to increase the production and the undeveloped Patola discovery. Out- Neon and Goiá,” Karoon said in a new
extend the life of these fields,” Trident put is expected to grow to 33,000 B/D release. In addition to Brazil, the com-
said in a news release. Backed by New in 2022 through development of Pato- pany has projects in Australia and Peru.
PTTEP Discovers Giant Gas Deposit Offshore Malaysia

PTT Exploration and Production Com- have relatively clean gas qualities and said. “Legacy fields have experienced
pany (PTTEP) encountered 252 m low impurity content,” said Huong sand influx and water breakthroughs,
of net gas pay while drilling the Tra Ho, a senior analyst at the ener- while many of the remaining undevel-
shallow-water Lang Lebah-1RDR2 gy consultancy, in a note following the oped discoveries require advanced CO2
exploration well on Block SK410B off- PTTEP announcement. and H2S processing. Gas quality will
shore Sarawak, Malaysia. “The discovery is located in the gas- thus be crucial to determining the speed
The Thai operator drilled the well rich Sarawak-Luconia-East Natuna and ease of future monetization plans
to a TD of 3,810 m primarily target- basin, which has enjoyed an explora- for Lang Lebah, which is also close to
ing the Middle Miocene cycle IV/V car- tion success rate of 55% over the past existing infrastructure.”
bonate reservoir. The well was tested 10 years, above the 37% global aver- PTTEP’s Malaysian subsidiary PTTEP
at a completion-constrained rate of age,” she said. “The Miocene carbonate HK Offshore is operator of Block
41.3 MMscf/D of gas and 246 B/D of play in particular has produced a num- SK410B with a 42.5% stake. Kuwait For-
condensate through a 40/64-in. choke. ber of high-profile finds over the years, eign Petroleum Exploration Company
Lang Lebah-1RDR2, the first explora- including Pegaga, B14, Kuang North, also has 42.5%, and Malaysia’s state-
tion well in the 1,870-sq-km Sarawak and Kasawari. But issues around gas owned Petronas holds 15%.
SK410B project 90 km off Sarawak, impurities and contaminants have sty- PTTEP as of late has been expand-
is PTTEP’s largest-ever discovery, the mied development plans for some of ing its presence in Southeast Asia and
company said. Further drilling will con- the fields.” particularly Malaysia, where the com-
firm its potential. Wood Mackenzie believes the Lang pany in March agreed to acquire Mur-
Wood Mackenzie estimates the Lebah discovery has “a high chance of phy Oil’s assets in the country for more
find holds some 2 Tcf of gas, making commercialization” via the Malaysia than $2 billion. Also, earlier this week,
it this year’s seventh-largest discovery LNG complex. PTTEP reported that it’s acquiring Por-
worldwide. “It is in the deeper, [high- “The plant is in urgent need of new tugal’s Partex Holding for $622 million.
pressure/high-temperature] reservoir supply as existing sources have only met Partex is primarily focused on opera-
of the basin, and looks potentially to 85% of its requirements in 2018,” she tions in Oman and the UAE.
Analytics Firm: Permian Fracturing Work Underreported

by 21% in 2018
Findings from analytics firm Kayrros founding group includes a former lead with proprietary algorithms to identify
suggest the average well in the Permian economist at the US Energy Information rigs and frac crews.
Basin of west Texas and southeastern Administration (EIA), found that some Kayrros’ tally of 6,394 completed
New Mexico is both less productive and 1,100 wells were completed in the Perm- wells for 2018 contrasts with the 5,272
more expensive than reflected in pub- ian last year but not reported through wells counted by FracFocus, which is
lic data. state agencies or FracFocus. Kayrros a public repository for information on
The firm, whose leadership includes made its assessment by pairing optical chemicals used during fracturing. Indus-
former Schlumberger executives and and synthetic aperture radar imagery try analysts typically rely on data sub-

mitted by operators to state agencies the number of wells drilled generally more water- and sand-intensive than is
and FracFocus. matches that of wells completed, leaving commonly believed.”
Kayrros noted, however, that Permian DUC inventories relatively unchanged. Assuming a cost of $5 million per
crude production is accurately measured EIA estimated there were just more horizontal completion, operator capi-
in monthly EIA statistics, meaning it took than 4,000 DUCs in the Permian tal expenditure is underestimated by
many more wells to reach 2018 output in June. as much as $4.1 billion, the analysis
than were actually reported. “Misperceptions about shale oil in indicates. Sand and water intensity of
The underreported activity also means general and the Permian in particular Permian tight oil production in 2018
the backlog of Permian drilled-but- have consequences, hence the impor- was 23% higher than previously record-
uncompleted (DUC) wells is much small- tance of these measurements that ed, with sand demand underestimated
er than commonly thought, Kayrros said. show Permian production per well has by 9.2 billion lb and water by 12.5 bil-
“The prevalent view that shale operators been substantially overestimated,” lion gal.
sit on a large backlog of DUCs that could said Andrew Gould, Kayrros advisory Kayrros was founded in 2016 by a
be quickly brought to production even board chairman, former Schlumberg- group including current President
without further drilling is thus deeply er chairman and CEO, and former BG Antoine Rostand, who previously served
misleading,” it said. “There is just no Group chairman. as president and founder of Schlum-
such inventory.” “By the same token, average produc- berger Business Consulting, and Antoine
In any given month, Kayrros calcu- tion costs per well are understated,” Halff, a former lead industry economist
lates the Permian DUC inventory at just Gould said. “With far more wells con- at EIA and former chief oil analyst of the
around 1,000 wells. Most of this rolling tributing to Permian and US oil pro- International Energy Agency. The firm’s
inventory results from regular drilling duction than accounted for, current advisory board also includes former BP
and completions operations. Over time, shale oil production is substantially Chief Executive Lord Browne.
Building innovative chemistries that answer the questions

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Shale Consolidation: Callon Acquiring Carrizo in $3.2 Billion
Stock Deal
Callon Petroleum Company is making a Basin and Eagle Ford Shale—the two “operational synergies” that include
move to acquire Carrizo Oil & Gas in an largest oil-rich basins in Texas. This switching to “mega-pads” (or cube drill-
all-stock deal that is worth $3.2 billion, includes 90,000 acres in the Delaware ing) to reduce impacts caused by the
according to a release issued by the two Basin side of the Permian, where Callon well-to-well interactions known as frac
Houston-based companies. estimates it will have about 2,500 hori- hits. This means the company will tran-
Based on current share prices, the zontal well locations upon the deal final- sition away from developing mostly on
equity value of the deal is about $1.2 bil- izing late this year. single well pads and toward creating
lion. Callon shareholders will own about Callon also said it will have between pads where most of the wells are being
54% of the combined company, while 9-10 drilling rigs and 3-4 completion drilled and completed around the same
Carrizo shareholders will own the rest. crews working in 2020. Most of its focus time, a tactic adopted to preserve res-
“Together with Carrizo, we will accel- will be in the Permian acreage where the ervoir pressures and mitigate fracture
erate our free cash flow, capital efficien- acquisition will achieve “the critical mass driven interactions.
cy, and deleveraging goals through an to realize supply chain savings and sus- Last month, Comstock Resourc-
optimized model of large-scale devel- tain simultaneous operations initiatives.” es announced plans to purchase its
opment across the portfolio,” Callon’s Corporate presentations detailing the Haynesville Shale peer Covey Park
Chief Executive Officer Joe Gatto said in acquisition outline how the combined for $2.2 billion in cash and stock.
a statement. entity will find new cost efficiencies, The year’s biggest blockbuster acqui-
The combined company will produce including up to $45 million in general sition, Occidental Petroleum’s take-
more than 102,000 BOE/D (71% oil). Its and administrative costs. over of Anadarko, is expected to be
land holdings will amount to approxi- Callon also hopes to find between approved by Anadarko shareholders
mately 200,000 acres in the Permian $65–80 million in savings through in August.
Wood Mackenzie: Peak Oil Demand Is Coming, Will

Transform Exploration Sector
The global trend toward alternative It may also represent an opportunity research firm that has been analyzing
energy sources and shifting stakehold- to transform. the oil and gas industry since 1973. The
er sentiments could mark the demise This is according to a new report pub- report concluded that a number of driv-
of the oil and gas exploration sector. lished by Wood Mackenzie, a global ing forces indicate that peak oil demand
is likely to manifest within the next 20
years—removing the need to tap many
of the world’s undeveloped fields.
“But the pace and nature of the ener-
gy transition is highly uncertain,” noted
Andrew Latham, vice president of explo-
ration at Wood Mackenzie and author
of the report. “The world might move
more quickly to deeper decarboniza-
tion. Even if this happens, we still see
a chance for exploration to success-
fully re-invent itself and retain an im-
portant role.”
Wood Mackenzie projects two sce-
narios in the report. The most proba-
ble scenario, also the most positive one
for explorers, forecasts a supply gap of
16 million B/D by 2040. This base case
An offshore drilling platform in the Beaufort Sea. Not long ago, exploring for
hydrocarbons in such remote areas was considered critical to meeting growing
sees that the current industry spending
global demand. A new report argues that the outlook is now very different. of about $40 billion per year is sustain-
Source: Getty Images. able and enough to meet demand.

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The other model hinges on a more Reacting To Change the industry will never return to the level
aggressive outlook for global decar- The industry’s license to operate is also of exploration activity seen during the
bonization. This scenario predicts that under increased scrutiny, a trend that prior decade.
rising adoption of electric vehicles, shows no signs of letting up. On the In light of these possibilities, the con-
new biofuel mandates, and a reduc- financial side, investors have started sultancy’s report advises that conven-
tion in single-use plastics will slash oil their slow retreat from the upstream tional exploration companies focus on
demand by as much as 10 million B/D business, pushing large oil com the highest-quality prospects, and those
by 2040. panies to redirect cash from explora- with shorter cycle times. Following
Under these conditions, all but 6 mil- tion budgets into shareholder divi- this would place a priority on offshore
lion B/D of global demand would be met dends or crowd-pleasing investments in developments where infrastructure is in
by existing oil fields. Latham character- zero-carbon technologies. place, allowing satellite fields to be cost-
ized the confluence of these factors as Meanwhile, governments around the effectively tied in, or in onshore fields
an “existential threat to exploration.” world are considering stricter limits on where phasing in new developments is
However, the report argues that the oil and gas activity, including potential even easier.
clearest risk facing the exploration sec- bans on future exploration. Explorers will also increasingly turn
tor is coming from inside the house. Oil companies can attempt to miti- their attention to natural gas discover-
If production-boosting technologies in gate such outcomes by adopting tech- ies, despite the world’s abundant supply
existing fields were to yield only a 2% nologies or practices that lower the car- of associated and stranded gas. Using
uplift in recovery factors, the need to bon footprint of operations. Examples its more severe decarbonization model,
find 6 million B/D of new reserves could include using renewable energy to power Wood Mackenzie still forecasts a 15%
be canceled altogether. production equipment and taking steps increase in natural gas production over
“Given that we might be on the to reduce gas flaring. The industry’s the next 20 years.
cusp of a new digital technology rev- deep understanding of subsurface fluid If all these changes are realized,
olution—advanced seismic imaging, dynamics has also opened the door for the consultancy’s report predicts that
data analytics, machine learning, and it to play a major role in future carbon the exploration sector will relinquish
artificial intelligence, the cloud and sequestration projects. its role as the oil industry’s “prima-
supercomputing—such an improved While acknowledging the uncertainty ry engine of growth,” and take on the
recovery scenario is hardly fanciful,” of how fast the energy transformation new responsibility of improving exist-
Latham wrote. will unfold, the report determines that ing portfolios.
Dominican Republic’s Offshore Future Begins With First

Bid Round
The Dominican Republic officially Dominican government, described the try since the early 20th century indi-
kicked off its quest to become the central contract terms as “flexible” by high- cates the presence of a working petro-
Caribbean’s next oil and gas hub with its lighting that operators will have between leum system,” said Juan Agudelo, the
first licensing round of 14 onshore and eight to 10 years to explore and drill for director of upstream consulting at
offshore blocks. at least one well in each of the areas they Wood Mackenzie.
The country announced the terms of are awarded. The government is making seismic
its historic auction in Houston where Optimism has surged in the Carib- data available for the proposed blocks
many of the potential suitors have a bean in recent years after Exxon while incentivizing further acquisi-
headquarters or a major presence. The Mobil made a series of major discov- tion of geologic and geophysical data.
largest exploration companies in atten- eries offshore Guyana. Earlier this Companies participating in the auc-
dance included Anadarko, Apache, year, E xxonMobil and Repsol both tion may submit their own propos-
Exxon Mobil, Noble Energy, CNOOC, signed contracts with the Colombi- als to change the size or shape of the
Shell, and Repsol. an government to explore blocks in blocks—a tactic that was previously
The Dominican Republic’s Ministry of its territorial waters of the Carib- used by Mexico before its first licensing
Energy and Mines will base the awards bean Sea. auctions in 2015.
on work commitments that include a Wood Mackenzie said there are cur- Winning bids are expected to be
minimum investment of $2 million for rently no exploration activities tak- announced in November and the gov-
the onshore areas, and $4 million for the ing place in the Dominican Repub- ernment will consider the licens-
offshore blocks. lic but pointed out that there is a ing round a success if just two of
Wood Mackenzie, which is helping historical context for potential. “The the blocks are awarded, according
plan and evaluate the auction for the exploration performed in the coun- to Reuters. JPT

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John Donnelly, JPT Editor
What key issues will you emphasize during your ◗ Strengthening the feedstock of incoming talent into the
year as president? industry.
I want to focus on strengthening five areas for SPE to remain
a trusted, unbiased source of technical information, be the How will you go about strengthening these areas?
membership of choice for professionals in oil and gas, and to For the past year in my role as incoming president, I have
be respected both within and outside of our industry. When been working with my fellow board members and SPE staff
people see that SPE logo, it should be synonymous with excel- to develop the various initiatives around my five focus areas.
lence in terms of all our offerings to our membership. I will share those details in each of my monthly JPT columns
The theme of my presidency is “SPE strong,” strengthening along with updates on our progress.
the core of our society. The five areas are:
◗ Strengthening the technical quality of our publications, In the latest SPE Strategic Plan, there is an
presentations, and events emphasis on instilling professional pride.
◗ Strengthening the tools and methods by which we What should be the focus?
disseminate knowledge to our members I am proud to be a petroleum engineer but I, like many of our
◗ Strengthening our core functions, with an additional members, have not been adept at explaining what exactly our
focus on automation and digital science industry does. We need to learn how to have an effective con-
◗ Strengthening knowledge transfer in unconventional versation with those outside of our industry on how we lift the
resources world out of poverty and improve the quality of life by providing

2020 SPE President
Shauna Noonan
Shauna Noonan will take office as 2020 SPE President She has been an avid SPE volunteer in many roles
during the SPE Annual Technical Conference and since first serving as a student section officer.
Exhibition 30 September–2 October in Calgary. She served on the SPE International Board of
She is the director of artificial lift engineering Directors as the Technical Director for Production
for Occidental Petroleum Corporation, based in
and Operations from 2012–2015. She has driven
Houston, where she directs the company’s efforts
the development of industry standards and
in artificial lift system performance globally. Prior to
recommended practices for artificial lift systems
joining Oxy in late 2015, she worked worldwide on
while serving as chair for ISO and API committees,
artificial lift projects and technology development
and has received industry awards for her
at ConocoPhillips and Chevron for more than 22
contributions to the discipline.
years. She has authored or coauthored more than 25
technical publications on the subject of artificial lift Noonan holds a BS degree in petroleum engineering
and is a frequent speaker at industry events. from the University of Alberta.
affordable, sustainable energy while targeting carbon neutral- The success of our industry’s digital transformation depends
ity. An effective conversation is an open dialogue, not a Power- on having all disciplines working and collaborating together.
Point presentation or a factual document.
Our members have been looking to SPE for guidance on how The industry has gone through many changes
best to engage with those outside of our industry and we are in the past few years. Do our members want
addressing our membership’s needs with a “conversation tool- something different out of their membership
kit” to be launched very soon. These materials have made my than they did before?
discussions stronger and more effective. Imagine the impact While SPE has a wealth of technical content in various formats
our Society can make if every member can engage others and all (magazines, manuscripts, webinars, etc), it is not in an easily
agree that we have the common goal of protecting the environ- consumable format favored by our younger members. Visual
ment while sustaining/improving our quality of life. and audio content needs to be accessible via mobile devices in
a short period of time. With the launch of the SPE International
What other trends or areas should SPE be app, we have a platform for providing new methods of knowl-
adapting to? edge transfer, such as podcasts and short training videos. I also
One gap we are working to bridge is with engaging the automa- believe that our members are not fully utilizing all of our tools
tion engineers along with the data scientists. We are creating and realizing the total value of having an SPE membership. It
events, partnering with other associations, and finding ways is like a gym membership. If you want to get physically fit, you
to expand our membership and technical content in this area. need to go to the gym and use the equipment. I want members

When I joined the student chapter at the University of
Alberta, SPE was relatively new to Canada. It was through SPE
that we started integrating outside of our campus with various
companies in the region. That is when the bug hit me about
working globally, or at least coming to the US.
After attending a conference as a young engineer, I made
up my mind that I was going to write and present a technical
paper because just being in the audience does not necessarily
help expand your network or show people the value you bring
to the table. So I was determined to submit an abstract and
to be able to showcase my abilities at the podium. That paper
caught my management’s attention and resulted in a job trans-
fer to the US. After that, I continued to publish papers and
began to chair SPE program committees and that led to oppor-
tunities working on projects all over the world.
Did you always want to be a petroleum engineer?

I actually started out in pre-med in college. My mother wanted
me to be a doctor but I ended up switching while I was in college
from pre-med to engineering. What attracted me to engineering
was the teamwork, and petroleum engineering appealed to me
as I have always loved geology. The tipping point was a conver-
sation with a professor, Dr. Don Flock, who said that petroleum
engineering would provide more opportunities to work all over
the world. He was right.
How difficult is it to manage a family/work balance?

Finding balance with a career and family is hard, especially for
Noonan has held a variety of engineering jobs during
her career. dual-career couples. It can even be harder if the employer is
not supportive of its employees who need that balance between
to understand how to get full value out of their membership but work and family. I have been fortunate to work for companies
we need to provide better digital tools to keep up with members’ that not only supported it, but promoted it as well. While I
needs as well. raised my two daughters in a country where neither I nor my
husband had any family, we were also blessed to have family
How do you make the case that SPE membership members travel to the US to lend a hand when both of us had
is relevant to someone’s development and his or business trips scheduled at the same time.
her career? Digital technology makes it easier to keep up with my
What I stress to other SPE members, especially the students daughters when I am traveling, whether it is FaceTime ses-
and young professionals, is that SPE opens doors of opportu- sions or getting grades via text as their teachers are enter-
nity. When I visit with corporate executives, we discuss how ing them into the system. It makes being a working parent so
SPE supplements their own employee technical development much easier.
programs and provides more opportunities to practice and Adding SPE involvement might seem to complicate work/
hone communication and leadership skills. Even as a young life balance, but I was always able to demonstrate to my man-
member, you can take on leadership roles within SPE, such agement that it would bring value to them, allowing me to
as chairing program committees in preparation to qualify for incorporate most of my SPE obligations into my work hours.
management roles within your company. Given that, I have spent countless hours reviewing SPE papers
People always talk about diversity and the power of diversi- while waiting for my daughters to finish their dance class-
ty. SPE is globally, geographically, and functionally diverse, and es. I also learned that having a committee chair role allowed
there are great networking opportunities and learnings that me better control of meeting schedules, letting me fit my SPE
come from that. Nothing rivals what SPE offers its members. work in with my family and work obligations.
How do you make this pitch to students? How has your career prepared you to be SPE
I use my own story on how my involvement within SPE opened president?
doors of opportunity for me. SPE has helped to add rungs on My entire career and SPE involvement has been global. I am not
my career ladder and allow me to climb higher than I ever defined by a geographical region but by my technical ability and
thought possible. vast experience. I have worked as a rig supervisor, field engi-

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Noonan believes her global experience combined with

engineering and management roles have prepared her
well for the presidency.
neer, completion engineer, production engineer, artificial lift

specialist, and I have worked in local assets, technology devel- 14 TECHNICAL CONFERENCE CATEGORIES
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JPT • SEPTEMBER 2019

Requires Changing Drillers
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
T here is a lot of buzz about digital

data and analytics changing drill-
ing, and far less talk about teaching those
dents ranging from roughnecks to drill-
ing managers for digital change.
The notion that an employee for a drill-
nearby, to systematically improve perfor-
mance (SPE 194093).
Advanced technology provided an
who drill the wells how to deliver on that ing contractor who may never have gone unusually detailed picture for a crew
promise. That looks like a major over- to college is the point person for drilling “systematically engaging the rig in iden-
sight to Kevin Krausert, the chief execu- innovation is counterintuitive. But expe- tifying opportunities for improvement
tive officer of Beaver Drilling. rience with drilling improvement pro- and using engineering design to make
“Our industry is trying to figure out grams has found that the ones on the rigs continuous improvements that can be
how we can engineer the humans out of play a critical role. used anywhere,” said Molly Giltner, a
this change. And we need to be thinking “The fundamental shift has to be in senior drilling engineering supervisor at
about how we put the humans in charge of the mindset of the guys who are right Occidental, who delivered a paper on the
engineering this change,” Krausert said. there in the thick of it. They are the project at the drilling conference.
His critique was delivered during a ones affecting the change; they are the “People can do it, they just need the
panel discussion at this year’s SPE/IADC ones who can lead the movement,” said information,” said Giltner, the project
Drilling Conference and Exhibition. The Jennifer Zieglgansberger, an executive leader. “They need to be told they can
head of the small Canadian drilling com- coach in Calgary who partnered with change things. Motivating people makes
pany argued that the value of digital- Beaver to create Avatar. a huge difference. We do not talk about
and data-driven change will depend on that a lot as engineers and they do not
whether workers skilled at running a People-Driven Change talk about that in school.”
mechanical system are prepared to lead Beaver’s story is one of four examples Corva has grown rapidly due to the
teams finding way to use digital tools to of worker-centered innovation efforts in strong demand for its real-time data
drill more productively. the oil industry. and analysis system. In a year, it has
To try to back up that claim, Beaver Occidental Petroleum has slashed gone from a couple of rigs equipped with
created a 2-year program in partnership drilling costs using a flood of data from its drilling advisory system to 250 rigs
with the University of Calgary to cre- wired drilling pipe. The key to doing so and 35 clients by September, said Ryan
ate the Avatar program to prepare stu- was the teamwork on that rig, and others Dawson, chief executive officer of Corva.

Its future depends on whether drill- by identifying and attacking a series of
ers use these tools to improve rig per- issues that were limiting performance
formance. “There had been cycles of try- (SPE 102210). Initially those in charge
ing, using, and failing. The tailwind of assumed the ideas would flow from engi-
digitalization led a lot of companies to neers in the office analyzing the data.
adopt. We have to prove tangible value,” “It was believed the real-time interface
Dawson said. would allow the organization to bring
Apache’s program to roll out its drill- more engineering to the brake handle,”
ing advisory program on rigs working in the paper said. Instead it found: “Off-
the US focused on winning over the many site personnel cannot effectively inter- Society of Petroleum Engineers
people affected by the change, and find- pret the data without detailed knowledge
Annual Technical
ing ways to address their issues. A paper of ongoing operations.”
describing its effort said failure to do that That still rings true. The Occidental
Conference and
has undercut many promising drilling paper previously mentioned described a
innovations (SPE 194184). step-by-step process. Teams defined spe-
Exhibition
The paper included an anecdote about cific factors limiting performance. That
curious drillers quickly adopting the set the agenda for engineers offsite work-
advisory program, but it also noted, “The ing their way through the mountains of
driller’s attitude would tend to reflect data that are generated during drilling. 30 September–2 October 2019
the overall attitude of the leadership Like ExxonMobil, Apache and Occiden- BMO Centre at Stampede Park
on the rig.” tal train rig leaders, including contrac- Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Drillers have often been wary of pro- tors, in the physics of drilling so they can
grams that record their every move and anticipate the likely impact of changes
grade it. They also do not want to stake they are considering to deal with limiters. Register for ATCE 2019
their reputation on something new that Ultimately, the person at the controls
seems unreliable. “When we pull out a has to decide how to translate that into 300+ technical presentations
new technology, the feeling the guys have action. While Corva plays up the value of
is, when it hits road bumps the first incli- real-time data, analysis, and support by Special sessions on
nation is to turn it off,” Krausert said. drilling veterans, it has a rule against tell- relevant industry topics
A key piece of the digital transfor- ing clients what they should do.
mation has been the spread of drilling “At the end of the day, the client has to
200+ exhibiting companies
advisory systems putting more data, make the call based on all the data and
and responsibility, in the hands of the advice at hand. Real-time operations are
driller. Instead, Krausert said the indus- all about high-grading information from 30+ training courses
try has been asking for more but giv- the rig and turning it into valuable knowl-
ing drillers less reason to risk trying edge through human insight and experi-
something different. ence,” Dawson said.
While drilling advisory technology is
designed to empower the driller, waves of For Further Reading
layoffs since the 2014 oil price crash sent SPE 194093 Performance Impact of
a signal that is the opposite of empower- Downhole Data from Wired Drill
ing. Krausert said the industry is sending Pipe and Downhole Sensors by Molly
a message: “You are highly disposable. Giltner, Linsay Earle, John Willis, and
And by the way, be more collaborative Diego Tellez, Randall Neel, Occidental
and drive down costs.” Petroleum Corporation.
SPE 102210 Comprehensive Drill Rate
Management Process To Maximize ROP,
Rig-Based
The process behind both the Apache and
by Fred E. Dupriest, ExxonMobil Register Today! Visit
SPE 194184 Change Management
Occidental programs owes a lot to an SPE go.atce.org/PlanFor19ATCE
Challenges Deploying a Rig-Based
paper dating back to 2006. Drilling Advisory System by Michael for more information.
Both Apache and Occidental cited Behounek, Blake Millican, Brian Nelson,
a paper about ExxonMobil’s drilling Apache Corp., et al
improvement program written by Fred SPE 119570 Step-Change Improvements
Dupriest, now an engineering professor With Wired-Pipe Telemetry by Chris
at Texas A&M University. It described McCartney, Allen, Scott, Occidental
how the company and its contractors Petroleum Corp.; Maximo Hernandez,
systematically improved performance Grant Prideco, et al.

Beaver Drilling: Drillers as Innovation Leaders
B eaver Drilling’s survival in the bru-

tally competitive oilfields of west-
ern Canada depends on the performance
ial thinking was a critical element in the
training program created with Beaver,
known as Avatar.
executive coach who also partnered with
Beaver in developing the program,
She explained, “With these guys, they
of eight drilling rigs. It recently graduated 17 Beaver drill- are naturally innovative. They almost
The strategy of its chief executive offi- ers and rig mangers, plus one rough- always have a business on the side, a
cer, Kevin Krausert, depends on effec- neck. The 2-year program designed farm or something like that. They are
tively using new drilling technology to for working drillers included class- hands-on learners. What makes them
gain a performance edge on the compe- room work, online studies, and proj- successful on the rig is that they are very
tition. Executing that plan will require ects. The university courses included gifted at executing.
drillers prepared to drive change. business basics, from finance to energy “But in the world we are living in
“I was thinking about a lot of tech- economics. There was also networking we want to leverage technology. Doing
nology systems that we were already with executives, group evaluations of things more efficiently and effectively
using, process automation on our rigs, new digital technology; and individual takes an innovative mindset. It is some-
surface optimization, drilling apps. research projects on topics from drill- thing you do every day and you find a
These are fundamentally new pieces ing logistics to recruiting new rig hands. way to do it better.”
of technology and there was really Other companies offer drillers train- Doing it better requires being in the
very little training in the industry ing that is directly related to the jobs, habit of looking for ideas that work,
that enables and empowers the drill- such as the physics underlying drill- which can be consistently repeated to
er to actually use them confidently,” ing performance. Krausert’s goal was to significantly improve results.
Krausert said. turn technically competent drillers into Class work covered how to evaluate
To give meaning to the easily mocked leaders of innovative business units who and research ideas to see which innova-
phrase “really empowering drillers,” understand the need for new technol- tions are potentially valuable, and use
Krausert decided to create a training ogy, and the resilience required to get in that process to make a case to justify
program in partnership with the arm working effectively. the money and time required to make
of the University of Calgary business A program that includes meeting the a change. In a business, having a good
school that does executive training. artistic director of the Alberta Ballet idea is worthless unless it can be sold to
The oil business in Canada “has been Company to learn about creative think- those who control spending.
hammered by everything that has hap- ing may seem like an odd approach to “You need to build a business case, do
pened since 2014. You have got to be training skilled operators of power- some research, and talk to some people”
a different kind of company is you’re a ful drilling machines. It was included to make a financial case that the payoff
Canadian company. You need a differ- because a major goal was to teach them justifies the cost and effort required to
ent kind of worker. You need a different how to identify promising ideas and give change, Hassey said.
approach,” said Derek Hassey, a profes- them the confidence to pursue them and To help the Avatars learn the ways of
sor at the University of Calgary business evaluate which are valuable to the busi- management, they were each assigned
school whose expertise in entrepreneur- ness, said Jennifer Zieglgansberger, an an executive sponsor at Beaver’s
Calgary headquarters.
Now that the first class is done, it
is hoping to do another. Oil operators
and service companies are interested
but it is a costly program, supported by
job training grants from the province
of Alberta.
A simple argument for the program’s
value is it has to keep Beaver rigs work-
ing at a time when oil and gas prices in
western Canada are depressed by lack
of pipeline capacity to faraway mar-
kets. The program’s focus on continu-
ous improvement helped forge a bond
with a Calgary-based operation, Birch-
cliff Energy.
“We never drilled for Birchcliff before
Paul Paziuk, a driller at Beaver Drilling, presents the results of a research Avatar, and now we are their number
project at an industry gathering. one driller,” Krausert said.

Corva: Selling the User Experience
C orva’s challenge is to change the

behavior of drillers who work for
somebody else. The fast-growing com-
with their own systems. The starting
point for users is creating a dashboard
featuring a handful of apps relating to the
The initial reaction by drillers was often
wary because they worried that their
moves were recorded and graded based
pany has no shortage of users. Retaining person’s specialty. on the machine’s standard. Beaver worked
those customers will require convincing If a user’s focus is on drilling floor effi- to overcome that reluctance by making
oil companies that the real-time drilling ciency, they will include the app monitor- it clear that “rigorous analysis empow-
data and analysis is creating enough value ing pipe connection times, which shows ers the driller to understand what they’re
to justify the cost. when those rates are lagging compared doing,” he said. In other words, their job
Getting workers at client companies to with high-performing wells. The time is to make use of the numbers to do better.
use the system, much less use it effective- saved per connection looks small, but in a “I see these as really valuable tools. But
ly, requires coaxing. It can hope that cli- test it allowed a client to shave many days without the right culture and the right
ent companies push workers to use what of work, as can faster drilling. training, they get lost,” Krausert said.
it offers and builds its numbers into drill- A directional driller will likely want Corva cannot control the organization,
ing routines. to see the slide percentage—a measure but its ability to track who is using the sys-
But Corva’s main levers are sharp of how much sliding time is required to tem allows it to identify “super users” who
graphics highlighting insights from drill- drill a curve. A lower percentage is bet- adopt the system early and use it often.
ing analysis that can be displayed on a ter because progress slows during sliding. Dawson said Corva does “everything
range of devices, backed up with personal An app analyzing hole quality based it can to empower them.” They are influ-
support from drilling veterans on staff. on dogleg severity—the tightness of encers in the office who can help win over
“We do not publicize this but our secret bends—has attracted the interest of an and train non-users, which typically rep-
sauce is about the user experience,” said executive vice president with one big resent 30% of the potential user base.
Ryan Dawson, founder and chief execu- independent, who has set up an alert, and “We monitor what everyone is saying.
tive officer of Corva. He defined the goal will send out a message to the rig when a They like this app more than that. They
as delivering “a product they want to use, threshold level is crossed, said Dawson. are not using these apps that are not add-
they love to use.” ing value,” Dawson said, adding, “Cus-
Readers who concluded Dawson came Human Decisions tomers come up with the best ideas.”
from the consumer technology sector are A drilling advisor offers useful bits of Users do not appear to be defined by
correct. Previously he worked for a soft- information, from the suggested weight age, gender, or job title, said Cody Byrd,
ware firm in Austin, Texas whose clients to put on the bit to warnings of leaks. It operations team lead for Corva, who
included Netflix and Microsoft. And, yes, is still up to human beings to put all these described users as from the “C-suite to
he is trying to create a service that is as variables together to solve the problem. the rig floor.”
intuitive and addictive as an iPhone. Beaver Drilling created a rig leadership While engineers took longer to start
It features 60 drilling apps. It is program for its drillers based on the obser- using Corva than drillers, Dawson said
expanding next into completions. It is vation that drillers need to be trained to that engineers use its data to select
field-testing 20 apps built for real-time effectively use digital tools to lead efforts which components to put together
monitoring and analysis of horizontal to find ways to improve performance. in the bottomhole assembly and track
well completions. “We use Corva and other drilling ana- performance indicators.
Corva has been investing in both lytics tools, and some from operators,” Ultimately, Dawson said, drillers and
advanced analytics to aid decision making, said Kevin Krausert, chief executive offi- others will use a drilling advisor if it helps
and experts to add the voice of experience. cer for Beaver Drilling. “them do what they know how to do better.”
Those providing support have experience
in directional drilling or measurement
while drilling and can connect with drill-
ers by talking their language, Dawson said.
The job is to “do whatever you can to
make someone happy,” short of telling a
customer what they should do, Dawson
said. Telling them what to do is against
the rules. Corva is working to provide
better information for decision makers,
but ultimately the conclusions will vary
depending on many factors. Corva offers customer support using drilling veterans with a range of
Corva is competing with other real- experience. A team of three drilling analysts are available around the clock
time drilling data services and companies to monitor and analyze drilling. Source: Corva.

Apache: Averting Human Roadblocks
W hen Apache rolled out a digital

system delivering real-time drill-
ing data and advice, the reactions from
One driller never tried the program.
The paper said that when asked why he
was not using it, he explained he was
Those with high power and influence
but low interest “have to be kept satis-
fied to the extent they do not harm the
workers were strong, and conflicting. afraid he would break something. project.” The approach is different for
“With the supervisors, what surprised The experience of installing and train- those with power, influence, and high
the field team the most was the vari- ing crews on seven rigs to use a sys- interest who “can accelerate the adop-
ance in responses. Some wellsite super- tem that had performed well on a two- tion of change.”
visors saw the system as an opportu- rig pilot confirmed the need for a plan Listening required a follow up. After
nity to improve the performance on to deal with “all the people it will affect a rig supervisor said the system needed
their rig and expand upon their per- when it is time to scale up.” to allow the driller to ignore mild lev-
sonal knowledge. Others saw the Experience with other drilling innova- els of drill bit stick and slip, they quickly
tool as a test of their overall control tions showed that many good ideas failed made that change. As a result, that per-
of the operation, making them resis- due to a “lack of consideration given to son “started seeing the advisory as more
tant to use the system,” according to how the project will be perceived by the of a support tool.”
a technical paper describing the effort people it affects,” the paper said. Some engineers objected because the
(SPE 194184). Scalability is a must. In this case, system would take over jobs, such as
“Some drilling engineers embraced Apache partnered with a software com- creating daily drilling plans.
the data-driven approach” while oth- pany, Intellicess, to build a drilling advi- Other engineers appreciated the time
ers “felt the program would overshadow sor able to consolidate and display data saved by having the drilling advisor cre-
their engineering effort and preferred generated by differently equipped rigs to ate a plan describing the next section
methods,” the paper said. ensure it could be used widely. and providing drilling guidelines. Still,
Others were curious. During the field Selling something new can require “a they needed to offer unhappy engineers
trial, drillers were initially told to ignore dialogue about their concerns and fears.” something, because they had learned
the engineers testing the system, but After some reassurance and training, the that drilling advisory system use dropped
they soon started asking questions. reluctant driller became a regular user. when engineers did not encourage drill-
“Within days of the system being ers to use it.
installed on the rig, drillers were active- Power and Influence There was a limit to what they could
ly participating in the trouble-shoot- The study identified many people whose offer. The system was designed to
ing process, without being asked to concerns and fears could affect the effort. “empower drillers to make better data-
do so, working with the field engineer The change management planning pro- driven decisions in drilling parame-
and adjusting parameters according to cess at Apache created a chart ranking ter selection with less input from well-
drilling suggestions” it provided, the nine groups of people based on their level site supervisors and engineers,” the
paper said. of power and influence. paper said.
They offered to keep engineers
involved in the process by allowing them
to determine the parameters of the com-
parable wells used by the advisory system
to help predict well conditions and deter-
mine optimal drilling performance.
Drillers were required to go through
training on the physics of drilling so they
were “equipped with the pertinent infor-
mation to make the most informed drill-
ing parameter choices.”
Over time, the rollout has grown to 20
US rigs, and drillers can be faster than
computers at pattern recognition.
The paper said those doing the one-
on-one training observed that after
using the system for a few days, when
they encountered drilling dysfunc-
Adding a real-time drilling display to the welter of screens in the driller’s tion “most drillers were able to pre-
cabin required Apache to work with rig managers to ensure it was easy to see. dict what action the advisory system
Source: SPE 194184. would suggest.”

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Occidental: Learning While Drilling Faster
M olly Giltner smiled when she saw a

text from a driller saying, “Reduced
WOB. Continued to drill to bottom.”
etry sending 10 bits per second. To justify
the cost of that quality, significant perfor-
mance gains are required.
The focus of the system is on the drill-
er using the available information to find
a better way. “Rather than telling them
For the senior drilling engineer at Occi- “If you do not translate that knowl- what to do, which means you will do only
dental Petroleum, that cryptic note was edge to the person on the joystick, he as well as you did before, they describe
a sign that a rig-based program provid- doesn’t do anything different, so what what the data means and how to use
ing a flood of data from wired drilling have you accomplished?” Giltner said. it, allowing them to use their judgment.
pipe installed on one rig could have a The data had to be part of a group effort, They were empowered,” Giltner said.
lasting impact on other rigs drilling in starting on one drilling rig and spreading She described the approach to dealing
the Permian. to six others. with a drilling dysfunction: “We will go
Specifically, it was shorthand for how The hard part was developing and one way and try the conventional thing
a driller dealt with a problem—the mud maintaining “a simple and effective way to do. Then we go the other way and we
motor was stalling while drilling hard, to capture that information and use it” to understand a lot more quickly.”
interbedded rock near the bottom of a redesign drilling, she said. For example, drillers had been taught
horizontal well. Occidental drillers and The methods used were not new or to react to torque oscillations by increas-
engineers had figured out that it is fast- unique. Occidental has a program to ing the revolutions per minute and
er and cheaper to reduce the weight on teach the physics of drilling to key rig reducing the WOB. The Occidental rigs,
bit (WOB) than speeding ahead, which personnel, including contractors. It built though, found that in a particular section,
increased the risk of a breakdown and that process into the industry practice of increasing the WOB reduced the oscil-
time lost for repairs. creating a drilling parameters roadmap. lations without having to make chang-
The text message arrived after Giltner “It is nothing magic. It was knowledge es that slowed drilling. “It was better to
delivered a talk at the SPE/IADC Drilling sharing and an understanding of what not back off from every dysfunction we
Conference and Exhibition in The Hague. you are drilling through,” Giltner said. found,” she said.
The paper topic was about improving The potential value of that flood of data The work began on the rig with wired
drilling performance using downhole provided “a perfect opportunity to dou- pipe. “What made a difference was start-
data from wired drill pipe and downhole ble down on the drilling improvement ing with a small group that was really
sensors (SPE 194093). system” she said. into the project and then we brought in
There was no mention of people in the others,” she said.
title, but the majority of the talk was on Focus on the Driller Others joined in without an invitation.
the cooperative method used by teams on The payoff was a 25% reduction in “They showcased a 10% rate of penetra-
drilling rigs to use high-resolution data the drilling time through an interme- tion gain and that got the attention of
to figure out how to increase drilling pro- diate hole section, and a 33% savings. others who asked, what you doing? What
ductivity and pass on what was learned. Those pro forma estimates are based on is working? It snowballs,” Giltner said.
Wired pipe sending nearly 58,000 bits reduced equipment costs and a lower The number of rigs involved grew as they
per second offers a lot clearer view of cost-per-foot calculation using assumed saw the results when others learned to
subsurface reality than mud-pulse telem- hourly rates and equipment costs. “drill smarter.”
An Occidental rig drilled faster and reduced cost per Another rig working nearby in the Permian for Occidental
foot using a flood of downhole data from wired drilling delivered similar results based on what was learned
pipe and a systematic process to identify issues limiting without the benefit of the wired pipe. Source: Occidental,
performance. Source: Occidental, SPE 194093. SPE 194093.

Competition motivated others to ring lessons learned as well as the usual “I think constant communication
change. Drillers wanted to be fastest, information covered in such a report, between the rig and the office is key
and company representatives do not such as what to expect in the rock ahead. to make sure all parties understand
want to be associated with mangled It also provided advice on the con- the dysfunctions occurring, or in the
drill bits. trol settings and strategies based on absence of dysfunction, opportunities to
While other rig crews did not have the what had been learned, and informa- improve,” Giltner said.
data offered by wired pipe, what was tion related to the current drilling lim- The roadmap is updated after each
learned about the local problems and iter—the focus of the drilling improve- well so lessons are documented for
how to adjust to deal with them, enabled ment effort. future reference. Occidental is looking
them in some cases to outperform the The goal was to create a constant- for other ways to share what is learned.
wired rig after the data convinced them ly updated document used by drillers, “We are working on other systems to
that they needed to change their habits. drill-site managers, and engineers to efficiently share lessons learned and
Those rigs had been drilling fast, but identify and record what they observed successful practices and designs across
stops for repairs added days to the time when drilling problems were encoun- the global drilling community,” she said.
it took to drill a well. Based on what tered. It described the drilling char- The paper reported on work done
they learned, they made changes that acteristics of intervals ahead allowing a year ago within a group of rigs that
reduced the time lost and cost of replac- drilling teams to focus on specific indi- is still using wired pipe to go after
ing damaged hardware. cators related to the limiter. remaining limiters, Giltner said. “We
The drilling roadmap was used to Engineers played an important role of are targeting higher-hanging fruit,” She
communicate what was learned. It making “sense of all these piles of data explained that, “We are getting away
evolved as they worked to create a con- we were getting,” helping plan changes from avoiding failure and moving more
cise report documenting and transfer- for future wells. toward optimization.” JPT
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To “Right Size” Fractures, Producers

Adopt Robust Monitoring and
Custom Completions
Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor
A s the shale sector looks for ways to

improve well results, momentum
is building to take a much closer look at
with a far finer degree of accuracy and
finesse than is realistic today. There is
an expanding array of diagnostic stud-
“The industry badly needs a low-cost,
stage-by-stage method that we can use
for assessing the reservoir quality, the
how and where hydraulic fractures are ies and new technologies working to this completion design, and fracture com-
created while pressure pumping fluids end. Several of the latest examples were plexities,” said Michael Sullivan, a res-
into tight, complex reservoirs. highlighted at the recent Unconvention- ervoir diagnostics advisor with Chev-
The effort is being driven by un- al Resources Technology Conference ron, during a technical session at URTeC.
resolved questions over optimal well (URTeC) in Denver. “Unfortunately, the high-cost and oper-
spacing and fracturing techniques. They Operators both large and small used ational complexity is a barrier to most
are two closely related issues that dove- the conference as an opportunity to other stage-level assessments. What we
tail into sector-wide production short- express support for the broader use of need is something we can afford to do.”
falls associated to frac hits, a common tools considered to be classic compo- Sullivan was presenting a paper
well-to-well effect that experts in the nents of petroleum and reservoir engi- (URTeC 970) that describes how Chev-
technical community have recently neering: wellhead and bottomhole pres- ron’s Canadian asset team in the Duver-
named fracture-driven interactions. sure gauges. These two technological nay Shale recently began using “free”
One of the biggest challenges in over- cousins are nothing new to the oil field, wellhead pressure data to estimate each
coming these issues is to learn how to but have only recently become viewed fracturing stage’s performance. His hope
control the size of hydraulic fractures as essential among those seeking afford- is that others follow the workflows as
(the general emphasis is on reducing able answers about how their fractures Chevron looks at more than half-a-dozen
their lateral and vertical extensions) behave during the treatment. ways to use the data (including perfora-

tion cluster efficiency analysis and frac tailored on a stage-by-stage basis, often The research team he works on at the
hit identification) to refine its comple- called the “engineered” completion. university is seeking to prove out a new
tions approach. However, several companies at URTeC analytical model and a real-time inver-
Sullivan highlighted that the new revealed that they are in the hunt. sion process that makes it possible to
learnings are thanks to pressure gauges Despite various approaches, a uni- rapidly figure out where fractures are
it uses per standard procedure, meaning versal objective of the engineered com- moving through the rock. Details of this
they are on wellheads whether the data pletion is to take into account the role model were shared earlier in the year
is analyzed or not. To drive down costs of nature and prior reservoir produc- by its principal developer, Ripudaman
further, Sullivan advised other operators tion and then customize individual stage Manchanda, a research associate at UT,
to buy their own gauges vs. renting them treatments to avoid extensive fracture at an American Rock Mechanics Associ-
from service companies. “What I’ve been overlap between wells. ation symposium (ARMA 19-2071). The
emphasizing around our company is that Devon Energy is among those explor- software will eventually be available for
this is a measurement we can afford to ing this concept. In fact, the company any company to license from UT.
make—so let’s make sure we’re getting is supporting research that aims to take The aim of the emerging toolset is to
the most out of it,” he added. things one step further by adding the process enough data from a fracturing
“on-the-fly” element to the engineered stage to inform changes on the subse-
New Data Leads completion. A new technical paper quent stage. This could be done to opti-
to New Directions (URTeC 449) outlines its work with the mize hydraulic fracture growth from
In the Permian Basin in Texas, Discovery University of Texas at Austin (UT) on a treatment well, or to prevent a frac-
Natural Resources is also paying close near real-time fracture geometry esti- ture from breaking its way into the low-
attention to well pressures measured mation—a key steppingstone to mak- pressure zone of a produced well.
during stimulations and documenting ing completion design changes during This would constitute the high-
well-to-well interactions. The small, pri- the treatment. est degree of fracture control ever
vate oil company moved into a pure hor- “To make real-time changes, we have achieved—but it is not a reality.
izontal drilling program in the Wolf- to be able to make a real-time recom- In presenting the conference paper,
camp Shale only 2 years ago and, not mendation—and to make a recommen- Elliott acknowledged such a vision of
long after, it decided to start using pres- dation, you have to understand what’s real-time completions is at least couple
sure data from surface and bottomhole happening in the subsurface second by of years away. The evolutionary steps
gauges to constrain fracture models and second,” explained Brendan Elliott. He begin with making well-to-well changes,
reservoir simulations. is a senior staff completions engineer at then stage-to-stage changes, and finally
The investment has delivered “some Devon who is completing a PhD in real- there may be enough confidence to test
of the best datasets we have in the com- time completion strategies. intra-stage changes.
pany,” according to Bryan McDowell,
a technical advisor of asset develop-
ment at Discovery. In two new papers
(URTeC 125, URTeC 272), the opera-
tor describes how reservoir diagnos-
tics and subsequent modeling have
increased its understanding of fracture
interactions and led to new completion
designs based on landing zones for its
stacked development.
There is one note of caution for com-
panies just beginning to catalogue every
recordable fracture interaction through
pressure data: be prepared to take on
the data management chores. In just one
of Discovery’s recent fracturing opera-
tions, the pressure plots from the parent
and child wells amounted to 56 million
rows of data. “We’re a small company,”
said McDowell, “so to us, it’s a huge
amount of data.”
Thousands of petrotechnicals gathered in Denver for the annual Unconventional
Neither Chevron’s Duvernay team nor Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) where several new papers on
Discovery have plans to use their new advanced completion designs using new diagnostics were presented.
data to test completion designs that are Source: URTeC.

All of this will require more field work Alberta are among those following this One finding Chevron shared was that
to decipher which toggles are the biggest emerging trend. the pressure data can reveal cluster effi-
influencers of fracture growth and com- Measured during zipper fracturing, ciency—something shale producers
plexity—which could be treatment rates, the supermajor believes that analyzing have struggled to determine over the
how fast the rate is ramped up, total sand post-fracture pressure falloff data could years. After validating with downhole
and fluid volumes, fluid rheology, clus- unlock a slew of valuable insights. fiber optics, the key takeaway is that
ter spacing, and the number of perfora- “The basic premise is that when a when only a small number of perfora-
tions in a cluster. Experts believe there fracture is connected to greater per- tions are taking fluid into the reservoir,
are at least a dozen other factors, not meability—system permeability—the a smaller pressure decay is observed
least of which are the landing zone and pressure will decay at a higher rate,” after the stage is finished. Sullivan
near-field geomechanics. explained Sullivan while presenting the advised using the signal as a proxy to
Operators including Devon have company’s paper at URTeC. “So when we cluster efficiency “which then you could
already figured out how to manage at can keep everything else constant, and use for improving by changing your perf
least one of these factors by adopting lim- change only one variable at a time, such design, for example.”
ited entry designs, also termed extreme- as the fracturing fluid, geologic landing In another experiment, Chevron ana-
limited entry, which use a small num- zone, completion type, etc., we can use lyzed the pressure data from five stages
ber of perforations in each fracturing this pressure fall-off rate as a compari- in a well completed using single entry
stage. Fewer perforations make it easier son metric for optimization.” point sleeves to eliminate the uncertain-
to assess cluster efficiency, while at the As of the conference, Chevron had ty of cluster efficiency. The stages landed
same time, those making the switch have recorded the data from about 1,800 in two types of rock: one was more brit-
also found that too many perforations stages in 58 wells, on 15 pads—but tle as defined by Young’s modulus, and
can lead to fractures that are longer than only analyzed about half. The com- the other was less brittle. Each saw sig-
desired, increasing the risk of unwant- pany is now working on automating nificantly different leak-off rates, with
ed frac hits. the signal analysis to speed the pro- the more brittle rock seeing the greatest
cess. While Sullivan stressed that Chev- pressure decay.
A Preference for Pressure ron’s understanding of the fall-off data Chevron was able to conclude that the
As operators look for reservoir diag- is still “evolving,” and it has made no brittle rock stages saw more complex
nostics, they are finding that the most changes to its completions yet based fracturing due to the higher rate of pres-
scalable tools are downhole and surface on the “signal,” it has identified sev- sure leak-off. This was a major revelation
pressure gauges. Petrotechnicals work- eral ways it could lead to new plans for the asset team since the landing zone
ing at Chevron’s Duvernay Shale asset in and designs. on these stages were all within 2–3 m
of each other’s vertical depth. Previous-
Frac Sequence ly, such small variances had not been
85 seen as important factors for comple-
tions design.
75
“Actually, it’s a big deal,” emphasized
Sullivan. “The brittleness of the rock can
Final Frac
control the fracture initiation complex-
Pressure (MPa)
65 Initial Frac ity, so what is within a meter of the well-

bore may matter a lot.”
55 Chevron’s potential uses of pressure
Diverter Analyzable
Pressure
decay signal:
45 ◗ Fracture modeling: Chevron
Decay
is integrating the decay signal into
geomechanical simulations to better
Frac10 Falloff10 (1.22536 hr)
understand its transient behavior.
Rate (m3/min)
10
1.25 hours ◗ Frac hit verification: When zipper
5
fracturing on a multiwell pad with
a “plug and perf ” completion,
0
it may not be possible to know
ToD 15:00:00 16:00:00 17:00:00 18:00:00 19:00:00 when a frac hit has occurred if
the interval of the well being hit
An example of a typical fracturing sequence of a single stage in which a has already been isolated with
diverter was used in the middle of the treatment. Such data are being studied
to learn what the behavior of the pressure decay signal reveals about stage
a bridge plug. However, a frac
performance. The pressure decay is usually longer on pads that are being hit is recognizable in the well
zipper fractured with other wells. Source: URTeC 970. being stimulated by observing an

tool for avoiding negative fracture inter-
action. “As the technology develops and
Sh we improve our ability to interpret inex-
10,500
pensive observations in adjacent monitor
9,800
wells, I believe we will see the benefits of
9,200 doing things this way.”
8,600 The opposing viewpoint is that on-
8,000 the-fly changes pose unnecessary chal-
BSGL 7,400
lenges and that it is simply incompat-
ible with the industry’s adopted “factory
6,800
FBSG mode” approach.
6,200
One of those hurdles involves change
SBSG 5,600 management. Shale producers are
5,000 famously rigid in how little flexibility
SBSG Shale is given to the fracturing consultants
TBSG
and company men tasked with carry-
WFMP A
ing out plans made weeks or months
WFMP B
prior. This bleeds into accounting issues
WFMP C that would arise since final investment
decisions on new wells are also made
This 3D cube accounts for about 30 square miles of the Delaware Basin and along the same timelines. Changing well
was assembled by first putting together seven other 3D cubes that represent designs on the spot makes it difficult to
each stress equation used by a mechanical Earth model. Each color here shows project costs.
the variations in minimum horizontal stress. Source: URTeC 208.
David Cannon, the senior vice presi-
dent of geoscience and technology for
anomalously high rate of post-frac ing too much work on technical staff, Diamondback Energy, was one of sev-
pressure decay. which in many cases is doing more work eral oil and gas executives at URTeC
◗◗ Geologic controls: Expectations with fewer resources. Most shale produc- who raised other concerns. His cen-
are that the pressure decay signal ers have shrunk considerably since the tered around how on-the-fly comple-
correlates to rock brittleness and heady days of $100/bbl oil, and many tions would expose delicate supply
the presence of natural fractures. continue to downsize as the sector faces chains that operators have spent years
Chevron also wants to map the ongoing financial hardship. establishing, along with the “safe and
results spatially to understand And between the limited number of efficient” work routines enjoyed by frac-
regional geology. companies implementing or testing turing crews and those that pay their
◗◗ Proxy for production logging: engineered completions, recent indus- day rates.
If the rate of change in the signal try literature and conference-circuit dia- The gamble is that disrupting this
indicates connected reservoir logue on the topic suggests that more fine-tuned orchestra of capital and labor
permeability, a stage-by-stage producers are comfortable with planned risks negating any positive economic
comparison may also indicate changes than those that think they can benefits achieved in the reservoir.
where the production is to flow make them during the treatment. Time “I think it’s an admirable goal,” Can-
from—thus, potentially serving will tell if the current research results in non said of on-the-fly completions.
as a reasonable alternative to more converts. “However, at the same time, you always
using expensive production “Currently, industry does not see a have to think about the efficiency of the
logging surveys. clear benefit to making changes to the operations at the surface. When you
◗◗ Image log correlation: The decay pumping schedule on the fly, because we can become repetitive, you can become
rate might correlate with the density don’t really know how to do it,” explained very efficient.”
of natural fractures, however the Mukul Sharma, a petroleum engineering
analysis has not yet been run on professor at UT and proponent of on- Ready or Not, Here They Come
any wells that used image log data the-fly changes. He is also involved in the While engineered completions remain
along the lateral section. research project with Devon. a larger point of debate than they do an
Despite the current state of readiness, industry practice, some operators are at
Why Real-Time Completions Sharma argues that with infill drilling least testing the waters.
Won’t Happen representing an ever-growing share of Callon Petroleum, a mid-sized Perm-
Customizing stages—whether planned the North American shale well invento- ian operator, is placing its bets around
or made during a treatment—is con- ry, real-time or near real-time fracture a mechanical Earth model and seismic
sidered by many operators as impos- control will be an increasingly important inversion to predict how fractures will

propagate in different layers of rock. tifying poroelastic responses that are pressure response data by attaching it to
The company’s paper (URTeC 208) the result of stress shadowing. Unlike “a direct known point in space.”
notes its motivation to experiment other recently established pressure- Analysis of the data is updated con-
with engineered completions stemmed based diagnostics, this innovation for- tinuously as a stage is pumped, which
from concerns about the sustainabil- goes using bridge plugs to isolate and allows engineers to use it as a near real-
ity of completions using “a repeated monitor a particular fracture stage in an time method for visualizing the pressure
sequence implementing identical geo- offset well. growing inside the formation as the frac-
metric stage placement and pump- Instead, the unique approach calls tures move through the reservoir.
ing schedules.” for bottomhole pressure gauges to be Devon has validated the new
By characterizing rock stress with installed at various locations along model using more complex 3D- and
logs, cores, and seismic data ahead of an offset well’s lateral section. These geomechanical-coupled numerical sim-
time, Callon has found that in high- gauges are “externally ported” to ulators, which are useful, but not in the
stress zones, fracture growth is more the rock formation to measure pres- context of real-time decision making
likely to be contained, resulting in less sure in the reservoir and prevent pres- since they take hours or days to run. The
well-to-well interference. In low-stress sure communication with the inside of new analytical model only takes seconds.
zones, engineers and petrophysicist are the casing. “I think this is incredibly powerful,”
using a new “seismic-to-simulation” The closer each gauge is to a prop- said Elliott. “We really haven’t had this
workflow to avoid fracture asymmetry agating fracture correlates to higher- before, and the ability of simple mod-
and frac hits by using wider stage spac- observed pressures. The extra effort of els to project this is quite impressive.”
ing and less aggressive stimulations. using downhole gauges this way is done He added that as the picture of fracture
Callon says these learnings have enabled to enhance the certainty of the reservoir’s behavior and reservoir pressure changes
it to high-grade its acreage based on
rock stress.
Equinor is also in the early stages of Wellbore Paths in Horizontal Plane
3,000
studying rock stress for engineered com-
pletions at its Eagle Ford Shale asset, but Fracturing Well DH Gauge
it is taking a different route than Callon. Monitoring Well
Instead of using seismic interpretations, 2,500
the company presented a case study it
says validates the use of surface drill-
ing data—i.e., mechanical specific ener- 1,313 ft
gy (MSE)—and a new modeling software 2,000
Relative Northing Distance (ft)
to infer pore pressure and stress states

(URTeC 511).
Fracturing Stage
Low pressures and stresses are cor- 1,500
related to areas of reservoir depletion,
which as mentioned earlier, should affect
stage placement and treatment. Equi- 623 ft
554 ft
nor points out that since the MSE data 1,000
is already recorded during drilling, its 818 ft DH Gauge
acquisition comes at no extra cost.
500
“A Direct Known Point
in Space”
As more operators realize that pressure
data is reflective of fracture geometry, 0
some want to get as close to the source of
that pressure as possible—the fractures
themselves. Devon is among those taking
pains to do just that. –500
–1,000 –800 –600 –400 –200 0 200 400
One of the company’s URTeC papers
that it coauthored with researchers from Relative Easting Distance (ft)
UT describes efforts to create a “new,
The horizontal wellbore trajectories and distances between treatment stage
fast analytical method to estimate frac- and monitoring points. Due to the azimuth of this fracture and wellbore
ture geometry, and the resulting stresses geometry, a fracture was observed passing the heel downhole gauge before
around a propagating fracture” by iden- a response was seen in the mid-lateral gauge. URTeC 449.

1,500 ees. In just 4 months, a single person
in the company was able to develop a
7 frac hit workflow to diagnose the inter-
1,400
actions it was observing by correlating
1,300 6 production effects. The reservoir simula-
tion workflow, which incorporates some
Fracture Half-Length (ft)
of that data, took a year to build with

1,200 5
four staffers.
Among the most critical learnings of
1,100
4 this combined reservoir diagnostics pro-
gram is that frac hits in Discovery’s loca-
1,000
tion tend to have neutral effects on oil
3
production, enabling the company to
900
tolerate them with only slight delays in
2 daily production.
800
This was realized using data from
1 downhole and surface gauges that in
700
some cases recorded pressure increas-
es in shut-in offset wells by as much as
600 2,000 or 3,000 psi during the treatment
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1,000
of another well. These pressures were
Fracture Height (ft) often sustained for days and weeks.
This graph represents the combination of data from two pressure monitoring Despite the magnitudes, pressures
locations inside the same well. It shows the most probable solution for fracture often built up slowly, almost to the ini-
geometry is the blue line, specifically the lower values to the left. White spaces tial reservoir pressures recorded before
represent outcomes in which the calculations could not find a possible answer. the first offset wells were hydraulical-
Source: URTeC 449.
ly fractured. When production data
came in later, the engineering team saw
becomes sharper, designed experiments monitoring wellbore. At 8 minutes into something they never expected: gas-
can be run to test different parameters of the fracturing of an offset stage, the heel- to-oil ratios (GOR) in the offset wells
the overall completion strategy. gauge recorded a pressure rise while the went down.
The central job of the new model is to mid-lateral gauge did not see a response “With frac hits, what we see is a bump
help figure out the three key unknowns until 24 minutes into pumping. Knowing in water production and a drop in GOR—
of fracture geometry: net pressure, frac- where these points were in the well, and every single time without fail,” said
ture height, and fracture half-length. The how far apart those responses were in McDowell at Discovery, explaining that
challenge is that for any given pressure time was all that was needed to reveal the the working theory is that the fractur-
response, these three parameters can be azimuth and behavior of the fractures. ing fluids are pushing the gas back into
combined in a nearly infinite number of The next set of goals for the Devon solution, providing a stronger drive for
ways to match the response. This means and UT team will be to run more pilots, oil production once the well cleans up
a fracture could be close to the point of validate the model against data sets from a few days or weeks of solid water
measurement, or it could be farther away, from other industry partners, integrate production. “It was pretty eye opening,”
and of different sizes, while generating the data with other diagnostic tech- he added. “We knew things were hap-
the same observed pressure response. nologies, and move the process into pening, but we never knew the extent of
To get closer to the true answer, the real-time mode. the pressure.”
UT research team has turned to an inver- Others have seen similar responses in
sion algorithm that Elliott said enables Water Hits, Arrival Times, the Permian and elsewhere, with one
the software to “calculate the full solu- and Pinballs theory being that a slow offset pressure
tion space” which is displayed as a curved The work of detailed reservoir diagnos- buildup indicates a complex fracture net-
surface. Each downhole gauge provides tics is not the sole domain of large com- work with many pathways for fracturing
one of these curves. When three gaug- panies. There are ample case studies that fluids to travel. Some experts believe that
es are used, the most likely solution show how small producers have increased the tortuosity of these complex systems
for net pressure and fracture geometry their scrutiny of reservoir pressures and is such that the proppant gets held up
is triangulated. adopted integrated modeling workflows somewhere in the near-field of the frac-
In the first pilot, Devon only used two to engineer better well designs. ture network, while the injected water is
gauges. One gauge was placed in the heel One of the latest comes from Discov- able to flow much deeper into the forma-
zone and one in the middle of an offset ery, which has only about 200 employ- tion and adjacent wellbores.

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All Horizontal Well Configurations (A–F) styles. However, many small and mid-
sized operators have shied away from
n=29 n=11 n=30 n=8 n=8 n=2
100 models and simulators due to their cost,
complexity, and uncertainty.
90 But with low-cost pressure data,
31%
operators have at least one constraint
80 36% 40% to make their models and simulations
50% more useful and believable. McDowell
FDI Types (normalized) (%)
70 and others still know that getting the

63%
7% exact prescription for well spacing
60 remains a difficult task. “But cutting
17% 13% down uncertainty is absolutely possi-
50 27% 100% ble,” he said. “And if you can cut down
uncertainty enough, then you’re eventu-
40 13% ally left with the answer, or at least a bet-
25%
ter answer than you started with.” JPT
30
31% 18%
20% 25% For Further Reading
20
URTeC 511 Estimation of 3D
25% Distribution of Pore Pressure from
10 18%
14% 13% 13%
Surface Drilling Data—Application
to Optimal Drilling and Frac Hit
0
x≤1,000 1,000<x≤2,000 2,000<x≤3,000 3,000<x≤4,000 4,000<x≤5,000 5,000<x Prevention in the Eagle Ford by James
Fracture Height (ft) Kalinec, Equinor, Mohit Paryani,
FracGeo, et al.
No FDI Oil banking Small water hit Moderate water hit Large water hit
URTeC 208 Frac Hit Prevention and
Engineered Treatment Design in
The type of fracture-driven interaction was documented for 88 horizontal
wells, showing that their frequency and intensity decreases with wider the Permian Basin Using In-Situ
distances between wells. Most of the events were recorded as “water hits” Stress From 3D Seismic by Michael
while a small share were impacted positively by what is known as “oil Shoemaker, James Hawkins, Callon
banking,” which causes oil production to spike after a fracture interaction. Petroleum Company, et al.
Source: URTeC 125.
URTeC 449 Interpreting Inter-Well
Poroelastic Pressure Transient Data:
Especially in water wet geologies, The team uses this data for enhanced An Analytical Approach Validated
which includes Discovery’s position in frac hit detection and well interference with Field Case Studies by Brendan
the Wolfcamp, this becomes a plausi- testing since it can learn the tendencies Elliott, Devon Energy, Ripudaman
ble explanation of why wells that take of its rocks by using the velocities to cal- Manchanda, The University of Texas
frac hits are spared from being sanded culate the “average arrival time” of each at Austin, et al.
in, meaning no proppant is observed. stage’s fractures. URTeC 970 Post-Fracture Decay:
Instead they produce a large volume of The case study proves that knowing A Novel (and Free) Stage-Level
water for several days or weeks before when a pumping stage begins, the dis- Assessment Method by Michael
returning to baseline oil production. tance between wells, and the moment Sullivan, Chevron, Behnam Zanganeh,
Accordingly, the company refers to when offset pressures rise, an operator University of Calgary, et al.
these events as “water hits.” of any size can see how fast fractures URTeC 272 Practical Reservoir
Discovery has inferred other inter- are propagating outward from the treat- Simulation for Small Development
esting fracture behaviors from pressure ment well. As these patterns are seen Teams—Customizing Stimulation
data, including how fracture interactions over and over in the same field, the data Designs by Landing Zone in the
seem to relay from one well to another becomes a hard-to-ignore diagnostic for Midland Basin by Tony Tran, Ryan
like a “pinball,” described McDowell. well spacing. Miller, Discovery Natural Resources,
Related to this, and in a fashion simi- One reason why all these nuances are et al.
lar to Devon’s (but relying on the tradi- so important to document is that Dis- URTeC 125 Production Effects From
tional application of gauges and com- covery needs them to make its invest- Frac-Driven Interactions in the
mercial software), Discovery has shared ment in reservoir models and hydrau- Southeastern Midland Basin, Regan
how it determines the average velocity of lic fracturing simulators worthwhile. County, Texas by Bryan McDowell,
fracture growth by measuring how fast These tools are seen as critical to mak- Alan Yoelin, Discovery Natural
the pressures move from well to well. ing informed changes to completion Resources, et al.

Getting the Most Out of Each Stage?
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If you want to drain the reservoir as completely and consistently as possible, then it’s time to get
even. The most effective completions improve recovery factors by distributing fluid and proppant
more evenly to maximize cluster efficiency across each and every stage. Learn how to get more
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Colombia’s New Ambitions Include
Caribbean and Shale Development,
But Are They Achievable?
Matt Zborowski, Technology Editor
Source: Getty Images.
A t some point during the first half of

this year, Colombia replaced polit-
ically and economically crippled Ven-
held licensing rounds with the intent of
attracting foreign investment. Oil pro-
duction subsequently rose to more than
with Venezuela, has proven petroleum
systems that have produced oil and gas
for a century, and the application of hori-
ezuela as Latin America’s third-largest 1 million B/D before dropping amid the zontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing
oil-producing country. global industry downturn. Output in offers huge promise.
That put Colombia behind only Bra- May averaged just short of 900,000 B/D. María Fernanda Suárez, Colombia’s
zil and Mexico in the hydrocarbons-rich The Colombian government is trying minister of mines and energy, has said
region, two nations on divergent paths to build on the foundation established by that unconventional development could
in terms of oil flow. Since Brazil ended those reforms by implementing a novel triple the country’s oil and gas reserves.
state-owned Petrobras’ monopoly and permanent, continuously open bidding Standing in the way, however, has been
opened up its industry to international process and exploring unconvention- public resistance to hydraulic fractur-
companies in the late 1990s, the coun- al development. The aim is to replen- ing, and pilot projects that would dem-
try’s oil output has almost tripled as ish depleted oil and gas reserves and onstrate its benefits are yet to get
it found and tapped into its giant off- increase production. Based on its 2018 environmental approval. There is “game-
shore presalt fields. Output from Mex- output, the country’s crude reserves are changing potential—if the industry
ico’s state-owned Pemex, meanwhile, good for just 6.2 years, while its natural can get going with development,” said
has fallen to its lowest level since at gas reserves would last 9.8 years, fall- Ruaraidh Montgomery, research director
least 1990, and President Andrés Man- ing below the 10-year mark for the first at oil and gas research firm Welligence
uel López Obrador is working to stymie time in decades, according to statistics Energy Analytics.
energy reforms implemented in 2013 to from Colombia’s National Hydrocarbons On the other side of Venezuela sits
rejuvenate industry in the country. Agency (ANH). Guyana, which has scored a bounty of
With the lessons of its resource-rich But Colombia has long been seen by the oil through more than a dozen offshore
neighbors in mind, Colombia finds itself global industry as a petroleum province discoveries by ExxonMobil since 2015.
in a similar position where it must care- with upside that surpasses just incremen- Colombia’s offshore potential is less clear
fully choose a path forward for its indus- tal reserves and production gains. All of given the presence of only one producing
try or risk squandering great poten- its liquids and nearly all of its gas produc- field in the country’s history—Chevron’s
tial, or worse, losing what took years to tion is extracted conventionally onshore, shallow-water Chuchupa field, which has
build. The Andean country in the early meaning its offshore and unconvention- been flowing gas since 1979. But deeper
2000s overhauled its regulatory frame- al sectors are nascent. Colombia, which wells drilled and seismic data collect-
work, reduced government take, and shares a more than 2000-km border ed since the reforms of the early 2000s

have improved knowledge of the region’s tional royalty bid. Colombia’s corporate those blocks, and Ecopetrol hopes
geology, leading to four gas discoveries income tax rate is 33%, which will gradu- to farm out stakes as it moves toward
and suggesting liquids potential. ally be reduced to 30% by 2022 under the appraisal drilling and formation testing.
administration of President Iván Duque. Petrobras plans to drill another well near
Reeling Back in the Majors “In terms of a comparison with the Orca in 2020.
Advancing participation in its offshore rest of the region, we consider the terms Those discoveries confirmed a work-
sector, ANH this year has awarded blocks appropriate for an established oil proving petroleum system in Colombia’s deep
to ExxonMobil, Shell, Repsol, and Colom- ince that offers moderate resource waters. Enticed by the presence of oil
bia’s state-owned Ecopetrol, with Hous- potential and relatively low geological seeps from the continental shelf and adja-
ton independent Noble Energy entering risk onshore,” said Montgomery. “There cent onshore basins, foreign operators in
the country via a subsequent farm-in to are better terms available elsewhere, but the coming years are likely to turn their
Shell’s block. Among the longest-tenured those typically reflect the fact that the attention to finding liquids deposits in
international firms operating in Colom- exploration risk or cost is a lot higher.” the region, including Noble, which is slat-
bia, ExxonMobil has ramped up invest- Alejandro Mesa, who leads Baker & ed to drill an exploration well next year.
ment in South America as of late, with McKenzie’s energy law practice in Bogo- The Colombian Caribbean’s new-
major projects in Brazil, Guyana, and ta, believes Colombia “could still do bet- found geologic appeal comes from “com-
Argentina. However, in recent years it ter” when it comes to the corporate tax pelling evidence” that the subduction
has scaled down its Colombia work. rate. However, he noted the government active margin model previously accept-
Waning interest in the country from has not rescinded contracts with foreign ed by petroleum geologists in the region
foreign companies, particularly from the oil and gas companies and has taken fur- “might not be the best explanation for
majors, caused ANH to rethink how it ther measures to protect foreign invest- the evolution of the Caribbean margin
approached contracts, extending explo- ment. “I think that’s definitely one of and its prospectivity,” explained Rober-
ration terms to give firms more leeway in the drivers for companies to still look to Aguilera, founder and president of RA
their commitments. ANH then rolled out at Colombia,” he said. Geologia, a Bogota-based geological and
its new permanent licensing scheme in geophysical consultancy.
which prequalified firms can bid on off- Caribbean’s Geologic Appeal In the past, some operators accept-
shore and onshore blocks not formally Colombia’s efforts to jumpstart its off- ed that model and gave up on the area
on offer in licensing rounds. shore sector beginning in the mid-2000s “because of the risks associated with
A benefit for the foreign firms target- first bore fruit in 2014 when Brazil’s trap integrity and reservoir quality,” said
ing Colombia’s offshore is its low cost of state-owned Petrobras made the deep- Aguilera. “But other companies and peo-
entry. “It’s not like Brazil where you’re water Orca gas discovery in the Guajira ple studying the area started to propose
having to put down a lot of dollars to get Offshore Basin. Then, during 2015–2017, alternative interpretations for develop-
exposure to acreage,” said Montgomery. Anadarko made the deepwater Kronos, ment of the margin and its prospectivity
“But Brazil is proven—the presalt is a Gorgon, and Purple Angel gas discover- based on the new 3D seismic, geophysi-
world-class resource, so you have to pay ies in the Sinú Offshore Basin. Anadarko cal, and geochemical data acquired dur-
to get access.” has since relinquished its interests in ing TEA evaluations.”
Risk is mitigated through technical
evaluation agreements (TEAs) that allow
companies to carry out technical stud- Colombian Oil Supply Disruptions by Year
ies over large swaths of unexplored or thousand B/D
underexplored acreage without making 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40
expensive work commitments. If those 2011
firms wish to proceed with drilling, they 2012
can negotiate the acreage into an explo- 2013
ration and production (E&P) contract 2014
with well commitments. 2015
E&P contracts function under a 2016
sliding-scale royalty that varies depend- 2017
ing on oil price, crude gravity, and pro-
2018
duction level. The royalty starts at 8%
and increases to 20% at a mid-sized
asset—for example, an asset that pro- Despite a peace accord between the government and rebel group FARC in
2016 that was to end a decades-long civil war, security remains a concern for
duces around 20,000 B/D—and tops off the industry in Colombia. Much of the instability has been at the border with
at 25%. In the licensing rounds, the bid- Venezuela, where the Caño Limón–Coveñas crude pipeline was bombed an
ding variable is usually additional work estimated 1,400 times during its first 32 years in operation. Source: US Energy
commitment and sometimes an addi- Information Administration.

Colombia
Pa Venezuela
nam
a
The Colombian Caribbean Margin reaches from Panama to Venezuela along 1600 km of coastline. It includes three
major basins that extend offshore and cover 95000 sq km: Sinú, Guajira, and Urabá (bottom left). Source: RA Geologia.
This new data suggest that the mar- There is still much to be learned water Chuchupa field, in the onshore
gin has more passive-like behavior, with about the Colombian margin, however, Guajira Basin.
deformation in the southern basins so comparing it with more-established New onshore exploration and applica-
mainly caused by mud diapirs and exten- basins is currently difficult. “But it will tion of new recovery methods are need-
sion associated with mud withdrawal and probably have the best of both worlds,” ed to offset declines from these aging
gravity sliding, creating folds and mini- Aguilera said. fields. The good news for Colombia is
basins similar to those found in the Gulf that its relative openness to participa-
of Mexico and Caspian Sea. This in turn Familiar Foreign Operators tion from foreign operators over the past
produced a deformation front toward the With age comes wisdom for Colombia’s 5 decades has allowed capable, inno-
continental slope of toe thrusts where onshore fields. Unlike offshore, there is vative international producers such as
Anadarko and Ecopetrol made their now a century’s worth of onshore E&P Chevron and Oxy to gain a better under-
recent gas discoveries. knowledge dating back to the historic standing of the country’s onshore geol-
While the more established Gulf La Cira and Infantas oil fields in the ogy and sociopolitical environment that
of Mexico and Brazilian margins and Middle Magdalena Basin in the north- includes decades of civil unrest.
the freshly tapped Guyana margin are central portion of the country. Most of Oxy in particular has been “gradu-
each passive, there are key differences the country’s oil and gas production ally stepping up” work on its existing
between them and the one in the Colom- since the industry’s inception there has assets as well as positioning itself “for
bian Caribbean, he noted. Those differ- come in the Middle Magdalena. new growth opportunities,” said Mont-
ences include the Colombian Caribbean One of Colombia’s most active for- gomery. The company has added several
margin’s extensive mud diapirs instead eign operators, Occidental Petroleum, blocks during the last couple of years and
of salt diapirs, uncertainty related to gained a stake in La Cira-Infantas in 2018, alongside Ecopetrol, sanctioned
its pre-Tertiary rock, and the apparent in 2006 and is operator of the Caño a steamflood project for the mature
gassy nature of its petroleum system vs. Limón field, located in the northern Teca heavy-oil field, where production
the liquids discoveries of the other off- Llanos Basin, that started oil produc- is expected to reach 30,000 BOE/D by
shore basins—and even compared with tion in 1985. Chevron since 1977 has 2025 and break even at West Texas Inter-
other mud-diapir basins such as the been producing gas from the onshore mediate oil prices of less than $40/bbl.
Caspian Sea. Ballena field, which is near the shallow- But how Oxy plans to proceed in Colom-

bia following completion of the Anadar- maximize shale potential with a mini- ment, said Montgomery, “The infrastruc-
ko acquisition will remain to be seen. mal footprint.” ture is just not there. Traffic is going to be
Meanwhile, small-to-midcap inde- The Middle Magdalena Basin, which horrendous” due to the equipment, sup-
pendents such as Canacol Energy, Gran lies in a river valley between the Andes’ plies, and personnel needed once the ser-
Tierra Energy, Parex Resources, Fron- central and eastern mountain ranges, is vice sector finally builds up to capacity.
tera Energy, and GeoPark have success- not like the Permian Basin in the US or To encourage more transparency with
fully exploited conventional oil and gas Vaca Muerta Shale in Argentina, where fracturing activity, the Duque admin-
in Colombia in recent years and resem- there are wide-open, relatively flat spac- istration last year established a com-
ble the nimble producers that fueled the es. And, for unconventional develop- mission to carry out a comprehensive
US shale revolution. “Colombia has been
very successful at bringing in invest-
ment from that type of company” since
ENGINEERED
the fiscal and contracting reforms of the
early 2000s, Montgomery said.
Ready To Frac, but When?
to PERFORM
But the bad news for those hoping for an
imminent and rapid launch of an uncon-
ventional revolution in Colombia is that
the hydraulic fracturing debate there
mirrors that in the US. Politicians have
seized the issue as a means to criticize CRAFTED FOR CONFIDENCE
the Duque administration, and some
citizens have developed a negative per-
ception of the practice before it has even
had a chance to be demonstrated for
unconventionals. “The government has
a lot of work to do to win the battle for
hearts and minds to really move forward
with this, because [it needs] the support
of local communities especially,” Mont-
gomery said.
Colombia’s identity is in its diverse
native population and environment,
Mesa explained, and preserving both is
paramount. Perception that either could
be negatively affected is often met with
fierce resistance—courts, for example,
are known as ardent protectors of com- ENGINEERING THE MOST ROBUST valve products and
munity rights. While companies may manifold systems in the industry isn’t something that
view this as an obstacle, Mesa said, “I just happens, it comes from a process decades in the
think right now everybody understands making, and it hinges on product design. With a refined
design process, CORTEC products are crafted to meet
this is part of the game—that you have
your specific needs and made to order with a faster
to engage with communities, you have turnaround time on project deliveries. Industry leading
to engage with groups that are affected expertise and approach allow our team to ensure every
by the oil and gas activities.” design meets or exceeds all industry standards and
“Overall, when looking at oil and gas, project requirements before production even begins.
even if it’s just conventional, there are
ongoing community tensions, there For more information on specific CORTEC product
are blockades that happen,” said Elena offerings, visit us at uscortec.com
Nikolova, Latin America upstream
analyst at research consultancy Wood
Mackenzie. “But unconventional pro-
duction also has a very different surface
footprint. And for Colombia, it’s real-
ly going to be key to figure out how to

Guajira
Basin
elt
a
ldb
sin eri
asi
Fo
Ba anch
aB
nto
len
-R
aci
sar
da
PA
nJ
Ce
ag
NA
n
Sa
asi
rM
Catatumbo
MA
uB
Basin
we
Lo
Sin
VENEZUELA
n
asi
aB
len
Atra
da
to B
ag
Much of Colombia’s
M
asin
dle
unconventional potential
Mid
lies in the Middle
Magdalena Basin and
its Cretaceous La Luna
Llanos
formation. Big gas Basin
potential is seen on Coal Bed Methane
the western edge of Shale Oil & Gas
the Llanos Basin and
Heavy Oil–Tar Sands
its Cretaceous Gacheta
formation, with source Gas Field
Oil Field
rock shales that are Caguan Oil Seeps
similar to the La Luna. Basin
Country/Basin
Source: RA Geologia. Boundary
Putumayo
Basin
BRASIL
ECUADOR
review of the stimulation practice in Those pilots would have been cru volumes, provide the country’s only real
Colombia and make recommendations cial to proving that fracturing works nearterm growth potential. “There’s a
as to whether it can be done with min technically and can be done without certain inevitability that they will have
imal interference to the environment negatively affecting its surroundings, to, at some point, produce from it,”
and local communities. Earlier this Mesa noted. said Nikolova.
year, the commission endorsed fractur If similar projects are to be approved,
ing pilots but said the projects must be “it’s probably going to be Ecopetrol How Colombia’s Unconventional
closely monitored. to lead the way in terms of largescale Basins Compare
However, Reuters reported in April investments,” Montgomery said, as Most of Colombia’s unconventional
that an environmental application for a Colombia’s native oil and gas company focus is on the Middle Magdalena Basin.
pilot submitted by Ecopetrol had been would probably have an easier time Wood Mackenzie estimates the basin’s
shelved. Late last year, partners Conoco carrying them out. Ecopetrol has been unconventional potential at 225 bil
Phillips and Canacol were denied envi in the US studying its shale plays—it lion bbl of oil in place with 1.3 billion bbl
ronmental approvals for two pilots on recently teamed with Oxy on a Perm recoverable, and 425 Tcf of gas in place
separate blocks in the Middle Magdalena ian joint venture—and previously said with 3 Tcf recoverable. Both estimates
Basin. Charle Gamba, Canacol president it was targeting a halfbillion dollars assume a relatively low recovery factor
and chief executive officer, said during in spending on Colombian unconven of 2% that could increase if production
his company’s firstquarter earnings tional pilot projects during 2019–2021. ramps up.
call in May that if the partners were to “They’re ready to start testing what The Middle Magdalena contains the
resubmit the permits, it would likely take they’ve got,” he said. Cretaceous La Luna formation, a deep
another year to get approval and then Colombia needs to replace production marine shale mixed with marl and lime
another yearandahalf to mobilize stim soon, and unconventionals, though still stone like the Eagle Ford and Niobrara
ulation equipment from the US. possibly years from yielding significant Shale plays in the US.

The La Luna there has oil-prone Francis believes unconventional devel- ta interval is thinner and deeper than
marine source rock with a good-to- opment of Catatumbo will be “a little the La Luna in the Middle Magdalena,
excellent range of total organic carbon harder because the geologic structures with a 600-ft-thick organic-rich section
(TOC) found 9,000–10,000‑ft deep. are more complex but also because of around 13,000–16,000-ft deep, and
The TOC average across the entire inter- the security issues.” overpressure also is not as strong. The
val, which is close to 2,000-ft thick, The more gas-prone Llanos Basin most prospective portion of the Llanos
ranges 2–6%. But some individual beds contains the Cretaceous Gacheta for- is on its western edge near the moun-
reach 12–14%. mation with source rock shales that tains where there is more structur-
“It’s really a world-class source rock,” are similar to the La Luna. The Gache- al complexity. JPT
said Julie Francis, an analyst in Wood
Mackenzie’s unconventional upstream
research group. “It’s richer than what we
see in the Eagle Ford” and in the Perm-
ian’s Wolfcamp Shale, she said, add-
ing that “one of the great advantages is
that it’s very overpressured,” even in the
oil zone.
Decades of drilling and production in
the Middle Magdalena mean operators
benefit from having existing data and
cores while not having to prove up the
basin through exploration. This experi-
ence includes a few vertical wells flow-
ing back from fractured limestone and
shale in the La Luna before operators
began examining the Middle Magdale-
na’s unconventional potential.
However, there are several challeng-
es in unconventionally developing the
Middle Magdalena. First, fluid types
vary across the basin, and understand-
ing which fluid is where in the source
rock is not as easy as in the Eagle Ford,
where “the depths are on a nice slope
with a very simple oil, condensate, and
gas window,” Francis explained. Depos-
DST-TCP Extreme
its in the Middle Magdalena are found in Pressure Series
anticlines with “a fair amount of fault-
ing,” she said, which requires seismic
Engineered for high-cost,
imaging so the operator can determine challenging well applications.
how to orient the wellbore relative to Expro’s Extreme Pressure Series TCP gun systems utilise
the fault. super big hole shaped charge technology, optimised for
Another source of uncertainty heavy wall casing, to deliver the largest area-open-to-flow
revolves around possible stacked-pay (AOF) in extreme high pressure frac-packed wells.
potential. Beyond the La Luna, opera- Incorporating Expro’s 30K PSI rated DST tools and
tors will have to figure out whether the hydraulic firing heads, the system provides class-
Simití and Tablazo formations can be leading technology required to deliver safe and efficient
developed into a larger section. completions while optimising well performance.
Next to the Middle Magdalena is the
www.exprogroup.com/extreme
Catatumbo Basin, which is the south-
ern extension of Venezuela’s Maraca-
ibo Basin. The La Luna is also pres-
ent in this “really rich but really small”
basin, she said, where production is Visit us at ATCE 2019
“a bit quiet these days” given instabil- Booth 532
ity at the Colombia-Venezuela border.

SPE AWARDS
SPE Honors 2019 International Award

Recipients at Annual Meeting
Each year during its Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE), SPE honors
members whose outstanding contributions to SPE and the petroleum industry merit
special distinction. Recipients of the 2019 International Awards will be recognized at
the Annual Reception and Awards Banquet held on Tuesday, 1 October, in Calgary.
Anuj Gupta is a senior petroleum engineer-

Honorary Membership ing consultant at the Aramco Research
Center–Houston, where he conducts and
Honorary Membership is the highest honor SPE confers upon leads research on simulation modeling
an individual. It is limited to 0.1% of SPE’s total membership workflows for unconventional reservoirs
and is conferred on individuals for outstanding service to and oversees other research activities relat-
SPE and/or in recognition of distinguished scientific or engi- ed to reservoir engineering for unconven-
neering achievement in fields encompassed in SPE’s techni- tional reservoirs. He has more than 30 years of experience
cal scope. across the United States, Middle East, and India. Prior to join-
ing Aramco in 2013, he served for 21 years as a member of the
Maria Angela Capello is an energy leader petroleum engineering faculty at various institutions, includ-
and author lauded for her expertise in res- ing the University of Oklahoma, Missouri University of Science
ervoir management, talent development, & Technology, Louisiana State University, ADNOC Petroleum
and diversity and inclusion. She is an exec- Institute, and Texas A&M University. His research has advanced
utive advisor at Kuwait Oil Company, cham- the disciplines of unconventional reservoirs, reservoir charac-
pioning the standardization of reservoir terization, enhanced oil and gas recovery, petrophysics,
management practices across its director- and drilling.
ates and managing key planning strategies for North Kuwait Gupta is a coauthor of more than 100 technical papers, five
Directorate. Additionally, she has been key in enhancing the patents, and several pending and published patent applications.
direction, coordination, and alignment of talent development He is the recipient of the SPE DeGolyer Distinguished Service
initiatives of the company and those related to the empower- Medal and SPE Distinguished Service Award and is an SPE Dis-
ment of women across the nine companies of the Kuwait tinguished Member. He holds a BEng in mechanical engineer-
national oil sector. ing from Delhi College of Engineering at Delhi University, India,
Capello was the first woman to supervise geophysical field and MS and PhDs in petroleum engineering from the University
operations in Venezuela, as field engineer, progressing in a of Texas at Austin.
variety of roles including project leader, technology manager,
and reservoir manager, to become the youngest general man- Franklin (Lynn) Orr is the Keleen and Carl-
ager of an oil asset in PDVSA. She has authored more than 78 ton Beal Professor of Petroleum Engineer-
articles and webinars, is the lead author of the book, Learned ing Emeritus in the Department of Energy
in the Trenches—Insights on Leadership and Resilience, and Resources Engineering at Stanford Univer-
has a recognized online presence focused on field develop- sity, where he served as chair of the Depart-
ment, leadership, talent management, and women’s empow- ment of Petroleum Engineering, dean of the
erment. She has chaired and served on numerous SPE com- School of Earth Sciences, founding director
mittees and conferences, and was the recipient of the SPE of the Global Climate and Energy Project, and founding director
International Distinguished Service Award in 2017 and the SPE of the Precourt Institute for Energy. He also served as a member
Distinguished Membership Award in 2014. She holds an MS of a task force for California’s energy future and as a member of
degree from Colorado School of Mines and a degree in physics a National Research Council Committee on America’s Energy
from Simon Bolivar University in Venezuela. Future, and cochaired a DOE study of basic research needs in

the geosciences. Orr was the Under Secretary for Science and Thakur served as SPE President in 2012. He has also been an
Energy at the US Department of Energy from 2014 to 2017. SPE Distinguished Lecturer and a member of the SPE Editorial
Orr was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer and served as a review Review Committee, and was the first Technical Director of Res-
chairman for SPE Reservoir Engineering. He received the SPE ervoir Description & Dynamics. He currently is a board member
Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum Engineering of the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, and Sciences,
Faculty and Cedric Ferguson certificates for papers published and Treasurer of the SPE Foundation. He is a member of the US
with students receiving the Ferguson Medal. He was elected to National Academy of Engineering, has published 70 papers and
the US National Academy of Engineering in 2000 and is a mem- patents, and is the author of three books. He received the SPE
ber of the ClimateWords Foundation board of directors. Orr Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award and is an SPE Dis-
holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota and a BS from tinguished Member. Thakur holds a PhD in petroleum and natu-
Stanford University, both in chemical engineering. He received ral gas engineering, an MA in mathematics, and an MS in petro-
an honorary doctorate in engineering from Heriot-Watt Uni- leum and natural gas engineering, all from Pennsylvania State
versity, the Robert S. Schechter Award from the University of University. He also holds an MBA from Houston Baptist Uni-
Texas, the Aurel Stodola Medal from Eidgenössische Tech- versity and received his bachelor’s degree with honors in petro-
nische Hochschule Zürich, and the Izatt Christensen Award leum engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology–
from Brigham Young University. School of Mines. He has received outstanding alumni awards
from both Penn State and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Jeffrey ( Jeff) Spath is a professor and
Stephen A. Holditch ’69 Department Head
Chair in the Harold Vance Department of Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal
Petroleum Engineering at Texas A&M Uni-
versity. Before joining Texas A&M, Spath The Anthony F. Lucas Gold Medal, established in 1932, recog-
was chief executive officer of the University nizes achievement in improving techniques and practices of
of Texas’ Texas Oil and Gas Institute, a finding and producing petroleum.
research and consulting institute, where he led a team of engi-
neers and geoscientists to increase the production and reserves Carlos Torres-Verdín is a professor in the
on the 9,600 oil and gas wells on the state of Texas’ university Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and
lands. Before joining the UT System, Spath was a member of Geosystems Engineering of the University of
the executive management team for Schlumberger. After join- Texas at Austin, where he holds the Brian
ing the company in 1984, he held various global positions in James Jennings Memorial Endowed Chair in
reservoir engineering, research, and management, including Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering,
vice president of industry affairs, president of the reservoir and conducts research on borehole geo-
management product group, and president of data and con- physics, formation evaluation, well logging, and integrated res-
sulting services. ervoir description. He is the founder and director of the
Spath has served as Technical Director for Management & Research Consortium on Formation Evaluation at UT, which has
Information on the SPE Board of Directors and was an SPE been in operation for 19 years. Before entering academia,
Distinguished Lecturer on the subject of production enhance- Torres-Verdín was a research scientist with Schlumberger-Doll
ment, and served as 2014 SPE President. He has published 26 Research and a reservoir specialist and technology champion
technical papers and holds 14 patents in oil and gas produc- with YPF. Torres-Verdín received the 2008 SPE Formation Eval-
tion. He earned BS and MS degrees in petroleum engineering uation Technical Award and is an SPE Distinguished Member.
from Texas A&M and a PhD in reservoir engineering from Min- He has published more than 200 journal papers and 235 confer-
ing University of Leoben, Austria. ence papers, is the author of five patents, and has served as an
editor for SPE Journal. He has received awards and served in
Ganesh Thakur is director of energy indus- editorial positions for SEG, SPWLA, and EAGE. He has super-
try partnerships and Distinguished Profes- vised 34 PhD and 46 master’s degree students, conducted
sor of Petroleum Engineering at the Univer- numerous industry training courses, and chaired, cochaired, or
sity of Houston. He leads teams of scientists participated in several SPE committees, technical workshops,
in solving complex problems for the energy and conference sessions. He holds a PhD in engineering geosci-
industry, and develops research partner- ence from the University of California at Berkeley.
ships and promotes synergy in petroleum
reservoir management involving conventional and unconven-
tional reservoirs and carbon capture and sequestration. He also John Franklin Carll Award
advises Geo-Park, a leading independent E&P company in Latin
America, and various national oil companies. During a 37-year The John Franklin Carll Award recognizes contributions of tech-
career with Chevron, Thakur served in various roles including nical application and professionalism in petroleum develop-
vice president and global advisor and fellow. ment and recovery.

George Moridis is a professor of petro- Mines, an MS in chemical engineering from the University of
leum engineering and holder of the George Calgary, and a PhD in petroleum engineering from the Univer-
and Joan Voneiff Professorship in Uncon- sity of Alberta.
ventional Resources at Texas A&M Univer-
sity. He is also a senior scientist/faculty
associate at the Lawrence Berkeley Nation- Lester C. Uren Award
al Laboratory, where he headed the Hydro-
carbon Resource Program in the laboratory’s Energy Geosci- The Lester C. Uren Award recognizes distinguished achieve-
ences Division and research programs on unconventional ment in petroleum engineering technology by a member who
resources, and led the development of the new generation of made the contribution before age 45.
simulation codes of coupled flow, thermal, geomechanical,
and geophysical processes. He is ExxonMobil Visiting Profes- Olivier Houzé cofounded KAPPA Engineer-
sor Chair in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering ing, a petroleum engineering software and
Department of the National University of Singapore, and a vis- training and consulting services company,
iting professor in the Guangzhou Center for Gas Hydrate in 1987, and immediately began writing the
Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Moridis has first versions of Saphir, the industry stan-
been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer and was named an SPE dard pressure transient analysis software
Distinguished Member. He is a member of the US Secretary of that is used today by major international
Energy’s Methane Hydrate Advisory Committee, and the and national oil companies, independents, and oil and gas ser-
recipient of a 2011 Secretarial Honor Award—the highest vice companies. Before starting KAPPA, Houzé spent four years
non-monetary award conferred by the US Department of with Flopetrol-Johnston (Schlumberger), primarily as a well
Energy—for work on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Flow test field engineer in the Middle East. He has been KAPPA’s
Rate Technical Group. Moridis holds BS and MEn degrees managing director since 1991. Houzé has been actively involved
from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and in numerous SPE forums and workshops on well test interpreta-
MS and PhDs from Texas A&M. tion and related topics. He was a coauthor of an SPE monograph
on pressure transient testing and one on unconventional
reserves. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer in 2013, and he
DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal served on the SPE Board of Directors as the Technical Director
for Reservoir Description and Dynamics during 2012–2015.
The DeGolyer Distinguished Service Medal recognizes distin- Houzé holds an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique
guished and outstanding service to SPE, to the professions of and an MS in petroleum engineering from Stanford University.
engineering and/or geology, and to the petroleum industry.
Hemanta Sarma is a professor of oil and Robert Earll McConnell Award

gas engineering at the University of Cal-
gary. Formerly, he chaired the Petroleum The Robert Earll McConnell Award recognizes beneficial ser-
Engineering Department at the Petroleum vice to humanity by engineers through significant contribu-
Institute, Abu Dhabi, and was the inaugural tions that tend to advance a nation’s standard of living or
Reg Sprigg Chair Professor at the Austra- replenish its natural resources base.
lian School of Petroleum of University of
Adelaide. Sarma received an Australian national citation for Ahmed Abou-Sayed, founder and CEO of
“initiating students into the profession of petroleum engi- Advantek International Corporation and of
neering while interacting with them to secure their welfare as Informateks International Incorporated
individuals and success as scholars.” He has held senior posi- Egypt, has developed best practices guide-
tions in the Alberta Research Council in Canada and Japan lines and operations assurance for E&P
National Oil Corporation. He has published extensively in the waste management for the oil and gas indus-
areas of EOR and reservoir engineering, and offered in-house try and regulatory bodies around the world.
training and consulting services to petroleum companies in He also developed produced-water-injection guidelines for the
Asia Pacific and Middle East. Sarma has been an SPE member OSPAR EEC Convention, the PWRI JIP. Abou-Sayed holds five US
for almost four decades, participating in numerous conferenc- patents and has authored more than 100 technical papers and
es, serving on technical and program committees, presenting publications. He has served on the SPE Board of Directors as
papers, and chairing or cochairing technical sessions. He Technical Director for Production and Operations. He has also
received the SPE Distinguished Service Award, was named been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer, was named an SPE Distin-
Outstanding Associate Editor for SPE Reservoir Evaluation & guished Member, and is a recipient of the SPE Production Oper-
Engineering Journal, and is an SPE Distinguished Member. He ations Award. He was a United Nations advisor in the Technical
holds a BTech in petroleum engineering from Indian School of Assistance Program for Unconventional Energy Recovery.

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Abou-Sayed holds a BS in mechanical engineering with highest launch ANAK-Tnk, a Manila-based nongovernmental organiza-
honors from Cairo University, an advanced diploma in information (NGO) that supports the Philippines capital city’s most
tion sciences from Institute du Recherches D’Informatique et impoverished children. He then created French and interna-
D’Automatique, and an MS in applied mechanics and a PhD in tional branches of the NGO and still serves as its president.
engineering mechanics, both from Brown University. Breton served as vice president of the SPE France Section and
has been the recipient of SPE regional awards for voluntary
commitment and public service. He holds a master’s degree in
Charles F. Rand Memorial Award Earth sciences and a geophysical engineer degree, both from
Strasbourg Institute of Earth Physics.
The Charles F. Rand Memorial Award recognizes distinguished
achievement in mining administration, including metallurgy
and petroleum. Distinguished Service Award
Kamel Ben-Naceur is the CEO of Nomadia The SPE Distinguished Service Award recognizes exceptional
Energy Consulting, a company focused on devotion of time, effort, thought, and action to the society that
supporting countries in the sustainable sets them apart from other contributions.
development of their energy sectors. He has
been the chief economist at ADNOC, and the Saeed Al-Mubarak has spent his career
director of sustainability, technology, and with Saudi Aramco, where he is the intelli-
outlooks at the International Energy Agen- gent fields focus area champion and has led
cy, and spent more than 33 years with Schlumberger, including important teams, including the strategic
in executive positions such as chief economist and technology team managing the world’s largest intelli-
center president. In 2014, he was appointed Tunisian Minister gent fields. He has also worked in reservoir,
for Industry, Energy, and Mines, leading key energy reforms production, drilling and completion, facili-
that included renewable energy expansion and the reform of ties, and knowledge management positions. Al-Mubarak is a
energy subsidies. He also was a professor at the Political Scienc- founder or cofounder of several knowledge-sharing and educa-
es University in Paris. Ben-Naceur has actively participated in tional programs, including the SPE Digital Energy Technical
and chaired SPE conferences and has authored more than 120 Section (DETS) LinkedIn Discussion Group. He is currently
articles and 16 books. He served on the SPE Board of Directors chairman of DETS, a member of the Management & Information
as Technical Director for Management and Information. advisory and Awards advisory committees, a member of the
Ben-Naceur has received several industry awards, including the Data Science and Digital Engineering training curriculum, and
SPE Distinguished Member and Distinguished Service awards. Texas A&M University SPE Student Chapter industry advisor.
He holds a master’s degree from the French Ecole Polytech- Al-Mubarak has been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer and the
nique and an aggregation of mathematics from the Ecole Nor- recipient of the SPE M&I Award and the Saudi section’s Commu-
male Superieure. nity Service Award. He holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical
engineering and a master’s in petroleum engineering, both
from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals.
Public Service Award
Mohammed Badri is managing director of
The SPE Public Service Award recognizes distinguished public research and development and technology
service to a country, state, community, or the public through advisor with Schlumberger, where he has
excellence in leadership, service, or humanitarianism, provided held management and technical positions
the service is above the requirements of employment. over the last 28 years. He is the inventor or
coinventor of 25 US patents and has pre-
Pascal Breton is deputy vice president E&P sented more than 78 papers in geoscience
communications with Total and also in and petroleum engineering. He has helped organize and chair
charge of internal and external communica- many conferences, panels, workshops, symposia, and forums,
tions for the Total Technological and R&D and was reviewer for SPE’s Reservoir Journal. Baldri is an SPE
Nerve Center, located in Pau, France. He Distinguished Member and received a regional service award.
joined Elf Aquitaine as a geophysicist and He currently serves on the SPE Distinguished Lecturer selec-
developed expertise in borehole geophysics tion, Research and Development, and Regional Training com-
and seismic characterization. He became head of seismic cali- mittees, and the Middle East Oil Show Executive and Program
bration and characterization after the Elf-Total merger and later Committee. He also is a board member of the International
moved from technology into human relations. As head of E&P Petroleum Technology Conference. Baldri holds a BS in geology
higher education relations, he developed strong collaborations from Damascas University, and MS and PhD degrees in geo-
with academics. In 1998, Breton took a sabbatical year to physics from the University of Minnesota.

David G. Kersey recently retired from 2015. Ogunkoya’s SPE awards include the Africa Regional Ser-
Saudi Aramco as senior petroleum engi- vice and Recruitment awards and President’s Award for Section
neering consultant in the Upstream Profes- Excellence. He led the organization of Africa’s first SPE HSE
sional Development Center. He previously Conference in Maputo, Mozambique. Ogunkoya holds an MS in
worked for the Swiss Federal Institute of offshore engineering from Robert Gordon University and a
Technology, Robertson Research, Reser- higher diploma in petroleum technology from the Petroleum
voirs, Inc., Core Laboratories, Schlumberg- Training Institute in Warri.
er, and Gulf Indonesia. He has authored or coauthored more
than 80 technical papers. Kersey has been chairman of the SPE Michael D. Zuber is a technical specialist in
Java Indonesia and Saudi Arabia sections. He also initiated the reservoir engineering for Pioneer Natural
formation of a Hawaiian SPE section. He is an SPE Distin- Resources. Before joining Pioneer, he was a
guished Member, has been recognized three times as an out- technical advisor for Schlumberger Asia
standing technical editor, and received the Asia Pacific and area and director of the Schlumberger Bris-
Middle East regional SPE service awards. Kersey holds a bach- bane Technology Integration Centre. Zuber
elor’s degree in geological sciences from the University of has been actively involved in SPE for more
Southern California and a graduate degree in geological scienc- than 30 years. He has authored numerous publications relating
es from Harvard University. to evaluation of unconventional reservoirs. He taught the SPE
short course, “Coalbed Methane Engineering Methods,” was an
Silviu Livescu is chief scientist in Baker editor of the SPE Reprint on Coalbed Methane, and was a Dis-
Hughes’ Coiled Tubing Research and Engi- tinguished Lecturer in 2014–15. He served on the Asia Regional
neering Center in Calgary, conducting Technical Advisory Committee, the ATCE Reservoir Engineer-
research and development, commercializa- ing Committee, the technical committee for the URTCE in Bris-
tion, and intellectual property work related bane, and the IPTC Education Week Committee. He was techni-
to production and completion operations. cal program chairman for the SPE Eastern Regional Meeting in
Previously, he was a research engineer with 1998. Additionally, he held every section office in the Pitts-
ExxonMobil and a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford burgh Section and was chairman of the 2010 SPE Applied Tech-
University. He has authored or coauthored more than 30 US nology Workshop on Coalbed Methane. Zuber holds a BS in
patents and patent applications and more than 55 papers and petroleum engineering from Marietta College, an MS in petro-
articles, and was involved in the peer review of more than leum engineering from Texas A&M, and an MBA from the Uni-
5,000 technical articles as an executive editor for Journal of versity of Pittsburgh.
Petroleum Science and Engineering and an associate editor for
SPE Journal, reaching the “A Peer Apart” status and earning 13
Outstanding Editor and Reviewer awards. Livescu was an SPE Cedric K. Ferguson Medal
Distinguished Lecturer and currently serves on the SPE Pro-
duction and Facilities and M&I advisory committees, the JPT The Cedric K. Ferguson Medal is presented to young profes-
Editorial Committee, the Calgary Section Board of Directors, sional authors of an SPE peer-approved technical paper who
and various awards and technical conference and workshop are members of SPE and age 35 and under on the date of peer
committees. Livescu holds BS and MS degrees from Politehnica approval. Coauthors age 36 or over who were SPE members on
University of Bucharest and a PhD from the University of Dela- the date of peer approval receive the Cedric K. Ferguson Cer-
ware, all in mechanical engineering. tificate. The 2019 medals and certificate are awarded for the
paper, “Diffusion-Dominated Proxy Model for Solvent Injection
Anthony Kunle Ogunkoya is technical in Ultratight Oil Reservoirs,” published in SPE Journal in 2018.
director of Petro Congo SA. He retired in
2010 as general manager of Schlumberger, Michael Cronin is a PhD candidate in ener-
responsible for Republic of Congo, Gabon, gy and mineral engineering–petroleum and
and Democratic Republic of Congo. natural gas engineering option–at Pennsyl-
Ogunkoya joined SPE as a student member vania State University. He has coauthored
in 1978 and was a foundation member and four peer-reviewed journal articles and two
secretary of the Petroleum Training Institute, Warri Student conference papers. He has volunteered with
Chapter. He led efforts to rejuvenate the Angola and Congo sec- The Way Ahead since 2016 and will be the
tions. He is a Century Club and 25-Year Club member and served 2019–2020 deputy managing editor after previous leadership
on the SPE International Membership Standing Committee. roles in the Academia and Business Benchmark sections. Cronin
Ogunkoya visited all SPE sections in sub-Saharan Africa as Afri- earned a master’s degree in geological sciences from the Univer-
ca regional director and member of the SPE International sity of Texas at Austin and dual bachelor’s degrees in petroleum
Board, and was chairperson of the SPE Board Membership Com- and natural gas engineering and geosciences (with honors) from
mittee. He has served as trustee of the Nigeria Council since Penn State. Before starting his PhD, he worked as a geologist/

reservoir modeler in Anadarko’s reservoir technology group, Creek field. She began her career with Welltec Oilfield Services
where he also interned during his graduate studies at UT. as a field engineer. Abia joined SPE as a student member in
2006 and became a full professional member in 2011. She has
Hamid Emami-Meybodi is an assistant served on numerous committees and subcommittees, includ-
professor of petroleum and natural gas engi- ing cochairing the SPENC Young Professional Committee and
neering at Pennsylvania State University. He the Women’s Development Program. While serving as the
joined the university’s Department of Ener- young professionals chairperson, her chapter was voted best
gy and Mineral Engineering in 2015 follow- chapter for 3 consecutive years. She is currently the scholar-
ing 10 years in academia as post-doctoral ship chairperson of the Port Harcourt Section. Abia holds a
and research assistant at the University of bachelor’s degree in applied geophysics from the University of
Calgary, University of Regina, Canada, and Petroleum Universi- Calabar, Nigeria.
ty of Technology in Iran. Emami-Meybodi’s research has cen-
tered on the study of fluid flow and transport phenomena in Victor Anochie is a senior engineering
porous media, spanning both applied and fundamental aspects. technologist in the Department of Petro-
He has authored and coauthored more than 30 technical publi- leum and Gas Engineering of Baze Univer-
cations and one patent. Emami-Meybodi is the faculty advisor sity, Abuja. He spent 5 years with Afe Baba-
for Penn State’s SPE Student Chapter and is also a member of the lola University Ado Ekiti as an engineering
SPE International Scholarship and Fellowship Selection Com- technologist. Anochie holds a BEng in
mittee. He holds BS and MS degrees in chemical and petroleum petroleum engineering from the University
engineering from Petroleum University of Technology in Iran, of Benin, Nigeria, and a higher national diploma in chemical
and ME, MS, and PhD degrees in petroleum engineering from engineering from the Institute of Management and Technolo-
University of Calgary. gy (IMT), Enugu, Nigeria. He joined SPE in 2006 as an under-
graduate at IMT and became chapter president, organizing
Russell T. Johns is the recipient of the Ced- several innovative programs in IMT and across secondary
ric K. Ferguson Certificate for 2019. Johns is schools in Enugu, which led to the chapter winning the SPE
the George E. Trimble Chair of Energy and Gold Standard Chapter Award in 2011. Anochie initiated and
Mineral Sciences in the Department of coordinated the establishment of the SPE Afe Babalola Univer-
Energy and Mineral Engineering at Penn- sity Ado Ekiti Chapter, where he was faculty advisor. He is a
sylvania State University, and holds the board member of the Abuja Section and has served in various
Energi Simulation Chair in Fluid Behavior committees in the SPE Nigeria Council. He is part of a team
and Rock Interactions. He served on the petroleum engineer- that established an energy club at the Shephard School Abuja
ing faculty at the University of Texas at Austin from 1995 to to teach primary and secondary school students about clean
2010, and was a petrophysical engineer with Shell Oil and a and sustainable use of energy.
consulting engineer for Colenco Power Consulting. He has
authored or coauthored more than 250 publications in Oluwabiyi “Biyi” Awotiku is a petroleum
enhanced oil recovery, thermodynamics, and phase behavior, engineer with Chevron Nigeria Limited.
unconventional gas engineering, multiphase flow in porous Since joining Chevron in 2011, he has
media, and well testing. Johns holds a BS in electrical worked in offshore and deepwater assets.
engineering from Northwestern University and MS and PhD He has served at multiple levels within SPE
degrees in petroleum engineering and water resources from on the Lagos Section board and the SPE
Stanford University. Nigerian Annual International Conference
and Exhibition committees. As a Lagos section officer, he has
served as students affairs and young professionals chair and is
Young Member Outstanding Service Awards currently the membership chair. He has served as cochair of
the students programs and now serves as chair, young profes-
The Young Member Outstanding Service Award recognizes sionals program and advisor, students program on the Nige-
contributions to and leadership in the public and community rian conference committees. He has been instrumental in con-
arenas and SPE, the profession, and the industry, by a member ducting the Nigeria Council PetroQuiz competition for the
under the age of 36. past 5 years and has volunteered for the African regional
Petrobowl qualifiers. He has received several professional
Patience Abia is a field production super- awards and coauthored four SPE papers. Awotiku has a bach-
intendent for Nigerian Petroleum Develop- elor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Ahmadu Bello
ment Company, where she oversees the University, Zaria, Nigeria, and a master’s degree in petroleum
production of more than 30,000 B/D and engineering from African University of Science and Technol-
supervises the installation of gas-lift com- ogy, Abuja. He is currently an executive MBA student at Lagos
pressors and associated piping at Jones Business School.

Volunteering looks good on you.
In the SPE League of Volunteers, giving back suits you well.
As a volunteer for SPE, you provide the energy that makes our Society work. Giving back
gives you the opportunity to enhance your leadership and collaborative skills, and expand your
professional profile as you showcase your knowledge and talents to the industry.
Engage. Support. Volunteer. Learn more and join us at www.spe.org/volunteer.

Alejandro Antonio Lerza Durant is a Terrazas is currently enrolled in Heriot-Watt University’s
senior reservoir engineer with Chevron, petroleum engineering master’s program, and has studied
where he began his career as an intern in physics at Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and
2009. He currently focuses on leveraging engineering/physics at Florida International University. He
reservoir simulation techniques, rate tran- joined SPE in 2011 as the Universidade Estácio de Sá SPE Stu-
sient analysis, and predictive and prescrip- dent Chapter president and cofounder, later assuming the YP
tive analytics to optimize unconventional chair of the Brazil Section, while also acting as editor of
developments. Lerza received the SPE Gulf Coast Regional The Way Ahead. In 2015 he was appointed regional focal point
Young Member Outstanding Service Award in 2018; is an for the South America & Caribbean Region and received the
active technical committee member for the ATCE, URTeC, and Regional Young Member Outstanding Service Award. In 2017
LACPEC conferences; and has served as session chair for mul- he was appointed communications chair for the international
tiple SPE technical conferences. He has been a board member SPE YMEC, and is now its incoming chair.
of SPE sections in Venezuela and Gulf Coast Section. He also
has volunteered for Habitat for Humanity, Houston Food
Bank, Hurricane Harvey relief, and local science fairs, and is Distinguished Achievement Award for Petroleum
currently an SPE Ambassador Lecturer. He received his BA Engineering Faculty
in petroleum engineering from Universidad Central de
Venezuela, an MBA in gas business management from Univer- This award recognizes superior teaching, excellence in
sidad Simon Bolivar in Venezuela, an MS in petroleum engi- research, significant contributions to the petroleum engineer-
neering from University of Southern California, and an ing profession, and/or special effectiveness in advising and
MS in data analytics from Texas A&M, and is currently an guiding students.
executive MBA candidate from IAE Business Schools in
Buenos Aires. Roberto Aguilera is professor of petro-
leum engineering and CNOOC Chair in
Nii Ahele Nunoo is a new technology Tight Oil and Unconventional Gas in the
design engineer at National Oilwell Varco, Schulich School of Engineering at the Uni-
where he focuses on downhole tool devel- versity of Calgary, and a principal of Servi-
opment. He earned his BS in electronic petrol Ltd. He is the creator and principal
engineering from Minnesota State Univer- investigator of the GFREE Research Pro-
sity and an MBA from Duke University with gram, an integrated multidisciplinary team researching geo-
a concentration in energy finance. Nunoo science; formation evaluation; reservoir drilling, completion
has served on the SPE Young Professionals board for the past and stimulation; reservoir engineering; and economics and
5 years. In 2018, he chaired a 26-member board that orga- externalities. Aguilera is author of Naturally Fractured Reser-
nized technical presentations and community, networking, voirs, coauthor of three other petroleum engineering books,
and social impact events for young oil and gas professionals in author and coauthor of more than 200 petroleum engineer-
the Gulf Coast Section. He also was chair of the Emerging ing papers, and editor-in-chief and coauthor of the new
Engineers Symposium, a one-day conference focused on mid- SPE monograph, Unconventional Gas and Tight Oil Exploita-
career engineers and professionals in the energy industry. tion. He is a petroleum engineering graduate from the Uni-
Nunoo regularly presents at Energy4Me events in Houston versidad de America in Bogota, and holds MEng and PhD
schools and has served as the career management and con- degrees in petroleum engineering from the Colorado School of
tinuing education chair on the SPE Gulf Coast Section board. Mines. He has lectured, presented his course in naturally frac-
He has coauthored five publications in peer-reviewed jour- tured reservoirs, and consulted in more than 50 countries
nals, spearheaded events that raised more than $60,000 for throughout the world. He is past executive editor of the
student scholarships, and participated in Petrobowl, and was Journal of Canadian Petroleum Technology and current exec-
one of four founders of the GCS Innovate committee. He has utive editor of SPE Journal. He is a member of the SPE Legion
also organized workshops, including the technical writing soft of Honor, an SPE Lifetime Member, and a former Dis-
skill workshop for working professionals. Nunoo is currently tinguished Lecturer.
lead content creator for The Way Ahead and is incoming chair
of the YMEC Committee.
SPE Technical Awards
Rodrigo Rueda Terrazas is a production
metering and reporting engineer at Total These awards recognize outstanding achievement or con-
E&P Brazil, working on the Lapa field oper- tributions to the advancement of petroleum engineering in
ations/mass balance team. He has more specific technical disciplines.
than 7 years of experience in deepwater
projects and Brazilian presalt. Rueda

Completions Optimization and Technology Award gies and pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions includ-
Jon E. Olson is a professor and chair of the ing geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground formations
Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and and energy systems analysis for a low-carbon future. Prior to
Geosystems Engineering at the University of joining Stanford, Benson was division director for Earth scienc-
Texas at Austin, where he has been a mem- es, associate laboratory director for energy sciences, and depu-
ber of the petroleum engineering faculty for ty director at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She
24 years and holds the Lois K. and Richard serves on the board of directors of the National Renewable
D. Folger Leadership Chair and the Frank W. Energy Laboratory and Climate Central. Currently she also
Jessen Professorship. He is codirector of the Fracture Research serves on the advisory boards of Argonne National Laboratory
and Application Consortium at UT-Austin, an interdisciplinary and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Princeton’s Carbon
group of engineers and geologists focusing on oil and gas pro- Mitigation Initiative, Princeton’s Adlinger Center, Japan’s Initia-
duction from shales and other naturally fractured reservoirs. tive for the Cool Earth Forum, and the Lahore University of
His group is currently engaged in characterizing and optimizing Management Science in Pakistan. Over the past several years
hydraulic fracture completions through numerical modeling she participated in a number of National Academy of Sciences,
and laboratory experiments. He also works on induced seismic- Secretary of Energy, and National Petroleum Council research
ity and naturally fractured reservoir problems. Olson has been needs assessments related to carbon management. She also is
a local SPE section and student chapter leader and has served on on the editorial board for Energy and Environmental Science.
organizing committees for workshops on hydraulic fracturing Benson holds a BA from Barnard College and MS and PhD
and workforce training. He is an SPE Distinguished Member degrees in material science and mineral engineering from the
and past Distinguished Lecturer. He has published over 100 University of California, Berkeley.
scholarly papers. He holds BS degrees in both civil engineering
and Earth sciences from the University of Notre Dame and a Management and Information Award
PhD in applied Earth sciences from Stanford University. Jim Crompton is director of Reflections
Data Consulting and an adjunct professor in
Drilling Engineering Award the Petroleum Engineering Department at
Steve Sawaryn is an independent drilling- the Colorado School of Mines. He co-
engineering consultant specializing in authored The Future Belongs to the Digital
drilling systems. He retired from BP in Engineer and The Digital Journey of the Oil
2015 as a senior drilling advisor. During his and Gas Industry, and has also coauthored
36 years’ service, he held a variety of posts more than 20 papers and talks at SPE Digital Energy and other
in drilling operations, consultancy, tech- industry data management, standards, and analytics confer-
nology, and projects in Aberdeen, London, ences. He has been the recipient of numerous SPE awards and
Kuwait, Alaska, and Norway. Sawaryn has served on a number has been an SPE Distinguished Lecturer, member of the Digital
of SPE drilling and digital energy committees and cochaired Energy Technical Section and Management and Information
the 2004 SPE Smart Drilling Forum, which addressed the Advisory Council and Digital Transformation Training Work-
potential application of nanotechnology in drilling. He chaired group, and chair of the Digital Transformation Subcommittee.
the Hits and Misses Applied Technical Workshop in 2014 on He has also received numerous awards for career accomplish-
behalf of the SPE Wellbore Positioning Technical Section ments in data management, and was elected to chair the gen-
(WPTS) and currently serves as the chair for the WPTS Well eral committee of the Petroleum Industry Data Exchange
Collision Avoidance Subcommittee. Sawaryn is a past recipi- (PIDX). Crompton had a 37-year career with Chevron in geosci-
ent of the SPE North Sea Region Technical Award for Drilling ence, IT, and upstream positions. He holds a BSc in geophysical
Engineering and Technical Editor’s Award, and was a Distin- engineering and MS in geophysics from Colorado School of
guished Lecturer. He holds BA and MA degrees in chemical Mines and an MBA from Our Lady of the Lake University.
engineering and a PhD in petroleum engineering from Cam-
bridge University, UK. He has authored more than 40 SPE Production and Operations Award
papers on drilling, completions, and drilling IT, and is a char- Elisio Caetano is a senior consultant in
tered engineer, chartered information technology profession- multiphase production technology for
al, and fellow of the British Computer Society. Petrobras, where he has worked since 1977.
He is recognized for his contributions to
Health, Safety, and Environment Award multiphase flow in annular configurations,
Sally M. Benson, who joined Stanford Uni- multiphase pumping and metering tech-
versity in 2007, is codirector of Stanford’s nologies, and for his coordination of the
Precourt Institute and a professor in the conceptual design of an R&D center devoted to the integrated
Department of Energy Resources Engineer- operations of digital fields (presalt Santos Basin). He has
ing in the School of Earth, Energy & Envi- coauthored a US patent; authored, coauthored, or coordinat-
ronmental Sciences. She studies technolo- ed nearly 200 publications including technical papers, book

chapters, a book revision, and the first Portuguese-language including three editions of Properties of Petroleum Fluids. He
petroleum dictionary; and has presented at various confer- is an SPE Distinguished Member and has served in numerous
ences. He also has been a visiting or collaborating professor at leadership and committee positions in SPE, including chairing
universities in Brazil, the US, and Mexico, where has taught, the Education and Accreditation Committee and the Mississippi
lectured, advised post-graduates, and participated in examin- Section, and serving as technical editor of SPE Reservoir Engi-
ing committees. He is a former SPE Regional Award recipient neering. McCain holds a BS degree from Mississippi State Col-
in Production and Operations in Brazil and the Latin Ameri- lege and MS and PhD degrees from the Georgia Institute of
can and Caribbean Region. Caetano holds a mechanical engi- Technology, all in chemical engineering.
neer degree from Sao Paulo State University, a lato-sensu
post-graduation in pipeline and terminals engineering from Sustainability and Stewardship in the Oil and Gas
the corporate university of Petrobras, an MSc in nuclear engi- Industry Award
neering and energy planning from Rio de Janeiro Federal Uni- Karen Olson, who is currently director of
versity, and a PhD in petroleum engineering from the Univer- technology for Southwestern Energy Com-
sity of Tulsa. pany (SWN), is the inaugural recipient of the
Sustainability and Stewardship in the Oil
Projects, Facilities, and Construction Award and Gas Industry Award, which recognizes
Phaneendra Kondapi is interim assistant the outstanding efforts of individuals in the
dean of engineering programs and found- upstream oil and gas industry in promoting
ing director of engineering programs at the and adopting the relatively new concepts of sustainable devel-
University of Houston at Katy, and profes- opment. Before being appointed to her current position, Olson
sor and director of subsea engineering at was director of the Strategic Solutions Team, accountable for
the University of Houston. He is also a for- leading SWN’s Freshwater Neutral Initiative, and was the com-
mer professor of practice in subsea engi- pany’s corporate completion engineering chief. During her
neering at Texas A&M University. He has more than 28 years of 30-year career in completion and reservoir engineering, she has
experience as a manager, project manager, project lead, and applied her expertise in design, modeling, and operational exe-
simulation engineer around the globe in upstream, offshore, cution of hydraulic fracturing as Gulf of Mexico deepwater com-
and process industries, including with ABB Simcon, MSi Kenny, pletion team leader and North Sea stimulation team leader for
FMC, and KBR. Kondapi codeveloped the first subsea engineer- BP and Mobil. Olson has been active with SPE for more than 30
ing program in the US and the first-in-the-world dual master’s years in local sections, workshops, and conferences, including
program in mechanical and subsea engineering. He has chaired chairing the 2014–2016 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology
the SPE Flow Assurance Technical Section and the 2015 Flow Conferences. She has authored or coauthored 15 technical
Assurance Forum and served on numerous technical and con- papers and presented at numerous SPE events. She has been the
ference subcommittees. He also has been the recipient of recipient of numerous SPE regional and international awards,
numerous society awards and honors. He has organized or including SPE Distinguished Membership, and has been an SPE
chaired more than 45 technical sessions at various internation- Distinguished Lecturer, speaking on the topic, “Freshwater Neu-
al conferences and authored or coauthored more than 25 arti- tral: Managing Water Use and Giving Back to the Environment.”
cles in journals and magazines. Kondapi holds BS and MS She is a member of the SPE HSE Technical Director’s and Com-
degrees in chemical engineering from Andhra University in pletions Technical Director’s advisory committees. Olson holds
India, and a PhD in chemical engineering from Tennessee a BS in petroleum engineering from Louisiana State University
Technological University. and an MS in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M Univer-
sity, where she serves on the Industry Board for the Petroleum
Reservoir Description and Dynamics Award Engineering Department.
William D. (Bill) McCain, Jr. is visiting pro-
fessor of petroleum engineering at Texas
A&M University. He began his engineering Distinguished Members
career with Esso/Exxon, then joined the
petroleum engineering faculty at Mississip- The SPE Distinguished Membership recognizes SPE members
pi State University, serving as head of the who achieve distinction deemed worthy of special recognition.
department for 11 years. He then joined S.A. This award acknowledges members who have attained emi-
Holditch & Associates, retiring as senior vice president, chief nence in the petroleum industry or the academic community, or
engineer, and member of the board of the directors. McCain who have made significant contributions to SPE.
has been associated with the Petroleum Engineering Depart-
ment at Texas A&M in various full- and part-time roles since Dhafer Al-Shehri, King Fahd University of Petroleum
1984. He has three US patents, has published 38 technical and Minerals
papers, and has presented and otherwise participated in many Vasile Badiu, Senior Researcher
technical conferences. He has also published five books, Baojun Bai, Missouri University of Science and Technology

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MANAGEMENT
Enhanced Recovery Technologies

for Unconventional Oil Reservoirs
Ganesh Thakur, University of Houston
Unconventional resources have trans- in unconventionals followed by The primary recovery from uncon-
formed the landscape of the oil and gas produced gas injection. Surfactant ventional oil reservoirs is predicted to
industry. The primary oil recovery fac- injection showed the next best be less than 10%, ranging anywhere
tor ranges from 2–8% for the various potential to increase oil recovery by from 2 to 8% for the various shale plays
shale plays throughout the US. Hence, it altering the wettability of rock in throughout the US. It is well known that
is imperative to develop the vast poten- laboratory experiments. individual well production has a steep
tial of unconventional reservoirs and ◗ The produced field gas injection decline before leveling off at a low rate.
increase the recovery factors beyond pri- pilots showed that sufficient Infill drilling is a current practice to get
mary depletion by implementing IOR/ injectivity was achieved mainly due short-term increase in production. It is
EOR methods. This article describes the to the injection-induced fractures not always economic to drill and com-
role of effective reservoir management and did not exhibit any significant plete new wells with long laterals.
and summarizes the detailed review of effect of diffusion. To date, understanding of EOR in
the advances in IOR/EOR technologies ◗ Conformance control remains a big unconventional plays is in its embryon-
applied to unconventional oil reservoirs, challenge due to the channeling of ic stage due to poor understanding of
as performed by the Energy Industry the gas through the fractures. the geological constraints on reservoir
Partnership Team (EIP) at the Univer- ◗ Produced field gas injection pilots performance. Definitions of key geolog-
sity of Houston (Balasubramanian et al. in the Eagle Ford formation have ical parameters that influence primary
2018). That review included: demonstrated the greatest success recovery are understood to some extent;
◗ A thorough review of the pertinent in increasing oil recovery. however, the same in relation to EOR or
published literature on IOR/EOR ◗ Many inconsistencies exist between secondary recovery has not been per-
◗ Results of EOR application to laboratory investigations and field formed successfully. As the mechanism
unconventionals shared by trials that need reconciliation and of EOR is better understood, geological
various operators in their investor further research to bridge the gap. parameters that define the “sweet spot”
presentations and from press reports ◗ This methodical study elicits the for a secondary recovery process will
◗ Classifying IOR/EOR studies as learnings and challenges from the simultaneously need to be established.
laboratory experiments, numerical application of different IOR/EOR For EOR, industry is still chasing the sim-
modeling, and field laboratory technologies to unconventionals at ilar geological characteristics that makes
trials (pilots) various scales (micro to macro to a primary recovery successful, e.g., frac-
◗ Analysis of field trials based on the field scale). In addition, ideas for tures and brittleness. These parameters
representative shale plays. future research are recommended may be different for EOR. An integrated
Most studies performed for the appli- to improve the understanding of field laboratory study will help advance
cation of EOR technologies to uncon- the complex mechanisms of EOR in knowledge with practical results.
ventional oil reservoirs have been lim- unconventional oil reservoirs. Rigorous reservoir characterization is
ited to experimental investigations Unconventional resources have necessary to provide realistic geomod-
and numerical simulation studies. The changed the landscape of oil and gas els and perform more accurate dynam-
research revealed that miscible gas injec- industry in the US and the world. Oil ic simulation of EOR processes. As in
tion (produced field gases, CO2, etc.) is production from unconventional tight conventional reservoirs, reservoir char-
the most promising method among the oil reservoirs have accounted for more acteristics, including fracture network
EOR techniques, including miscible gas, than 50% of total oil production in and fluid properties must be favorable
waterflooding, surfactant, chemical, and the US in the recent years. Todd et al. for EOR methods. Lab studies, along
polymer. Experimental studies showed reported that unconventional oil reser- with field production data analysis and
the following: voirs contributed to more than a 4 mil- simulation work, suggest that fluid
◗ CO2 injection had the highest lion B/D increase in production between mobilities within the reservoir are con-
potential of improved recovery 2011 and 2014. trolled by fractures. Key concepts for

EOR applicability in unconventional
TABLE 1A—DIFFERENT TABLE 1B—DIFFERENT
reservoirs include:
FORMATIONS STUDIED TOOLS USED TO INVESTIGATE
◗ Fault location, fracture networks, FOR IOR/EOR METHODS EOR APPLICABILITY
complexity, and density that (AFTER ALFARGE ET AL., 2017) (FROM ALFARGE ET AL., 2017)
dictate EOR fluid permeation and
hydrocarbon extraction Basin Percent Basin Percent
◗ Production logs providing insights Bakken 59
Simulation 51
into fluid distribution Eagle Ford 13
Experimental 41
◗ A variety of log data (resistivity,
Permian Basin 6
microimaging, ultrasonic) for Field Tests 3
(including Wolfcamp)
fracture characterization Others 5
Others 22
◗ PNL assisting with mineralogy,
lithology, and fluid saturations
◗ Microseismic data helping induced et al. 2011; Schmidt et al. 2014; Todd et al. SR value for a reservoir are similar to
fracture network distribution and 2016). A range of conclusions has been the ones for the PR process, e.g., reser-
stimulated reservoir volume presented by the different researchers voir and fluid properties, heterogeneity,
◗ Pressure monitoring, fluid on the applicability and understanding of continuity, and well locations. Similar
communication tests, stimulation EOR to unconventional oil reservoirs. The observations are also made when com-
pressure tests, and pulse tests that ultra-tight matrix and high conductivity paring a TR value (for CO2 flooding) with
help identify fluid communication of the natural fractures are two impor- respect to its (PR+SR) value. Although it
paths between wells, tant factors that impair success of uncon- would be incorrect to say that SR or TR
communication due to frac hits ventional EOR methods. Table 1A shows will always be higher if PR is greater, in
◗ Use of tracer tests as a cost-effective a snapshot of the different studies that many cases in my opinion, this type of
means of identifying fluid flow paths have been performed on the various shale relationship is true for the convention-
◗ Containment of injection gas and tight oil formations. Table 1B shows al reservoirs in the Permian Basin. If we
◗ API gravity, gas-to-oil ratio, bubble the different tools that have been used to apply similar logic to an unconventional
point pressure, first contact miscible investigate IOR/EOR methods applicabili- reservoir, to maximize the total recovery,
pressure, and fracturing pressure ty (Alfarge et al. 2017). Field trials for EOR we must not only focus on EOR but also
◗ Well completions strategy also have been limited in the Permian Basin continue to stretch the envelope in terms
plays an important part for an Wolfcamp formation. of increasing PR values.
EOR application: The EOR methods that have been
o Design of the injection well most investigated for applicability in the Challenges/Limitations/
completions unconventional reservoirs are summa- Lessons Learned
o Completions being targeted to rized in Table 2. ◗ Most investigations for EOR in
the injection test and monitoring unconventional reservoirs have
plan to understand how fluids are EOR Field Trials been limited to experimental studies
moving Most of the field trials or pilots conduct- and numerical simulation, resulting
o A detailed history of the ed using waterflood, miscible gas, CO2, in wide gaps between the micro
production and completions and natural gas have been performed scale (lab scale) and macro scale
of the subject well and the in the Canadian Bakken, Bakken, and (field trials) studies for the different
surrounding wells Eagle Ford formations. Field trials for EOR methods in unconventional
o A conformance control plan EOR have been limited in the Permian reservoirs.
considering the quality of the Basin Wolfcamp formation. The field tri- ◗ CO2 EOR ranked as the most suitable
completions als in the Bakken are distributed between method over natural gas in the
Canada and US (Table 3). laboratory studies, but field trials
Status of EOR in showed more success with natural
Unconventional Oil Reservoirs Conventional/Unconventional gas or enriched natural gas.
EOR methods in unconventional reser- EOR Ratios ◗ Experimental studies concluded that
voirs are quite different from those in con- Note that for a conventional reservoir CO2 diffusion was the mechanism
ventional reservoirs due to the complex (depletion drive, light/medium gravity for improved recovery, whereas
and poor quality properties of the plays. oil in the Permian Basin), often there the pilot tests did not show a clear
Most studies have been limited to exper- is a relationship between SR (second- indication on the field scale.
imental work, mathematical approach- ary recovery due to water injection) and ◗ Earlier studies concluded that
es, and numeric simulation. A few pilots PR (primary recovery), and TR (tertia- injecting miscible gas by huff-n-puff
have been conducted in North Dakota and ry or EOR recovery) and a sum total of protocol might be more beneficial
Montana in the Bakken formation (Wood (PR+SR). The underlying causes for the than continuous injection.

TABLE 2—EOR METHODS FOR UNCONVENTIONAL RESERVOIRS
EOR Method Influencing Mechanisms Laboratory Validation Field Trials

Miscible gas injection • G
as molecule diffusion •M ost widely studied and focused •D iffusion is negligible;
(CO2, N2, natural gas) • R
eduction in capillary pressure more on CO2 Repressurization, oil swelling
•Repressurization •M any experimental and may be important
• Extraction numerical simulation studies • The key findings are still
• O
il swelling and pressure reports in the literature. inconclusive
maintenance • CO2 shows better performance •H uff-n-puff proves to be
•O il viscosity reduction than other gases successful in some shale
•H igh compressibility to displace •D iffusion is the dominant reservoirs
oil in matrix mechanism; Other mechanisms •C ontinuous injection was tested
•M iscible gas dissolves in are also important
oil, swells the oil and lowers •H uff-n-Puff injection tested to be
viscosity reasonably successful
Low-salinity •C lay swelling and shale cracking •O nly experimental investigation •N
o field test has been reported
waterflooding • Wettability alteration performed
• Water imbibition •M ost studies performed on the
core scale
• Incremental oil recovery
attributed to shale cracking by
clay swelling
•N ot well understood or applied
in the field
Chemical methods • Wettability alteration •S
urfactants has the most •C
ouple of tests have been tried
(surfactants, polymers, • Interfacial tension reduction promising potential •R
esults have been inconclusive
alkaline) •N
onionic and anionic surfactants
have been used
•E
xperimental work performed
on Bakken cores
•S
caled up to field using
simulation
◗◗ Understanding the length of the development. The effective number (miscible gas, water flooding,
soak time (extent of diffusion) vs. of wells and fracture stages are not surfactant, chemical, and polymer).
area of gas contacting the rocks quite well understood. ◗◗ Experimental studies showed
(stimulated rock volume) is critical ◗◗ Horizontal wells are currently that CO2 injection had the highest
to EOR success. placed in an equally spaced potential of improved recovery
◗◗ It is unclear if high intensity of fashion, which leads to variations in unconventionals followed by
natural fractures played a role in the in total production per well. produced gas injection followed
conformance problems, although Developing a standard/metric by surfactant injection.
this was not observed in the to place fractures and wells has ◗◗ Produced gas injection pilots in
Canadian Bakken. always been challenging. the Eagle Ford formation have
◗◗ It is essential to conduct studies demonstrated the greatest success
to integrate all tools of detailed Conclusions in increasing oil recovery.
reservoir characterization and ◗◗ The industry is optimistic about
geomodeling, lab, dynamic the future of EOR in tight oil Further Research
simulation, and pilot tests to formations. There are significant Ideas to be considered for future field
advance the understanding of opportunities for oil mobilization trials include:
the applicability of each IOR/ and production using produced ◗◗ Advanced gas injection strategies
EOR method to unconventional field gas and CO2 injection under such as cyclic gas injection in
reservoirs. appropriate conditions. areas of better permeability and
◗◗ Improved understanding of the ◗◗ IOR and EOR are essential to huff-n-puff gas injection in regions
petrophysical, geological, and improving the primary recovery of very low permeability (Zuloaga
geochemical conditions of the factor that ranges from 2% to 8% et al. 2017)
reservoir rock help in designing in unconventional oil reservoirs. ◗◗ Effective fracture placement
the best development strategy of ◗◗ The research revealed that miscible by utilizing technologies to
these tight resources. gas injection (produced field gases, differentiate brittle vs. ductile rock
◗◗ Horizontal wells with multistage CO2, etc.) is the most promising (Alzahabi et al., 2015, Bateman, R.
fractures are used for unconventional method among the EOR techniques et al. 2016, Ozkan, E. et al. 2009).

TABLE 3—EOR FIELD TRIALS PERFORMED IN UNCONVENTIONAL RESERVOIRS
UCR Play EOR Method Results Findings

Bakken Canada Waterflood (toe-heel configuration) • Oil rate increased although water • Canadian Bakken has high
injection was sporadic porosity and permeability
• Well spacing – 200 ft.
• Needs validation
Miscible gas (natural gas) • Oil rate increased from nine • Conformance problems due to
offset producers better rock properties
• Improved after conformance
treatment
Bakken US CO2 miscible gas • Huff-n-puff schemes did not • CO2 cyclic injection in a vertical
show a clear increase in oil well. CO2 was observed in a well
recovery 900 ft away
Continuous water injection • No increment in oil production • Water breakthrough attributed to
• Water breakthrough in east west injection induced fractures
offset wells and not in north
south offsets
Continuous gas injection • Oil production increased from all • Frac hits could be a reason for
producers improved recovery
• Injectivity not reported to be an
issue due to induced fracture
Eagle Ford – Natural gas – Dry gas • A 30–70% increase in oil rate • Sequential procedure – Lab
EOG Resources (from produced gases; based on • EOG has indicated success from studies, single well, multiwell
investor reports) four field trials in 15 wells pilots, field scale
• Field trial extended to 32 wells • Well spacing – 200 ft
• Large scale (100 wells) planned • Dry gas picks heavy ends
• CAPEX < $1 million/well (without
drilling cost)
• EOR = 2 × NPV from primary
recovery
◗ Smart injection technologies G.C. (30 April–3 May 2018). Horizontal-Well Performance in

considering the variation in rock Recent Advances in Enhanced Conventional and Unconventional
properties and moving from equally Oil Recovery Technologies for Reservoirs. Society of Petroleum
spaced wells and fractures to more Unconventional Oil Reservoirs. Engineers. doi:10.2118/121290-MS
efficient well spacing and fracture OTC-28973-MS 6. Schmidt, M., and Sekar, B. K.
placement. 2. Alfarge, D., Wei, M., and Bai, B. (1 January 2014). Innovative
◗ Enough long-term data to ascertain (23 April 2017). IOR Methods in Unconventional2 EOR-A Light EOR
that the recovery factor is being Unconventional Reservoirs of North an Unconventional Tertiary Recovery
increased than just accelerating America: Comprehensive Review. Approach to an Unconventional
production. JPT Society of Petroleum Engineers. Bakken Reservoir in Southeast
doi:10.2118/185640-MS Saskatchewan. World Petroleum
Acknowledgments 3. Alzahabi, A., Soliman, M., Al-Qahtani, Congress.
I sincerely thank the research work per- G, Bateman, R, and Asquith, G. (2015). 7. Todd, H. B., and Evans, J. G.
formed by the Energy Industry Partner- Fracturability Index Maps for Fracture (5 May 2016). Improved Oil Recovery
ship Team at the University of Hous- Placement in Shale Plays. Hydraulic IOR Pilot Projects in the Bakken
ton Petroleum Engineering Department. Fracturing Journal, Volume 2-Issue Formation. Society of Petroleum
The key members of the team included No.1, pp. 8–18. ISSN 2373–8197. Engineers. doi:10.2118/180270-MS
S. Balasubramanian, P. Chen, S. Bose, 4. Bateman, R., Alzahabi, A. M., and 8. Wood, T., and Milne, B. (2011).
A. Alzahabi, and G. C. Thakur (direc- Soliman, M. Y. (24 October 2016). Waterflood potential could unlock
tor). In particular, S. Balasubramanian Resistivity Transform Indicates billions of barrels: Crescent Point
played the main role in documenting ‘Fracturability’. AOGR. http://www. Energy.
OTC 28973, which served as the founda- aogr.com/web-exclusives/exclusive- 9. Zuloaga, P., Yu, W., Miao, J.,
tion of the subject paper. story/resistivity-transform-indicates- Sepehrnoori, K. (2017). “Performance
fracturability evaluation of 〖CO2 Huff-n-Puff and
References 5. Ozkan, E., Brown, M. L., Raghavan, continuous injection〖CO2 injection
1. Balasubramanian, S., Chen, P., R. S., and Kazemi, H. (1 January in tight oil reservoirs,” Energy, 134,
Bose, S., Alzahabi, A. and Thakur, 2009). Comparison of Fractured 181–192.

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Reservoir Performance
Silviu Livescu, SPE, Chief Scientist, Baker Hughes, a GE Company
Since the last Reservoir Performance fea- The current quest papers had first authors from academia,
ture in September 2018, complex supply- 63 had first authors from operating com-
and-demand challenges have con-
for production-cost savings panies, and 31 had first authors from oil-
tinued to shape our technology and cannot continue field service companies and consulting
business-innovation models. Under sig- without improvements firms. For comparison, the review for
nificant pressure from several angles, the 2018 feature included 62 papers with
operators around the world are focusing in both operational efficiency first authors from academia, 70 with first
on lowering their production costs for and recovery factors. authors from operating companies, and
both conventional and unconventional 25 with first authors from oilfield service
assets, while oilfield service companies companies and consulting firms.
are responding to customers’ cost-saving ments in both operational efficiency and The three primary papers select-
requests with incremental improvements recovery factors. ed and three alternative papers recom-
in technology, supply chains, automa- In the past 12 months, 133 technical mended as additional reading consti-
tion, and collaboration. While the cur- papers were presented at various con- tute a representative sample of the 133
rent trends in machine learning and arti- ferences and meetings with a reservoir- papers reviewed for this feature. They
ficial intelligence certainly can help lower performance focus and were reviewed for are a geographically diverse mix of fun-
the production costs, future reservoir- this feature, showcasing further advanc- damental research, industrial research
performance improvements still will es in reservoir-performance monitoring, and development, and field-application
have to rely on reservoir characteriza- analysis, and optimization. For compari- studies, reporting the latest reservoir-
tion, surveillance, and optimization. The son, 157 and 160 technical papers were performance advances. JPT
current quest for production-cost sav- reviewed for the 2018 and 2017 features,
ings cannot continue without improve- respectively. Interestingly, this year, 39
Recommended additional reading
Silviu Livescu, SPE, is the chief scientist in the global Coiled at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
Tubing Research and Engineering Centre of Baker Hughes, a GE SPE 192881 Reservoir Health Indicators
company, in Calgary, with fundamental and applied research, Driving Performance Through Data
industrial research and development, innovation, commercial- Analytics by Mohamed Al Marzouqi,
ization, and intellectual-property experience related to produc- ADNOC, et al.
tion engineering, completions, and reservoir engineering. He SPE 193701 Satellite INSAR Technology
holds BS and MS degrees from Politehnica University of for Caprock-Integrity Monitoring of Cyclic
Bucharest in Romania and a PhD degree from the University of Steam Stimulation and Steamflooding
Delaware, all in mechanical engineering. Livescu is an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for Heavy-Oil Production in Kuwait by Zu Biao
2018–2019 and is an executive editor for the Journal of Petroleum Science and Ren, Kuwait Oil Company, et al.
Engineering and an associate editor for SPE Journal. He serves on the SPE SPE 195366 Permeability and Porosity
Production and Facilities Advisory Committee, the SPE Management and Information Evolution of Organic-Rich Shales as a Result
Advisory Committee, and the JPT Editorial Committee. Livescu can be reached at of Heating by Tae Wook Kim, Stanford
https://ca.linkedin.com/in/silviu-livescu-14a96735. University, et al.

Improving Temperature-Logging Accuracy
in Steamfloods
A robust reservoir surveillance

program is key to managing a
steamflooding operation successfully.
CCL Electronic Cartridge Temperature Sensor
Time-lapse temperature surveys are a

primary data type collected from the
observation wells to evaluate reservoir
heating and to monitor the steamchest. Fig. 1—Schematic of a temperature tool.
The objective of this study was to look at
factors that can affect a temperature log ward, therefore avoiding wellbore-fluid- step change can be an increase or de-
and steps that can be taken to improve churning issues. Additionally, depth con- crease in the parameter being measured,
temperature-measurement accuracy. trol is maintained by monitoring tension such as temperature. Response time is af-
Field data and analytical assessment on the line and by correlating to the CCL. fected by the type of sensor, the medium
show that several factors can affect the Temperature sensors in the logging in the wellbore (typically water), and the
accuracy of a temperature log, which can tool measure the temperature of the fluid change in temperature. Response time in
subsequently affect interpretation and in the wellbore, which is in thermal equi- air is much slower than in water, a state
operational decisions. librium with the adjacent formations. A that exists even for newer RTD sensors. If
resistance temperature detector (RTD) the logging speeds are too fast, the sen-
Temperature-Logging-Tool is the preferred sensor for temperature sor may not have sufficient time to equil-
Overview measurements. An RTD is a device that ibrate with the medium, resulting in an
Temperature-logging tools are among senses temperature by measuring the inaccurate temperature reading. How-
the most common used in thermal proj- change in resistance of a material in a ever, higher or varying logging speeds
ects. These tools are accurate, reliable, known and repeatable manner. Platinum often represent an operational decision
and relatively inexpensive. Fig. 1 shows a thermistors are also used as tempera- to save time.
schematic of a typical temperature tool. ture sensors; however, an RTD has bet-
It includes a casing-collar locator (CCL), ter repeatability, long-term stability, and Factors Affecting Temperature
a temperature sensor, and tool electron- accuracy, and features greater sensitiv- Measurement
ics. Temperature logs can also be ob- ity to small temperature changes than Factors that will affect temperature mea-
tained in conjunction with data from does a platinum thermistor. Additionally, surement include logging speed, sensor-
other logs such as the cement-bond, car- platinum thermistors have lower maxi- response time, and steamchest tempera-
bon/oxygen, pulse-neutron, and open- mum temperature limits typically and ture. In the complete paper, the authors
hole logs. However, it is recommend- require more-frequent calibration, al- present an analytical basis upon which
ed that temperature surveys from these though their response can be faster than the sensitivity of these parameters on
tools be used for quantitative analy- that of an RTD. temperature measurement may be evalu-
sis because the other logs are record- The sensor requires a certain mini- ated. The purpose of the analytical calcu-
ed normally by first lowering the log- mum time to reach thermal equilibrium lations primarily was to gain directional
ging tool to the bottom of the well and with the measured fluid, which is a func- insight on parameter sensitivity, and not
then logging up to the surface. These tion of its response time, defined as the for purposes of quantitative analysis.
log measurements may also be taken at time unit required for a sensor to reach Key observations from the analytical
a higher logging speed. But temperature 63.2% of the total output signal when calculations include:
tools, by comparison, are logged down- subjected to a step change in input. The ◗ The higher the logging speed,
the greater the error in measured
temperature.
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
◗ The higher the steamchest
of paper SPE 191539, “Temperature-Logging Guidelines and Factors That Affect temperature, the greater the error
Measurement Accuracy,” by Gede Adnyana (retired, former Chevron), Jyotsna in measured temperature.
Sharma, SPE, Don Mims, SPE, David Barnes, and Ron Behrens, SPE, Chevron, ◗ The longer the sensor-response
prepared for the 2018 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, Dallas, time, the greater the error in
24–26. The paper has not been peer reviewed. measured temperature.
For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

◗ The error in measured temperature equilibrated water-filled wellbore fluid has equilibrated
typically reduces over time. temperature-observation well thermally with the adjacent
Four field examples are presented in (TOW) at a constant and optimal formation.
the complete paper to illustrate errors in- logging speed from the surface to ◗ Log the temperature tool going
troduced in temperature measurements bottom of the well. downward from the surface to the
caused by running at higher or nonuni- ◗ Compare the temperature-tool bottom of the well at a constant
form logging speeds, and the effect of reading at the surface with the optimal logging speed to achieve
steamchest temperature on measure- surface temperature to identify necessary temperature accuracy.
ment error. With respect to these field significant deviations from ◗ Ensure that the temperature tool
observations, running at higher logging expected temperature behavior has a current calibration record.
speeds shows the following: that could be caused by tool issues. ◗ Verify the specification and type
◗ Lower magnitude of peak ◗ Compare the temperature gradient of temperature sensor used in the
temperature that can affect from the log with the geothermal temperature tool; this has an effect
operational decisions gradient in the nonsteamflooded on the accuracy and repeatability
◗ Temperature profile delayed or zones. A significant difference from of the measurement
shifted downward the geothermal gradient could ◗ Perform log QC to identify any
◗ Higher error in peak temperature indicate poor tool calibration, tool anomalous temperature reading
value at higher steamchest error, or out-of-zone heating. caused by tool malfunction,
temperature ◗ Depth QC is a necessary step in improper calibration, or unsuitable
◗ Disturbance of wellbore fluid when temperature-log QC. One way this wellbore conditions.
speed is not held constant from the can be achieved is by comparing ◗ To prevent wellbore reflux, ensure
surface to bottom of the well the CCL from the temperature that sufficient hydrostatic pressure
survey with the CCL from previous in the water column exists to
Temperature-Log Quality- temperature surveys. prevent boiling.
Check (QC) Guidelines ◗ Compare time-lapse temperature
Some key guidelines for performing QC of surveys to identify significant Conclusions
a temperature log include the following: deviations from expected ◗ The assessment of field data, as
◗ Ensure that the log was run temperature behavior that could well as the analytical modeling
downward into a stable and be caused by tool issues. study presented in the complete
Several field examples are presented paper, suggests that the accuracy
in the complete paper to illustrate the ef- of a temperature log can be
fects of tool malfunction and poor cali- affected by factors such as the
bration. Guidance for the interpretation logging speed, sensor type,
of temperature signature in air, iden- sensor-response time, steamchest
tification of liquid level in a TOW, and temperature, and wellbore fluid.
the wellbore-reflux phenomenon are also ◗ Running temperature logs in a
discussed through field examples. downward direction at a constant,
optimal logging speed, in an
Acquiring Temperature Data in undisturbed, equilibrated water-
Steamflood TOWs filled wellbore provides the most
◗ Before surveying, identify favorable results.
any safety issues such as high ◗ Temperature surveys in a water-
temperature and pressure in filled TOW minimize measurement
the wellbore owing to thermal error and result in faster response
expansion or steam leak into the time, as compared with an air-
casing, which can be hazardous filled TOW.
for those accessing the wellbore ◗ Field data and analytical
for logging. calculations suggest that higher
◗ Establish that the fluid level in the logging speeds introduce greater
well before surveying is close to error in measured temperature
the surface in order to measure data and that these errors are
temperature accurately throughout greater at elevated steamchest
the length of the well. temperatures. Temperature tools
◗ Leave the well undisturbed before with longer sensor-response
taking a temperature survey to times need to be run at slower
minimize temperature-smearing logging speeds to obtain accurate
effects, and ensure that the measurements. JPT

Integrating Fractional Flow Into Reservoir
Surveillance Improves GOM Production
I ntegration of well and reservoir

surveillance techniques—production
Rate
WBT
1,1000
CT Acid Mud
measurements, reservoir fluid Stimulation
Pressure (psi)
characterization, pressure transient
Intervention
9,000
analysis, production logging, relative
SSV
permeability, and fractional flow—are
critical to understanding well and
7,000
reservoir performance for effective well
and field management, particularly in 5,000
high-cost intervention environments. 0 20,000 40,000 PBU 60,000 PBU PBU
The complete paper presents a case and and
Rates (STB/D)
–10,000 20,000 40,000
PLT PLT
study in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico
(GOM) in which pressure transient
analysis (PTA), fractional flow (FF), and
production logging tools (PLT) were
integrated to identify correctly the cause 0 20,000 40,000 60,000
of, and execute an effective remedy for, Time (hours)
a well’s productivity deterioration.
Fig. 1—Deepwater GOM well history, including acid stimulation. PBU=pressure
buildup.
Background
The level of integration achieved in this has been recommended to determine 35,000 STB/D with no water production
study is not common practice because the potential production-optimization and a gas/oil ratio (GOR) of 1100 scf/STB.
most commercial software products do benefits of future intervention candi- The well was equipped with a downhole
not consider multiphase interpretations dates. The complete paper discusses the pressure gauge (DHPG) that worked for
in analytical PTA. These limitations leave geology and reservoir characterization only 90 days, during which it was pos-
out the actual effect of relative perme- of the well, its initial performance and sible to adequately establish a baseline
ability in the estimated transmissibil- subsequent deterioration, the surveil- well performance and accurate determi-
ity values. In this case, integrating frac- lance tools used to evaluate the well’s nation of formation damage (skin) and
tional flow analysis with a multilayer performance and determine the inter- transmissibility. In July 2013, the well
PTA curve and running a production- vention method and steps, a comparison was shut in because of a stuck-closed sub-
logging tool made it possible to sepa- between basic diagnostic PTA and multi- surface safety valve (SSV). The well was
rate relative-permeability effects from layer PTA, the building of the multilayer back on line in 2014 after replacement of
plugging effects. A coiled-tubing (CT) model, the execution of the stimulation the upper completion, which included a
mud acid-stimulation treatment then treatment, and the results and conclu- new SSV and DHPG. Fig. 1 shows aspects
enabled recovery of approximately 65% sions of the program. of the well history.
of the well’s lost transmissibility, de- The oil rate was sustained at approxi-
creased formation skin from 16 to 9, and Field Case mately 35,000 STB/D from 2009 until
instantaneously restored 7,000 STB/D A subsea deepwater GOM well began pro- 2013. The first well performance ques-
of production. This analysis approach duction in 2009 with an initial rate of tion arose after the well came back on-
line in 2014, when a production loss of
approximately 10,000 STB/D was ob-
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Judy Feder, contains highlights of paper
served. Because of uncertainties in the
SPE 192843, “A Success Story of Production Improvement in a Deepwater GOM Field
estimation of downhole pressure be-
Based on Integration of Surveillance Techniques,” by Fabio Gonzalez, SPE, Doris tween 2009 and 2013, the point at which
Gonzalez, Steve Carmichael, SPE, Carlos Stewart, SPE, Marney Pietrobon, and the well began losing productivity was
Francisco Garzon, SPE, BP America, prepared for the 2018 Abu Dhabi International uncertain. Whether the well was oper-
Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, 12–15 November. The paper has not ated at a higher drawdown before the in-
been peer reviewed. tervention was not entirely clear. Efforts

were made to fully understand this issue, On the basis of PLT interpretation,
but some uncertainties remained. Ad- water and oil were produced from the
ditional changes were introduced in the lower 27 ft. This was the zone affected
well’s completion during the SSV inter- by relative permeability that equates to
Behind
vention in 2014. a maximum thickness loss of 16 ft. This
The second well-performance investi- result is consistent with fractional-flow
gation began after an additional produc- analysis. Plugging effects contributed
tion loss of approximately 15,000 STB/D to approximately 43 ft of 123 ft of effec-
in 2016. This production loss occurred tive thickness losses, as per PLT before
every at approximately the same time as water

breakthrough (WBT), and it was hypoth-
esized that the effective permeability to
the stimulation. This result is very close
to multilayer-type curve-modeling PTA.
On the basis of the results of the
oil was the main reason for this addi- 2016 intervention and observed post-
recipient
tional loss. The potential to restore even intervention performance, the most-
a percentage of these two large losses in- likely source of the formation damage
spired a more-detailed evaluation of the was fines migration from high-velocity
performance of this well. flow. This is believed to have been pri-
is a
marily the result of screen plugging and
Performance Diagnostics near-wellbore damage that occurred
and Results during the 2014 workover to replace the
Well-productivity deterioration for the upper completion.
great
well was identified on the basis of pro-
duction testing and well-performance Conclusions
nodal analysis. The productivity dete- ◗ Basic PTA diagnostic practice can
rioration was then confirmed by means deliver misleading results. In this
of PTA. Standard diagnostic derivative study, it would have indicated
nomination analyses suggested that permeability

decrease was the main source of per-
formance detriment as the result of an
permeability reduction, when in
fact transmissibility reduction
occurred mainly as a result of
apparent transmissibility reduction of plugging (formation damage-skin)
60%. Because WBT took place before and, to a much lesser degree,
productivity impairment was acknowl- a relative-permeability effect.
edged, the immediate reaction was to Common industry practice is to
establish the hypothesis that effective overlay log-log plot and diagnose
permeability reduction caused by rela- accordingly. Unfortunately
tive-permeability effects was the main this practice leaves behind
Excellent work should be reason for the impairment. A multilay-
er PTA-type curve model, together with
many production-optimization
opportunities.
recognized everywhere. fractional-flow analysis, did not support ◗ Approximately 7,000 STB/D
the relative-permeability premise as the of production were added
International Award primary cause, leaving the potential for because of the acid stimulation.
severe plugging of the reservoir rock as More importantly, a systematic
deadline is 1 March.
the predominant hypothesis. surveillance approach and data-
A PLT run confirmed that approxi- analysis technique has opened
Regional Award
mately 60% of the completed inter- additional scenarios to identify
deadline is 15 March. val was not producing at the expect- production-optimization
ed levels. It was possible to separate opportunities.
Visit www.spe.org/awards the relative-permeability effects from ◗ Multilayer PTA enables the
for more information. the plugging effects by integrating PTA, prediction of selective plugging in
FF, and PLT. On the basis of relative- a single-layer producing interval
Nominate a colleague today. permeability and fractional-flow analy- when analyzed as multilayer.
sis performed on data before the stimu- ◗ A PLT confirmed the results from
lation, transmissibility was most likely the revised PTA. There was very
affected in an amount equivalent to 13 ft close agreement between the PLT
of the total perforated interval of 114 ft. and the revised PTA results. JPT

Chemical Tracer Flowback Data
Help Understanding of Fluid Distribution
T his paper presents a data set

involving the pumping of multiple,
unique chemical tracers into a single
Horizontal Wellbore Formation
Wolfcamp B fracture stage. The

goal of the tracer test is to improve
understanding of the flowback
characteristics of individually tagged fluid
and sand segments by adding another
layer of granularity to a typical tracer-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
flowback report. The added intrastage-
Unique Tracers Fracture Half-Length
level detail can provide insights into
fracture behavior in shale-reservoir Fig. 1—Piston-like displacement. Each color represents a unique tracer.
stimulation by looking at individual
fluid-segment tracer recoveries. volume, also known as effective propped ◗ Does the order of injected fracturing
volume (EPV). fluid correspond with the order in
Introduction SRV, estimated usually from micro- which tracer is produced?
Operators have relied upon high- seismic mapping, is a rough estimate of ◗ Can the residence-time calculation
intensity completion designs that in- the volume of rock that is hydraulically for each tracer be used to infer the
clude a combination of high proppant fractured, and is sometimes defined as degree of fracture complexity?
volumes, increased perforation-cluster the product of gross stimulated area and As operators elect to enhance fracture
density, and smaller-mesh-size prop- pay-zone thickness. EPV is a fraction of complexity by increasing perforation-
pants. These designs aim to create a com- the total SRV that is supported by prop- cluster density, using lower-viscosity-
plex fracture network and increase the pant and is capable of flowing during de- fluid systems, and pumping smaller-mesh
contact area with shale rock. They have pletion. From a production perspective, proppants, the modeling of fracture ge-
helped operators achieve higher initial the surface-area contact of the fractional ometry has proved difficult. In addition,
productivity and larger estimated ulti- propped SRV is more important than the varying perforation-cluster efficiency
mate recovery while simultaneously en- gross SRV estimate. and sand-duning effects can cause fluid
abling the drilling of horizontal wells at In the past, chemical tracer data have and proppant to be distributed nonuni-
tighter well spacing. The traditional, bi- offered stage-level insights into load re- formly within the fracture network.
wing fracture model seems to be scru- covery and hydrocarbon contribution, Without these effects, a piston-like dis-
tinized increasingly for its lack of rele- but the data set presented in the com- placement of the fracturing fluid is ex-
vance when stimulating shale reservoirs. plete paper considers individual fluid- pected within a given fracture (Fig. 1). In
Operators have observed greater fracture segment data within a single fracturing the simplified illustration, the pad-stage
complexity when using enhanced com- stage. A few of the questions prompting fracturing fluid should flow furthest into
pletion designs. These designs aim to this study included: the formation. It is also possible that a
increase fracture surface area and com- ◗ Do certain fluid segments exhibit limited recovery of the pad stage is to
plexity, leading to a debate regarding the poor tracer recovery by being placed be observed if it is placed outside of the
merits of stimulated reservoir volume within the unpropped fraction of propped fracture network. By tagging
(SRV) and propped-stimulated reservoir the SRV? each fluid and sand segment of the frac-
ture stage, the residence-time distribu-
tion of each tracer should yield insight
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of
into the fluid and proppant distribution
paper SPE 194362, “Understanding Fracturing-Fluid Distribution of an Individual
of the fracture network.
Fracturing Stage From Chemical Tracer Flowback Data,” by Wei Tian and Alex
Darnley, SPE, ResMetrics; Teddy Mohle, SPE, and Kyle Johns, Contango Oil and Gas; Overview of Chemical Tracers
and Chris Dempsey, ResMetrics, prepared for the 2019 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing During the past decade, chemical trac-
Technology Conference and Exhibition, The Woodlands, Texas, USA, 5–7 February. er usage for diagnosing fracture treat-
The paper has not been peer reviewed. ments in unconventional reservoirs has

increased dramatically. Chemical trac- Tracer Application volumes. A segment for which 476 bbl of
ers are exclusively soluble in a single Twelve unique water-phase tracers and fracturing fluid were pumped downhole
target phase, which can be water, oil, or oil-phase tracers were injected into the was selected as the standard, and cor-
gas. They can also be manufactured in heel-most stage to tag individual fluid responding normalization coefficients
liquid or solid form. Liquid tracers are and sand segments beginning with were then applied to other tracers. The
pumped with fracturing fluid at a con- the pad segment and ending with the earliest segments for both phases of
stant concentration, which will scale 2-lbm/gal 40/70-mesh stage. Each fluid tracer display overall increasing concen-
proportionately with the clean fluid and sand segment was allocated unique tration, indicating that the earlier seg-
rate of the fracturing blender. Liquid tracers. The tracers were injected con- ments are more likely to partially flow
water tracers follow the aqueous phase, tinuously along with the fracturing fluid into up-propped SRV and are at a much
whereas liquid hydrocarbon tracers dis- at a constant concentration throughout lower concentration relative to the other
solve into oil or gas upon contact with each individual segment. The chemi- tracers during flowback and production.
reservoir fluids. A new addition to trac- cal tracers are conservative tracers, ex- Differing magnitudes of concentra-
er technology results from adsorbing clusively soluble in their carrier fluid, tion imply that the tracers are contact-
chemical tracers onto a solid carrier. and will not decompose or react under ing completely different pockets of hy-
Solid-tracer carriers have the benefit subsurface conditions. drocarbon throughout the stage. This
of being placed with the proppant in After the well was brought on line for further supports the idea of increased
the fracture network; however, the spe- flowback and production, water and oil fracture complexity with this style of
cific mass of tracer absorbed onto each samples were collected at the wellhead. completion program.
carrier bead and the release rate of the One sample per day was taken for the The complete paper describes
tracer from the solid carrier in the res- first 2 weeks, followed by a reduction in the methodology of residence-time-
ervoir is difficult to quantify. Solid trac- sampling frequency. The entire sampling distribution analysis.
ers also degrade during the fracturing process lasted approximately 80 days,
treatment when exposed to high treat- during which 21 water samples and 21 oil Conclusions
ing pressures and do not have the crush samples were collected. All samples were Water-soluble and oil-soluble tracers
strength of sand or manufactured prop- sent to a laboratory for analysis. were injected into 12 segments within a
pant. Tracers can also come in polymer single heel stage. Flowback samples were
strip form, wherein the tracer can be at- Results and Discussion collected and analyzed to detect tracer
tached to completion hardware such as Raw Tracer Data. Tracers injected into concentration. Application of chemical
sand-control screens. different fluid and sand segments were tracers is an effective, nonintrusive tech-
Typical deliverables from chemi- commingled to some degree. Most of nique that provides invaluable informa-
cal tracer tests include analysis regard- the tracers pumped were detected tion about the fracturing-fluid dynamic
ing fracturing-fluid recovery, wellbore in each sample, including the earliest inside fractures. The following conclu-
cleanup, and stage inflow contribution. flowback samples, showing that some sions were reached:
Advanced research has led to use of fluid pumped early in the treatment was ◗ All tracers were detected in the
chemical tracer flowback data to inves- placed near the wellbore, indicating a de- flowback samples, indicating that
tigate fracture geometry and fracture- gree of fracture complexity. Significant no fluid segments existed that were
network complexity. Studies using connectivity between primary and sec- placed completely outside of the
chemical tracers to evaluate fracturing- ondary fractures may result in sufficient propped fracture network.
fluid distribution within a single fracture blending of fracturing-fluid segments. ◗ A high degree of fluid mixing
stage are limited. In general, the tracer concentration appears to take place during
in each fluid sample declined over time stimulation, possibly an indication
Test-Site Description because of dilution from increasing of high fracture complexity.
This project was conducted in a hori- formation-water influx. However, the ◗ Residence-time-distribution
zontal well drilled and completed in the tracer concentrations then increased analysis should be used to
Wolfcamp B formation of the Delaware suddenly, suggesting that the water- determine the transit time from
Basin. The lateral length is approximate- flow contribution from the heel stage in- the fracture to the surface for each
ly 10,000 ft with 48 fracture stages. creased relative to the previous sample traced segment.
Each stage consisted of approximately date. This would normally be verified ◗ To calculate the average residence
500,000 gal of water-based fracturing by relative changes in tracer production time for each tracer, a complete
fluid and 451,000 lbm of sand. Slick- from other fracture stages if that data tracer production history curve is
water and linear gel were used as the car- were available. The other fracture stages needed.
rier fluids. 100-mesh sand was pumped of this well were not traced. ◗ All tracers flowed back
from 0.2 to 1 lbm/gal, and 40/70-mesh simultaneously.
followed from 1 to 2 lbm/gal. The entire Normalized Tracer Data. Normalizing ◗ Tracers pumped during the linear
stage treatment was divided into 15 seg- raw tracer data to their injected amount gel fluid segments at higher sand
ments on the basis of the fracturing fluid, accounts for the concentration variation concentration flowed back faster
proppant size, and concentration. owing solely to the different segment than the slickwater segments. JPT

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Field Development
Maria A. Capello, SPE, Executive Consultant, Kuwait Oil Company
Field developers are making bold step Current trends purpose and temporary working teams.
changes to form their optimization The investments of time and effort are
strategies on the crests of digital trans-
in field development focused to better understand and predict
formation, using massive data analyt- are to study, model, and how to reduce or avoid the interference
ics, machine learning, cloud computing, understand the time-lapse among child and parent wells in shale oil
and data-sharing strategies for oil and or to ensure the sustainable production
gas fields in all stages of development. effects in those fields from offshore heavy-oil developments.
This trend will only grow, following the where optimization of costs, Field development and field-operation
imperative to ensure the sustainability of optimization become joint efforts as the
new assets and extend the life of brown- environmental challenges, loops of production are shorter and the
fields of any size. and sustainability data are shared among several disci-
Current trends in field development
are key differentiators. plines, interconnecting and integrating
are to study, model, and understand the their goals.
time-lapse effects in those fields where The three selected papers provide an
optimization of costs, environmental and closed-loop reservoir management opportunity to catch up with the thrilling
challenges, and sustainability are key are the leading best-decision loops. step-change evolution in field develop-
differentiators. In onshore or offshore Operating companies of all sizes and ment. The industry continues its digital
heavy-oil developments, as well as in profiles—national oil companies, large transformation, and field development is
shale oil and gas, massive data analyt- international oil companies, and small leading the wave. JPT
ics and optimization techniques revolu- private investments—are migrating
tionize work flows in field development from structured, linear, and conven-
with great force and speed. Digital oil- tional approaches in field development Recommended additional reading
field frameworks, fast-track modeling, toward more-efficient and data-driven at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
genetic algorithms, particle-swarm opti- work flows, with activities executed in
mization, ensemble-based optimization, parallel to benefit all fronts, and fit-for- SPE 191799 Time-Dependent Depletion
of Parent Well and Effect on Well
Spacing in the Wolfcamp Delaware Basin
by Cyrille Defeu, Schlumberger, et al.
Maria A. Capello, SPE, is an executive consultant with the Kuwait
Oil Company. She is an award-winning author in energy and an SPE 193914 A Comprehensive Adaptive
Forecasting Framework for Optimum Field-
expert in reservoir management, talent management, and gender
Development Planning by Amir Salehi,
diversity. Capello has worked in Latin America, the United States, Quantum Reservoir Impact International,
and the Middle East. She holds a licentiate degree in physics from et al.
Simon Bolivar University and an MS degree in geophysics from the
Colorado School of Mines. Capello holds an honorary lifetime IPTC 19468 Modeling Interwell
Interference Caused by Complex Fracture
membership from the Society of Exploration Geophysicists and Hits in Eagle Ford Using an Embedded
has received its Distinguished Member and Regional Service awards. She also is a Discrete Fracture Model by Mauricio Xavier
Distinguished Member of SPE and a 2018–2019 SPE Distinguished Lecturer. Capello Fiallos, The University of Texas at Austin,
serves on the JPT Editorial Committee and can be reached at mcapello@kockw.com. et al.

Considering Time and Space in Drilling and
Completion Can Reduce Well Interference
D evelopment of organic shale

reservoirs with large hydraulic-
fracture treatments not only poses
hydraulic fractures difficult to control.
In practice, fracture dimensions are not
constant along a lateral. Additionally,
area provided by the hydraulic fractures
of the child well.
challenges to the completion of a because limited contribution of the ma- Reservoir-Centric Vaca Muerta
single well, but also to interference trix is expected in a nano-Darcy envi- Work Flow
with surrounding wells. A direct ronment, the spacing between laterals The Vaca Muerta shale, located in Ar-
consequence of interference is tends to be smaller than the reach of gentina in the source rock of the Neu-
production loss. Therefore, the drilling the hydraulic fractures. This has been quén basin, ranks among the most-
and completion schedule for field evidenced by the increasing concern promising shale prospects outside the
development must be 4D in time and over fracture hits in the industry, and US. After the first exploratory well was
space to account for interaction in already has been experienced in the completed in 2010, development of
between wells. The complete paper Vaca Muerta. the play has continued at a constant
describes a physics-based model Interference can be caused by frac- pace. Still, only a few blocks have start-
of interference and a sensitivity ture hits while completing the well, ed their full field development, and
study to propose guidelines for well competition for drainage area during the total number of producing wells
spacing and a drilling timeline for production, or fracture-geometry de- remains an order of magnitude lower
multiple horizontal wells in the Vaca terioration caused by stress field varia- than that seen in most active shale plays
Muerta shale. tion when infill-drilling a child well near in the US.
a produced parent well. Even if some The Vaca Muerta faces a variety of
Introduction overlap between the hydraulic fractures challenges, including geology, opera-
Effective field development relies on the of two neighboring wells is advisable tions, production, planning, and com-
tradeoff between the capital expendi- to avoid leaving reserves behind, the mercial development. Accelerating the
ture (CAPEX) and the production profile tradeoff between well spacing, comple- learning curve is critical to ensuring suc-
generating cash flow. Both CAPEX and tion intensity, and production interfer- cess, and taking advantage of the learn-
the production profile are directly con- ence remains a delicate exercise. Hy- ings from other active shale plays—in-
trolled by the number of wells and the draulic fracturing should be considered cluding placing the well completion into
pace at which these wells are tied in to at the field level, rather than indepen- the space- and time-dependent context
the production facilities. With respect dently for each well, giving completion a of the field development—is key.
to tight rocks, the need for horizontal multiple-well spatial dimension. The paper presents a detailed discus-
drilling and hydraulic fracturing adds a As an additional complexity, child sion of a reservoir-centric, fracturing-
layer of geometrical complexity to un- wells completed later in the develop- to-production work flow that begins
lock such resources. ment of a lease tend to perform more with a detailed characterization of the
In very-low-permeability reservoirs, poorly than the parent wells. This per- reservoir that is input into a hydraulic-
the drainage area is controlled by the formance impairment might have sev- fracture simulator generating nonplanar
hydraulic-fracture geometry. However, eral different sources, but one of the geometries that are later explicitly grid-
the relatively large size of the fracturing most-accepted hypotheses is that the ded and fed into a reservoir simulator to
treatments performed in a multistage heterogeneous contrast in the stress evaluate the resulting production. The
manner across several different perfora- field generated by the depletion around high degree of integration of the work
tion clusters within a same stage makes the parent negatively affects the contact flow allows correlating the production
effect with reservoir properties or com-
pletion scenarios for both single- and
multiple-well configurations.
SPE 191836, “When, Where, and How To Drill and Complete Pads of Multiple Wells?
The work flow integrates all steps
Four-Dimensional Considerations for Field Development in the Vaca Muerta Shale,”by from well construction to production,
Stephane Pichon, SPE, Federico Gaston Cafardi Orihuela, Emilio Lagarrigue, including reservoir petrophysics and
and Gustavo Cavazzoli, SPE, Schlumberger, prepared for presentation at the 2018 geomechanics, nonplanar hydraulic-
SPE Argentina Exploration and Production of Unconventional Resources Symposium, fracture geometry, and production sim-
held in Neuquén, Argentina, 14–16 August. The paper has not been peer reviewed. ulation with fit-for-purpose simulators.

A multiple-well model enables investi- economic model to determine be considered horizontally,
gating possible hydraulic-fracture over- optimal well spacing to maximize the staggering of laterals in a
lap between laterals and competition for returns. multiple-pay development in
drainage as a function of the well spac- ◗ Optimal well spacing depends on thick formations such as the
ing. Reservoir depletion can be tracked both hydraulic-fracture geometry Vaca Muerta might lead to a
effectively, and corresponding stress and economic parameters. Varying reduction of individual well
field variations are estimated using a the lateral landing point, stress performance. Stacking a larger
3D geomechanical finite-element simu- containment, well cost, or oil number of laterals per unit surface
lator. The hydraulic-fracture geometry price might call for different well in a multiple-pay scenario, even
and production of a child infill well is spacing. Just as spacing should at the cost of some individual
simulated on the basis of this updated
stress field, in which a modified stress
contrast has been created by the deple-
tion of the parent well.
By running different scenarios, com-
petition for drainage between wells is
evaluated quantitatively to balance in-
A GasJack solution that ®
dividual well performance and field re-

covery. Factors affecting well spacing
such as lateral landing, stress profile,
adds value to your well.
hydraulic-fracture geometry, and num-
ber of pay intervals are investigated. An
example graph is provided in Fig. 1. Well
spacing acts as an additional geometri-
cal constraint during completion. Its
effect on the completion optimization
process when compared with that of a
standalone lateral is discussed. A time-
dependent relation between infill-drill-
ing of a child well and the production
loss caused by the effect of stress altera-
tion near a producing parent well is de-
rived. Recommendations for well spac- Gas Assisted Plunger Lift + Backside
ing and completion modifications are Auto Injection
provided to minimize the production
GasJack® delivers a Gas Assisted Plunger Lift/
loss of the child well at different stages
Backside Auto Injection System (BAIS) that
of the production of the parent well.
The proposed approach places the intermittently injects gas from your existing
completion of each well in the field- well to reduce wellbore tubing pressure, resulting
development context by considering a in increased reservoir production. And, it lowers
4D reservoir-depletion, geomechanics, the pressure on your production team through
and hydraulic-simulation coupling. The efficient well-cycling operation, higher reliability
methodology enables a quantitative ef- and fewer maintenance issues, resulting in lower
fect on production along with practical operating costs. Maximize production with the
drilling timeline and completion recom- most reliable name in gas compression.
mendations when planning for multiple
wells in a field development. Call Eric Boles at (403) 352-6875 to learn more.
Observations
◗ Multiple-well modeling, based
on reservoir characterization
and completion design, allows
™
establishing a correlation between ONE COMPANY. ONE COMMITMENT. ONE CALL.
the individual performance of csicompressco.com
a well and the spacing to its
neighbors. This correlation can
be upscaled to a multiple-well
© 2019 CSI Compressco. GasJack® is a registered trademark of CSI Compressco. All rights reserved.
scenario per area and fed into an

∆(10 Year Np) (% of base) NPV per Section (multiple wells) Tip to Tip P50 Length (m) Hydraulic
0% 400
Propped
–10% Middle VM Optimum
300 274 214
–20% 182
168
–30% 200
–40% Middle VM 100

Lower VM
–50%
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10 0
Middle VM Lower VM
Wells Per Section Wells Per Section
10 Year Np per Section (multiple wells) NPV per Section (multiple wells) Average P50 Height (m) Hydraulic
125
Middle VM Lower VM Optimum Propped
Lower VM 100 86
65
75
44
50
25
25
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10
Middle VM Lower VM
Wells Per Section Wells Per Section
Fig. 1—Comparison of well spacing for the different lateral landings of Middle and Lower Vaca Muerta (VM).
performance reduction, might should be considered in the during flowback is commonly

lead to higher return if the cost- completion design. Even if observed but not considered in
benefit tradeoff is engineered increasing proppant and fluid the modeling, and might delay
adequately. density might be beneficial the effect of the parent depletion
◗ Well spacing is an additional regardless of the constraint of over the child completion and
geometrical constraint that the spacing, perforation-cluster production.
spacing might differ if the lateral ◗ A good assessment of the parent-
is assumed to be standalone or well hydraulic-fracture geometry is
surrounded by neighbors at a necessary to estimate its drainage
Now Available: ◗
fixed distance.
Depletion during producing
area and possible remedial
measures that could be applicable
The SPE affects the stress field around for the child-well completion.
International App the well, particularly in the high Attempting to let the pressure build
level of drawdown observed in up by shutting in the parent before
the highly overpressured Vaca the completion of the child well to
Muerta. This depletion-induced reduce the depletion-induced stress
stress reduction creates a pressure contrast seems to have little effect.
and stress sink around the parent However, increasing the distance
well, negatively affecting the between the parent and the child
hydraulic fractures created by the wells might effectively reduce the
completion of a child well drilled level of production impairment of
later in its vicinity. Production the child well.
impairment of the child well ◗ During the completion of the
caused by its proximity to a child well, some of the hydraulic
producing parent well might be fractures grow into the area of
in excess of 40% reduction of the influence of the parent well. Given
parent well production after 1 year that a pressure gradient toward the
Download the app and access
and 30% after 10 years. parent well is already established,
SPE anytime, anywhere.
◗ The negative effect of the parent some of the new fracture surface
go.spe.org/speiapp
depletion over the child production profits the parent well rather than
might be notable even if the delay the child well and might enhance
between the parent tie-in and the production of the parent. Still,
child completion is on the order this production increase remains
of 1 year. Still, the early production marginal and does not offset the
of a lateral in shale formation is loss of the child well, leaving the
complex, and initial overpressure pad balance negative. JPT

Parallel Simulation and Cloud Computing Can
Optimize Large-Scale Field Development
F
1000
ield-development optimization is
challenging because of the large 800
number of control parameters, model
Net Present Value (MM $)

600
complexity, and subsurface uncertainties.
The complete paper discusses a study 400
in which the authors propose a joint
200
field-development and well-control-
optimization work flow using high- 0 GA:Samples
performance parallel simulation and PSO:Samples
commercial cloud computing, and –200
EnOpt:Samples
demonstrate its application through –400 GA:Best
an offshore oilfield development.
–600 PSO:Best
Introduction EnOpt:Best
–800
Designing a field-development plan to 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000
maximize the profitability of the asset in- Number of Simulations
volves accounting for many factors. Com- Fig. 1—Comparisons of optimization-technique performance with a P50 oil-in-
monly, a field-development plan follows a place simulation model.
staged process in which several alterna-
tives are appraised and the one with the ters. These processes are not single-step limited scalability in the cloud provides
best economics is selected. The selected but are executed iteratively during reser- opportunities for joint field-development
plan is then optimized while considering voir life. The focus of this paper is to de- optimization without reducing the num-
schedule and cost. Earth modeling and scribe the optimization process for max- ber of control parameters, enabling the
reservoir simulation are often used to imizing economical values by selecting developed work flow to be applicable to
provide probabilistic ranges of oil in place the best development plan under given various asset-development scenarios.
or net recovery for a given design at each ranges of subsurface uncertainties. The proposed work flow was applied to
phase of the process. This requires effec- The work flow proposed by the au- the Olympus field case, which is an opti-
tive cross-functional teamwork to achieve thors controls topside facilities, the num- mization benchmarking problem devel-
quality decisions by relying on knowledge ber of wells, their trajectories, the drill- oped by the Netherlands Organization
and skills spanning different disciplines. ing sequence, and completion strategy for Applied Scientific Research using a
simultaneously, while considering sub- synthetic North Sea-type reservoir. The
Proposed Work Flow surface uncertainties and constraints. study objective was to improve the net
Closed-loop or real-time reservoir man- The authors use a next-generation res- present value (NPV) after 20 years of op-
agement are terms often used to describe ervoir simulator and commercial cloud eration by controlling the number and
field-development optimization. These computing to explore the possibility of location of platforms and the number of
involve rapid data assimilation to define achieving an optimized development sce- injectors and producers as well as their
or update subsurface uncertainties and nario within reasonable time and cost trajectories and drilling sequence.
follow optimization processes to find the constraints. The combination of high- The large number of control param-
optimal combination of control parame- performance simulators and virtually un- eters and subsurface uncertainties make
the optimization process challenging.
Three optimization techniques—genetic
algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimi-
SPE 191728, “Large-Scale Field Development Optimization Using High-Performance
zation (PSO), and ensemble-based opti-
Parallel Simulation and Cloud Computing Technology,” by Shusei Tanaka, SPE, mization (EnOpt)—were tested and their
Zhenzhen Wang, SPE, Kaveh Dehghani, SPE, Jincong He, SPE, Baskar Velusamy, performances compared. Best results, in
and Xian-Huan Wen, SPE, Chevron, prepared for the 2018 SPE Annual Technology terms of NPV improvement, were ob-
Conference and Exhibition, Dallas, 24–26 September. The paper has not been tained by using the mixed-integer genetic
peer reviewed. algorithm method.

More than 10,000 simulation runs zation problem. Finally, the authors sum- pattern, completion design, and rig
were required by the method to reach marize their learnings by showing the scheduling.
optimal development of well location, performance of the proposed work flow ◗ Sensitivity analysis was
trajectory, drilling sequence, and other to achieve the selected optimized design. demonstrated to find parameter
aspects. The high-performance paral- The application of the proposed work interactions to the objective
lel simulator and cloud computing made flow under subsurface uncertainties en- function, and identified parameters
this possible. The estimated cost of the abled finding an optimized development that can be optimized sequentially.
commercial cloud service is almost neg- plan maximizing an NPV S-curve with ◗ Performance and efficiencies of the
ligible compared with the improvement no risk of negative value. A final optimi- three optimizers were evaluated,
in the economic value of the optimized zation test involving thousands of simu- among which GA was shown to
asset-development plan. The developed lation runs demonstrated the efficiency be the most-effective and -robust
work flow and parameterization tech- of using computational power. Numer- technique for this case study (Fig. 1).
nique are flexible in well-trajectory con- ous charts, plots, screen shots, and tables ◗ Effect of subsurface uncertainty in
figuration and completion design, allow- are used to illustrate the objectives, con- field-development optimization has
ing application to primary depletion as straints, work flow, and results. been addressed, and a sequential
well as waterflooding. uncertainty refinement method was
The complete paper first describes the Conclusions proposed, resulting in a robust field-
optimization problem for an offshore ◗ The topside facility, number of development design that includes
asset by defining control parameters, con- injectors and producers, well the number of model realizations.
straints, economic values, and objectives. trajectory, completion type, drilling ◗ The study demonstrated the viability
Next, the authors present the proposed sequence, and well control are of solving a complex, large-scale
field-development optimization work simultaneously optimized, resulting field-optimization problem using
flow including base design setup, param- in an improved NPV S-curve with commercially available computer
eterization of the decision variables, and reasonable field-development design. resources.
feasibility of the joint optimization of all ◗ The proposed work flow has ◗ The challenge remains to reduce
development design and well-control pa- flexibility and generality to apply the computational load because
rameters. Three optimizers were tested varieties of asset-development multimillion grids with complex
and evaluated on the basis of their effi- planning with customization in input physics-simulation models require
ciencies in solving the presented optimi- for economic values, well-location significant machine resources. JPT
Strengthening Deepwater for the Future

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Optimization Framework
Improves Mariner Field Development
T he growing popularity of model-

based optimization work flows
has resulted in an increase in their
imperative. These scenarios should also
account for the fact that different ob-
jectives often conflict with one another.
Multiobjective Optimization
For field-development planning, mul-
tiple objectives are usually defined as
application to field cases. In the Thus, there is a need for multiobjective long-term objectives from a reservoir-
complete paper, the authors present optimization under uncertainty, which engineering viewpoint, and short-term
the challenges, results, and learnings can be applied in an operational setting. objectives from a production-engineer-
from a 2-year robust multiobjective Adapting model-based optimization ing viewpoint. However, it is important
optimization application at the Mariner work flows requires computational ef- for the methods to be independent of the
heavy-oil asset in the UK sector of ficiency. While the adjoint-based gra- type of objectives to be able to account
the North Sea. The authors used the dient method is computationally very for any type of objectives in an optimiza-
efficient stochastic simplex approximate efficient, it is not suitably flexible to tion framework.
gradient technique (StoSAG) to achieve incorporate different types of control
optimization incorporating geological variables and requires access to the sim- Controls
and petrophysical uncertainty. ulation source code as well as a signif- The authors use two main types of con-
Depending on the problems, significant icant implementation effort. Thus, in trols: drilling order and well-trajectory
increases of between 5 and 20% in the this paper, the authors use the StoSAG control. Each well is assigned a prior-
expected value of the objective function technique. They chose to use an approx- ity value. Wells are then drilled in order
were achieved. For the multiobjective imate gradient method for the optimi- of their priority, with the highest-value
optimization cases, nontrivial optimal zation instead of a derivative-free tech- wells drilled first. The drilling times for
strategies reduced gas production nique because the computational costs the individual wells are also accounted
by 40% with less than 1% loss in the for derivative-free methods are usually for, making the dates at which the wells
economic objective. higher when uncertainty, in terms of dif- are drilled variable. Therefore, a change
ferent model realizations, is considered. in drilling order also leads to a change
Introduction StoSAG is an approximate-gradient- in the times at which wells are opened in
To date, most studies of single- and based approach that has proven practi- the simulation.
multiobjective optimization have focal for optimization under uncertainty. A parameterization developed else-
cused on a single study with a specif- A user must decide on the ratio of geo- where in the literature is used to optimize
ic purpose. Very few studies have used logical model realizations to control per- a control vector that defines the positions
these work flows in an operational set- turbations. The authors used a ratio of of an a priori defined number of target
ting (i.e., during the field-development- 1:1 for all experiments unless otherwise points that define a well trajectory. The
planning stage at an asset tackling a specified, making the number of con- choice of the number of target points to
variety of problems). trol perturbations equal to the number be used within the optimization is user-
Including uncertainty is an important of geological realizations. This is com- dependent, and the number provides the
step in decision making during field- putationally the most-efficient approach optimization flexibility to find optimal
development planning, especially be- for large-scale optimization under un- and nontrivial well paths. A minimum of
cause uncertainty is so extensive at this certainty when using high-fidelity, full- two target points (heel and toe, start and
stage in the life cycle of a field. Consid- physics-simulation models. The objec- end) are, however, necessary to optimize
ering a range of potential development tive function is the usual expression for the trajectory of a well. The first target
scenarios that will provide the neces- (simple) net present value as used in life- point is defined as the spatial coordinates
sary tools to enable robust decisions is cycle-optimization studies. for the well, with three variables—x, y,
and z. Every other point following the
first point is defined in terms of an azi-
muth, angle, and measured depth with re-
SPE 193883, “Robust Multiobjective Field Development Optimization for the Mariner spect to the previous target point. There-
Asset,” by Remus Gabriel Hanea, SPE, Ole Petter Bjorlykke, Yastoor Hasmi, and fore, the second point will be defined with
Tao Feng, Equinor, and Rahul Mark Fonseca, TNO, prepared for the 2019 SPE respect to the first, and the third will be
Reservoir Simulation Conference, Galveston, Texas, USA, 10–11 April. The paper has defined with respect to the second. As an
not been peer reviewed. example, for a choice of four well target

Prod 1: Initial Strategy Prod 2: Initial Strategy to drilling order; multiple objectives
Prod 1: Optimal Strategy Prod 2: Optimal Strategy (drilling order and gas production) for the
combined field model; and well-trajectory
optimization, including structural uncer-
Total Oil Production
tainties for a sector of the upper reservoir

model. Fig. 1 shows an oil-production
comparison from one model from the en-
semble of model realizations.
The initial strategy called for drilling
27 single-bore producers and 12 injectors,
with no multilaterals planned for the first
5-year time horizon. However, a detailed
analysis of the strategy revealed that it
June 20 October 21 March 23 July 24 December 25 April 27 September 28 January 30 would be better to drill four multilateral
Time wells within the first 5 years in combina-
Fig. 1—Comparison of the total production of two wells between the initial tion with 8 injectors and 21 single-bore
strategy (solid lines) and the optimal strategy (dashed lines) for one model
producers, indicating that pressure sup-
from the ensemble of model realizations.
port is an important mechanism to im-
points for a single well, the authors will the aquifers below. This is especially true prove long-term reservoir management.
have defined 12 control variables. when the viscosity of the oil is very high. Designing optimal well trajectories usu-
The allowable changes in the target Additionally, produced-water reinjection ally is performed one well at a time and
points can be variable and controlled by for pressure maintenance is the drainage usually on a single model realization. This
a user to ensure well drillability. Usually, strategy being implemented in this field. practice might lead to relatively optimal
the first target point can move during the The field consists of upper and lower strategies for the single well on a single
optimization more than the other points reservoir zones. The lower reservoir model realization. When such a strategy
to avoid the generation of infeasible well section consists of lower Paleocene, is tested against known sources of uncer-
trajectories. Large changes to the angles delta-fed, sand-rich turbidite channels tainty through an ensemble of models,
are permitted near the heel of the well, interspersed with sand-rich turbiditic the strategy for each well may or may not
but changes for subsequent points are sheet-lobes and mixed sand-mud turbi- be optimal. Additionally, interaction be-
limited. With the target points defined dites. The upper reservoir is believed to tween wells is not accounted for, which is
as described, the well trajectory is gen- consist of channel-like disconnected sand another drawback of the localized, single-
erated using root mean square, ensuring bodies. It is estimated that the reserves of well, sequential approach to well place-
that the well path passes through all se- the upper reservoir are larger than those ment. This interaction between wells and
lected target points. An automated work of the lower section. Both sections are the aim for the overall project objective to
flow was developed wherein the well path relatively faulted, adding to their geo- be achieved suggests the application of a
intersects the grid and the connection logical complexity. Additionally, it is un- more-global approach, wherein the tra-
transmissibility factors are calculated for certain at this stage whether there is any jectories of all wells being considered are
use in the dynamic flow simulation. Each communication between the two reser- optimized simultaneously, instead of the
time the optimizer adapts the well target voir sections. localized sequential approach.
points, new well paths are generated with The lower section is approximately
the corresponding well-connection trans- 1400 m beneath the seabed, with mar- Conclusions
missibility factors. ginally lighter but much-less-viscous oil ◗ Well-trajectory optimization
properties than the upper section. Addi- under uncertainty can be used
Mariner Heavy-Oil Field tionally, there are different gas/oil ratios efficiently in a multiobjective
The Mariner field, discovered in 1981, is between the lower and upper reservoirs. optimization framework to obtain
approximately 150 km east of the Shet- The field is being developed using nontrivial solutions of significant
land Islands. The producing reservoir a two-stage approach, with the devel- practical value.
sections, with an estimated 2 billion bar- opment of the lower reservoir planned ◗ Robust multiobjective optimization
rels of oil in place, are located at depths first. More than 70 wells are planned work flows can achieve results of
of approximately 1200–1500 m, in ap- to be drilled over a 10-year develop- significant practical value in an
proximately 100 m of water. The field was ment campaign. operational asset.
planned to begin producing in 2017–2018. ◗ The multiobjective optimization
The oil is heavy, ranging from Simulation Models and framework not only is able to handle
12–15 °API, and highly viscous (67 to Numerical Experiments different objectives, but also can
500 cp), depending on the reservoir for- The paper describes the simulation mod- provide asset engineers with multiple
mations. Traditionally, such heavy-oil els for the lower and upper reservoirs and scenarios for improving field-
reservoirs face production problems be- then discusses a series of different nu- development planning and decision
cause of increased water production from merical optimization experiments linked making under uncertainty. JPT

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Offshore Facilities
Ardian Nengkoda, SPE, Facilities Development Lead, Saudi Aramco
I had the pleasure of reviewing 322 efit production assets, business, and sus- al level in 1997, and I wrote about the
offshore-facilities papers submitted to tainability (social and environmental). concept of floating liquefied natural gas
SPE during the past year and selected The development of new subsea and (FLNG) facilities in Indonesia as a case
three for inclusion in this issue as well offshore technologies, methods, pro- study. The FLNG concept has been used
as three for additional reading. This is cesses, and monitoring should consider because it has the capability to transport
my first assignment as a member of JPT’s the tangible benefit of social and envi- the LNG to nearly any location. However,
Editorial Committee, and I am grateful. ronmental effects. The selection of inno- we know that the design of FLNG facilities
During my summer family vacation, I vative subsea processing systems, plat- has many challenges, including floating
enjoyed reading all of the papers and con- forms, real-time monitoring applications, design, process selection, equipment siz-
sidered a special theme related to today’s automation, smart fields, intelligent ing, process safety, wind effects, metocean
disruption of our oil and gas industry wells, data analytics, and well/reservoir/ effects, and product transfer. Therefore,
known as “Industry 4.0.” The first indus- facilities technologies and decommis- for FLNG, bigger is not always better and
trial revolutions were related to the com- sioning should reflect an initiative to a sustainable business model is impor-
mencement of electrification, followed by improve environmental performance. tant. It took almost 25 years for engineers
machinery. The third is the computer era, For instance, when a stakeholder selects and experts to construct an FLNG facility.
and the fourth (4.0) is the current age of a subsea processing and facilities tech- Now, the Prelude FLNG is the world’s larg-
machine learning, artificial intelligence, nology scheme, it should optimize and est FLNG facility as well as the largest off-
data analytics, and the Internet of things. accelerate the recovery of hydrocarbon, shore facility ever constructed. To derive
Therefore, to start our discussion, let us increasing its yield, extending the life of the greatest benefit from Industry 4.0,
ask the basic question: What is the defini- the field, reducing the floating produc- we must develop strong and reliable data,
tion of offshore-facilities project success tion facilities while minimizing carbon lessons learned, experiences, and knowl-
in the context of Industry 4.0? Generally, footprint, and creating a positive social edge management.
cost (economic), time, and scope (quan- effect and low environmental impact. The three papers and recommended
tity and quality, including safety) are Let us consider another offshore- additional reading presented here reflect
the common project-success indicators. facilities project example. The world’s off- support for the implementation of Indus-
However, I believe we can expand these shore liquefied-natural-gas (LNG) pro- try 4.0 such as innovation, digitalization
indicators to the social and environmen- duction concepts began in the 1970s but (automation), low-cost facilities develop-
tal areas. So, for the oil and gas upstream were only significantly enhanced in the ment, project flexibility, and facilities life
industry, Industry 4.0 is the strategic mid-1990s. I was a finalist in the SPE Stu- extension. I hope you enjoy reading these
positioning of technologies that can ben- dent Paper competition at the nation- papers as much as I did. JPT
Ardian Nengkoda, SPE, is a facilities development lead at Saudi

Aramco. He works as group leader for offshore-facilities develop- Recommended additional reading
ment, including in field development, facilities-concept selection, at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
flow assurance, production-chemistry risk, and project manage- OTC 28256 Standardization and
ment. Nengkoda is a member of the Saudi Aramco Petroleum Replication of Lean Wellhead Platform To
Engineering Technologist Development/Technical Review Accelerate Hydrocarbon Maturation From
Committee, Composition and Development Review for Field Exploration to Production for Marginal-
Development Committee, and Oil and Gas Process Engineering Field Development by H. Yong, Shell, et al.
Standards Committee. He has more than 22 years of experience in the upstream oil and OTC 28276 Cost-Effective Riser Solutions
gas industry, and, before joining Saudi Aramco in 2012, he worked for PDO, Shell, for Deepwater Gas Developments: Steel
Schlumberger, and Unocal. Nengkoda is a recipient of the 2015 SPE Regional Projects, Lazy Wave Riser and Tethered Catenary
Facilities, and Construction Award and the 2014 Gas Processors Association GCC Best Riser by Stéphan Eyssautier, Subsea 7, et al.
Paper Award. He holds a BS degree in gas engineering from the University of Indonesia OTC 28340 Pragmatic and Consistent
and MEng and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from Gadjah Mada University. Approach to Life Extension of Floating
Nengkoda is a member of JPT Editorial Committee and the SPE International Energy Structures by Cedric Morandini, Bureau
Information Committee. He can be reached at ardian.nengkoda@aramco.com. Veritas, et al.

Innovative Design and Execution Lead to
Successful Grand Banks Platform Operations
T he Hebron platform was

successfully installed on the Grand
Banks offshore Newfoundland and
concept includes a single shaft support-
ing the topsides and encompasses all
wells in the initial development. It is de-
Design Considerations
Facility Optimization. Because the
platform is located in a sub-Arctic cli-
Labrador in June 2017. It consists of signed to withstand sea ice, icebergs, mate with less extreme temperatures
a single-shaft concrete gravity-based and other meteorological and oceano- than other true Arctic environments,
structure (GBS) supporting an integrated graphic conditions at the offshore He- the topsides was designed with open ar-
drilling and production topsides. The bron site. The GBS is designed for an in- chitecture and strategically placed blast
design of the platform was challenged service life of 50 or more years to support walls that maximize natural ventilation
by sub-Arctic and extreme metocean future developments. while providing fire and blast protection
conditions that required innovative The lower portion of the GBS up to an for key safety-critical components.
design and layout approaches for elevation of approximately 27 m was con- The single-shaft configuration drives
many elements considered routine structed in a drydock created by building the placement of all necessary fire-
for typical platforms. This complete a bund wall and dewatering the site be- water, seawater, and crude-oil boost-
paper highlights the underlying hind it. Subsequently, the dock was flood- er pumps in the same GBS shaft as the
technologies, analytical and design ed, the bund wall was removed, and the well bay. Thus, a pump system that is
methods, and capital-efficient execution GBS base was towed approximately 3 km mounted and retrievable from the top-
strategies employed. to a deepwater site. The floating GBS was sides is required. This, coupled with
held in place with mooring lines while the the required air gap height of 30.4 m
Introduction remaining construction was completed. between the underside of the topsides
The Hebron platform comprises a GBS All walls were constructed using the slip- and the mean sea level, drove the proj-
and topsides installed in 93-m water forming technique. ect to employ submersible seawater
depth. Produced crude oil is stored in The topsides structure was fabricat- pumps among the longest in the in-
storage cells and pumped to shuttle tank- ed in modules at various locations in dustry (46.8 m) and longest-in-industry
ers by an offshore loading system. Newfoundland and Labrador and South line-shaft crude booster pumps (47.4 m)
The topsides facilities (operating Korea. Two of the topsides modules, that lift crude from the GBS storage
weight 65,000 tonnes) include the fol- UPM and DES, were fabricated in South cells to topsides for offloading to a
lowing major modules: Korea using block/pancake construction shuttle tanker.
◗ Utilities and process module (UPM) methods (Fig. 1). After UPM and DES The project identified and employed
◗ Derrick equipment set (DES) fabrication was completed, the modules a passive exhaust plume cooling and
◗ Drilling support module (DSM) were loaded out separately to heavy ves- dilution system that contains no mov-
◗ Ancillaries (flare boom, east and sels for transportation to Bull Arm, New- ing parts and reduces the output ex-
west liftboat stations) foundland and Labrador. All other top- haust temperature by up to 50%. This
◗ Living quarters (LQ) designed to sides modules were integrated with the allows drilling to proceed unimpeded
accommodate 220 personnel during main UPM module at the finger pier in during unfavorable wind conditions
steady-state operations Bull Arm and the completed topsides without personnel limitations on the
The total height of the platform with structure was mated with the GBS while derrick during early field life. Addition-
GBS is approximately 235 m, topsides floating at the deepwater site. The mated ally, the design geometry of the cool-
length is approximately 183 m, and the platform then was towed offshore and ers allowed for reduced wall thickness
width is approximately 75 m. The GBS installed at the final offshore location. when compared with traditional ex-
haust stacks, resulting in a lighter sup-
porting structure.
A survey of icebergs indicated that a
of paper OTC 28803, “Hebron Platform: Innovative Design and Efficient Execution,”
significant percentage of icebergs in the
by Widianto, Justin Chichester, Adel Younan, and Jameel Khalifa, ExxonMobil; Grand Banks are drydock and pinnacle
Krishna Komperla, WorleyParsons; and Knut Bidne, Kvaerner, prepared for the icebergs, which tend to have high sail
2018 Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 30 April–3 May. The paper has not heights that could collide with an over-
been peer reviewed. Copyright 2018 Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced hanging deck of the topsides structure.
by permission. Unlike the case with the concrete GBS,
The complete paper is available for purchase at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

it is cost-prohibitive to design the top-
sides structure for iceberg-impact load.
Design codes require the use of an air
gap to achieve 10–5 probability of ice-
berg collision with topsides and permit
iceberg management (using supply ves- Pedestal Crane
DES
sels to tow icebergs away) in determi-
nation of iceberg-to-topsides collision
probability. In order to meet the code
requirement of 10–5 annual probability DSM
of impact, a 30.4-m air gap was selected Power Generators
and the LQ module was raised vertically
an additional 10.8 m.
Helideck
Integrated Seismic Soil Structure
Interaction (SSI). The implementa- UPM Upper Deck
tion of an integrated seismic SSI proved
effective in performing seismic analy- UPM
Main Deck
sis and design of all components of the
platform through consecutive project
Flare Boom
phases and various contractor struc-
tural models. LQ
This approach enabled contractors to UPM
perform their own separate SSI analy- Lower Deck
ses using the same foundation proper-

ties developed by the geotechnical con-
tractor, resulting in a more-efficient UPM
Cellar Deck
design process with different levels
of detail according to the component
of interest. East
Lifeboat Station
Foundation Optimization. The He- Stair Tower
bron GBS has a flat, circular base slab
Load Spreader
with 500-mm-deep soil skirts. From a
constructability perspective, shorter
skirts are cost-effective because they Fig. 1—Hebron topsides block division for construction.
require shallower trenches in the dry-
dock construction site (less construc- ear finite-element analysis, an approach Full UPM-Use Initiative. Considering
tion work), minimize the negative effect used at other points in the design pro- the importance of locating the Canadian
of skirt length on the draft require- cess for the platform. The new method integration workforce as close as possible
ment during tow, and are subjected to did not require any reinforcement be- to work fronts during the critical integra-
smaller stresses during soil penetra- yond that needed for the ultimate limit tion phases of all modules at Bull Arm,
tion at installation. Analysis of environ- state, which improved constructability. most of the traditional storerooms, offic-
mental and design conditions revealed es, and workshop spaces in the topsides
that both scour protection and under- Execution Considerations were outfitted with temporary lunch and
base grouting were unnecessary for Comprehensive Weight Control. De- breakroom spaces. As a result, during the
the platform. veloping a robust and comprehensive integration phases, breaks could be taken
weight-control program based on the topside, allowing reduced transit time.
Concrete Crack-Width Calculation. stages of project execution was essen-
A new method for calculating crack tial to maintaining cost and schedule. Concrete Batch Plants. Two identi-
width in thick elements with multiple Clear budgets for the phases were de- cal, independently operated, fully au-
reinforcement layers was implement- veloped, and each module was weighed tomatic batching plants were used for
ed in the GBS design. This method ac- before transport and the result input concrete production at drydock and
counted for the crack-initiation effect into the weight-management program deepwater-site locations. This 100% re-
from several layers of transverse rein- and analytics. The project team then dundancy execution strategy was im-
forcement not fixed or welded to the leveraged the actual results to capture plemented to improve execution cer-
main reinforcement, and was validat- additional weight opportunities as the tainty during the most-demanding
ed by a parametric study using nonlin- project progressed. concrete pour.

Steel-Panel Bulkheads for Base-Slab- Slipforming of All GBS Walls. Slipform- mockups of several complex elements of
Construction Joint. To optimize the ing technique (i.e., formwork panels that the GBS were conducted, and lessons
construction schedule for the GBS base continuously move upward using hydrau- learned were supplied to the design team.
slab, cost-effective vertical steel-panel lic pumps and yokes) allows uninterrupted The mockups also allowed the opportuni-
bulkheads with horizontal corrugations concrete placement, reinforcing-bar in- ty to train the workforce on these complex
were used as formwork between the stallation, and minor surface repair. Slip- operations before actual construction.
various sections of base slab (poured forming allowed cost-effective placement
in four sections). The corrugated ver- of walls with high reinforcement density, Solid Ballast. To improve floating sta-
tical steel panels were designed to be minimized the construction schedule, and bility during tow and to improve slid-
left in place and detailed to ensure leak- improved leak-tightness because most ing resistance after platform instal-
tightness. Compared with conventional construction joints were eliminated. lation, 222,000 tonnes of solid ballast
formwork that would require stripping with a specified density of 3500 kg/m3
and surface preparation after setting Full-Scale Mockups. Small parts of the (approximately 10-m thickness) was
of the concrete (very time-consuming GBS were built as full-scale models using placed at the bottom of the oil-storage and
for thick base slab with many layers of the same procedures, equipment, and annulus cells. All solid ballast was placed
dense reinforcement), the use of left- materials planned for use in the actu- at the deepwater site with concrete pumps.
in-place formwork resulted in a shorter al structure. In addition to regular and This avoided extra costs associated with
construction time. early review of design drawings, full-scale offshore installation of solid ballast. JPT
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Evaluation of a Riser
After 10 Years of GOM Service Life
A s part of an effort to evaluate

existing riser systems, an
operator launched an inspection and
testing program to investigate risers
retrieved following well abandonment
after a service life of nearly 10 years
in the Gulf of Mexico (GOM). This
represented a rare opportunity to
evaluate the state of the threaded and
coupled risers after such a long service
life and assess the remaining longevity
of the riser system. Specifically, it was
a chance to observe and measure the
effects of actual service life as opposed
to calculated service conditions on the
pipe and connections. The findings
provided valuable insights into the
future viability of similar riser systems.
Fig. 1—Connection without box-seal galling, but with galling on threads.
Introduction
The Constitution truss spar was first
placed in service in 2005. The spar fea- testing, and first running; this synopsis little evaluation of the state of the ris-
tured six dry tree production risers with will concentrate on post-service testing ers was possible; however, photographs
two subsea tiebacks. It operates in the and assessment. of several of the connections were taken
Green Canyon region of the GOM in al- as they were pulled. Most notable was
most 5,000 ft of water. The production Riser Pulling, Evaluation, the lack of corrosion on the connection.
risers were run in 2006. In 2015, the de- and Testing
cision was made to abandon several of Pulling and Review. In late 2015, on Evaluation and Inspection of the
the production dry tree wells. There was the basis of internal evaluation, the op- Riser. Connection Observations. The
a high degree of interest in investigat- erator pulled several of the production first detailed evaluation of the connec-
ing the risers to assess remaining life. risers. In order to validate the remain- tions came after they were pulled and
Special attention was paid to evidence ing life of the risers and to help in- had been in a yard for several weeks.
of corrosion, cracking, or wear on the form future decisions on the longev- The results were not promising; rust
outer diameter (OD) or inner diameter ity of threaded and coupled risers, the was observed throughout the connec-
(ID) of the pipe, along with water in- operator then initiated a detailed re- tions along with galling on the internal
gress into the connection causing any view of the risers. The stress joints, ten- seal of the pin and threads. This trou-
corrosion from seawater on the bare sion joints, and first connectors after bling find led to an investigation to de-
metal of the connection. those joints were kept, along with sev- termine if connections might not be
The complete paper includes a de- eral of the risers from the middle of the suitable for continued use. Wet mag-
tailed discussion of the original design, string. During the pulling operations, netic particle inspection was also per-
formed on the connections to search for
indications beyond the rust and galling,
but no further indications were seen on
of paper OTC 28908, “Ten Years in the Water: Observation and Detailed Evaluation the connection.
of a Riser After Extensive Service Life,” by Mike Tricarico, Vallourec; Chris O’Neil, Connection Investigation. Rust. The
Anadarko; and Thomas Peter, Vallourec, prepared for the 2018 Offshore Technology first observation was the lack of protec-
Conference, Houston, 30 April–3 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. tion on the connections. Very little stor-
Copyright 2018 Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission. age compound was present, especially

on the pins (which were supplied with analysis of corrosion, visual inspection external pressure, internal tests with
“as-machined” end finish), and the little by camera along the full pipe ID, ultra- bending, or mechanical and thermal
that had been applied was mostly gone sonic inspection, and thickness evalua- cycle tests. This was a positive indica-
because of the lack of thread protection of the OD coating. As with the con- tion of the viability of threaded and cou-
tors. This pointed toward storage after nections, these investigations were vital pled risers for continued in-service use.
pulling as being the primary cause of to understanding the remaining life of
the rust. similar in-service risers. Fatigue Tests. Another important step
In addition to review of the photos Corrosion Analysis and Coating was further fatigue testing to indicate
taken during pulling, the “mill ends,” Thickness. The OD of the pipe exhib- remaining expected life. The specimens
or those ends with the coupling still at- ited white spots. These seemed to fol- taken were from the middle of the riser,
tached that were not broken out or re- low a helical pattern along the OD and but known factors can be used to esti-
moved during pulling, were inspected. were more severe in some locations. mate the life at the top and bottom of the
The couplings were taken off as part Chemical analysis of the spots showed riser. For that purpose, two fatigue spec-
of the retesting process. The complete they were aluminum oxide, the prod- imens were taken from the pulled risers
connections showed no damage or signs uct of seawater corrosion of the ther- by breaking out some of the connections
of rust. These connections would have mal sprayed aluminum (TSA) coating. and remaking them, as described previ-
been subject to the same loading con- This led to an evaluation of the remain- ously. Those two specimens were then
ditions as those broken out on the spar ing coating thickness. Review of the subjected to fatigue cycles at low, me-
as part of the pulling, but without expo- thickness in several locations indicated, dium, and high stress. The fatigue cy-
sure to storage or handling issues. Tak- on average, 15 mils of remaining TSA cles, described in detail in the complete
ing into account both the photos from coating—a positive indication for coat- paper, yielded a very positive indication
the rigsite as well as those broken out ing life. with regard to the continued service life
on shore, it was concluded that the rust Evaluation of the ID. Initial visu- of threaded and coupled risers.
observed was a result of storage after al inspection of the pipe ID revealed a
breakout and was likely not present on new layer of iron oxide. This was most Conclusion
the in-service riser. likely the result of open-air exposure An extensive review of the pipe body
Galling. Inspection of the pin-end during pulling and transport before in- and connections was performed follow-
connections pulled on the spar showed spection. However, it was important to ing pulling of the riser. The inspection
galling on the internal seal as well as evaluate if any corrosion or pitting could methods included visual inspection, wet
heavy galling on the threads. This was a be attributed to in-service conditions. magnetic particle, and ultrasonic in-
point of high concern for threaded and A power wash was performed along the spection of the pipe and connections.
coupled risers still in service. Galling full pipe-body length to remove any re- The nondestructive-evaluation (NDE)
on metal-to-metal seals usually leads cent superficial corrosion and to check inspections showed the pipe and con-
to leaking. The first step was to inspect for cracks or pitting. A camera system nection had performed very well in ser-
the corresponding coupling connec- was then used to visually inspect all sur- vice, with few signs of wear, excessive
tions from which the galled pins were faces of the pipe. Full review of the vid- corrosion, or cracking in the deepwater
taken. This could help determine if the eos showed no visual evidence of pitting environment. All of these evaluations
galling was a result of in-service dam- or cracks along the pipe-body length. were positive, with strong evidence of
age or was introduced as a result of han- any such issues having been introduced
dling while being pulled. Review of the Riser Post-Pulling Testing during pulling and storage.
box connections revealed no galling or Static Load Tests. The pulled pin ends In addition to the positive results of
damage on the internal seal (Fig. 1). of the connections were in a state that the NDE inspections, the connection
The internal seal and shoulder is the did not allow for further testing. To evaluation for internal and external
first area to disengage during breakout overcome this challenge, one connec- sealability performance, as well as fa-
of the connection. Because no galling tion was made from two of the pulled tigue testing, provided positive results.
was observed on the box internal seal, riser joints. This was achieved by re- The tested samples passed sealability
the conclusion was made that the gall- moving the coupling from half of the testing with no issues, and the fatigue
ing was not present on the connection pulled risers. The broken-out pin was samples had a high number of cycles
while in service. Galling was most like- then made back up into one of the other before failure. In both cases, the re-
ly introduced by rotating the connec- pipes and couplings. This not only al- sults were consistent with testing per-
tion while pulling against the threads lowed further investigation of the pin formed on similar pipe and connections
with the pin seal rubbing against the and box, but allowed the tested connec- before service.
box threads. tion to involve both pins with a field ser- This level of review following a
vice life. 10-year service life was the first for a
Pipe-Body Investigation. Along with Following makeup of the connection, threaded and coupled riser. The results
evaluation of the connection, a detailed a single sealability sample was run. Test- provide positive data toward continued
evaluation of the riser pipe was required. ing was successful, with no leaking ob- long-term use of similar risers in off-
Review of the pipe involved chemical served in the tests with internal and shore applications. JPT

Extra-Long Subsea Tiebacks
Reduce Deepwater Development Costs
I t now appears possible to reduce

deepwater development costs by
increasing the distance between new
series of tiebacks was developed for a
range of up to 15 km from the hub. The
second series of tiebacks, ranging from
is connected to the hub through a con-
ventional wet insulated loop, which col-
lects production from all the field’s drill-
assets and existing production hubs 25–30 km from the hubs, is under de- ing centers. Flowline diameters have
and shallow-water areas, or even velopment. Architectures and technolo- usually been in the range of 10–12 in.
connecting those assets to shore. gies to develop these tiebacks have been Second-line fields ranging up to ap-
The complete paper presents and extensively studied, matured, and opti- proximately 25–30 km from the main
discusses the authors’ technology- mized, and some of those tiebacks are hub have been developed for both
development program regarding already in production. deeper and shallower waters through a
very-long oil-tieback architectures New infilling fields are currently service-production loop interconnect-
(50–100 km) and enabling being explored and discovered at dis- ed with the main field loop. The paper
technologies. The paper describes tances 30 to 100 km from production discusses the production loops, the use
how the new technological solutions hubs, with new extra-long tieback ar- of pipe-in-pipe technology, and subsea
compare with more-conventional chitectures now under study. Those tie- multiphase boosting stations located
development schemes in concept- backs will necessitate new technologies close to the production hubs that can be
selection phases and discusses how to enable managing the growing techni- adapted on the loops’ interconnection
the operator is preparing for potential cal and economic challenges of subsea for distant fields’ enhanced recovery.
implementation. The authors believe field developments. Long and very-long Gas-lift injection is also discussed.
that the capacity to invest in and tiebacks that allow expanding from a According to the authors, if a produc-
develop technologies required for brownfield perspective are likely to en- tion facility (including topside and sub-
long and very-long tiebacks will able today’s greenfield programs. sea systems) is designed appropriately
decide the future of the deepwater The paper reviews architectures and from the beginning as a hub to produce
subsea industry. operation features of the operator’s multiple fields with a progressive deep
currently installed short- and medium- and shallow infilling strategy, avail-
Introduction length tiebacks to introduce the drivers able, proven, conventional subsea and
Over the past few years, Eni and its part- and features of very-long tiebacks. The flowline technologies have fully dem-
ners installed more than 100 subsea paper addresses sizing, operation tar- onstrated their suitability to technically
trees, mainly on deepwater fields in var- gets, flow assurance, technologies, and and economically develop five fields, or
ious areas of the globe, in particular An- related maturity. even more, within a 25–30-km radius of
gola, Norway, Indonesia, Ghana, Egypt, the main hub.
and Libya. The growing trend in subsea Short- and Medium-Length
trees is guiding the operator’s needs and Tieback Review Extra-Long Tiebacks
ideas about how to develop fields pro- The operator’s initial deepwater fields It appears that the enabling technolo-
gressively around its production hubs. have been developed with the produc- gy for extra-long (30–100 km) tiebacks
In the evolution of deepwater oil tion hub typically a few kilometers from resides in combining heated pipe-in-
fields, production floaters have been lo- the first main reservoirs in the direction pipe solutions with subsea multiphase
cated close above the first fields to be of shallower water depth, allowing min- boosting, staggered subsea preser-
developed. To guarantee the progressive imum distances dictated by drilling and vation systems, and advanced subsea
infilling of the production hub, a first offloading requirements. The main field production systems. The production
flowline will be based on continuous,
high-performance, heated pipe in pipe
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Judy Feder, contains highlights of
with, typically, a 10–14-in. internal di-
paper OTC 28839, “Deepwater Innovations: Extra-Long Oil-Tieback Technologies,”
ameter, collecting all fields’ drilling cen-
by Michael Gassert, Gianluca De Molli, Vito Calabrese, Eniprogetti, and ters in a daisy-chain configuration.
Stefano Magi, Gianfederico Citi, and Fabrizio Rollo, Eni, prepared for the 2018 The paper continues the architec-
Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 30 April–3 May. The paper has not ture discussion with descriptions of
been peer reviewed. Copyright 2018 Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced the drilling center and branches, main
by permission. production flowline, subsea produc-

tion system, subsea multiphase boost- Subsea control modules should be de-
An SPE Bookstore ing system, flowline heating system, veloped to allow for additional function-
New Release
and powering and communication sys- alities such as controlling machinery
tems. Water-injection flowlines will be and more-complex production systems,
replaced progressively by subsea water and safety-critical functionalities.
treatment and injection systems.
Digitalization will be key for both Flowline and Installation
asset integrity and operations manage- Major installation contractors are work-
ment, with resident autonomous un- ing already on heated, large-size, high-
derwater vehicles being deployed for performance pipe-in-pipe technologies
inspection and monitoring, digital data and verifying that their fleets of ves-
recovery, and nonfrequent interven- sels are able to install these lines cost-
tions, allowing reduction in the extent effectively. Different technologies’ ma-
of offshore-vessel use and the number of turity and qualification status can be
remote operable valves installed subsea. perceived across the market. Consider-
Providing heat locally where needed ing the significant lengths of this new
is the more-efficient and absolute way generation of tiebacks, some vessels
of resolving nearly any thermal flow- may be adapted to lay cables and/or um-
assurance issues, beginning with man- bilicals simultaneously to the main pro-
aging wax and reducing hydrates. As duction line, reducing installation time
such, a wide range of functionalities and associated costs.
RESERVOIR can be expected from heated flowlines,
Conclusions
SIMULATION:
even up to enabling production restart
after a long period of complete shut- ◗ Recent technology development,
down where no system, including flow- qualification, and testing,
PROBLEMS AND line heating, is available. The operator is and the experience gained on
SOLUTIONS considering heated, high-performance
pipe-in-pipe solutions with low
the most-recent deepwater
projects enable the possibility of
by Turgay Ertekin, Qian Sun, U-values and optimized diameters for considering seriously a full-subsea-
Jian Zhang efficient long-tieback development. development approach to long-
From the extensive design work per- distance tiebacks from existing
Built on the fundamental concepts formed on case studies and tieback hubs or from shore.
and solutions of the original exercises configurations, it appears that high— ◗ For intermediate-case studies,
and possibly boosted—flows above where both conventional and extra-
found in Basic Applied Reservoir
50,000 B/D are workable even without long architectures are possible, the
Simulation (Ertekin, About-Kassem heating over distances in the range of extra-long architectures appear to
and King), this new book provides an 40–50 km. For higher tieback lengths be cost-effective, proving to some
additional 180 exercises and solutions or lower flow rate, full-pipeline heating extent their sustainability as a self-
that fully illustrate the intricacies systems will remain the only technical standing offshore scope.
of reservoir-simulation methodology. solutions for development. ◗ Connecting to existing amortized
An expandable subsea production production hubs, projected
system is being considered to cover all development economics of
Print and Digital generations of tiebacks for both design midsize oil assets in a range up
Versions Available and supply. The system will be aimed at to 80–100 km from existing or
meeting integrated drilling-center re- planned hubs are encouraging.
quirements, expanding compact subsea ◗ It is still unclear which contractor
tree technology to other components, category will eventually propose
and sharing control systems. these systems. Few subsea-
Powering and communication will production-system or installation
Preview and order your evolve to use high-potential telecom- contractors are proposing their
book today at go.spe.org/ munication technology that allows mul- services as a supplier, or at least as
ResSimulation_JPT tiple users (more than 80 subsea con- an integrator, of these extra-long-
trol modules per cable) as well as the subsea-tieback systems, forcing
progressive conversion to all-electric operators to tender components
actuation of subsea valves and trees. separately. JPT

TECHNOLOGY FOCUS
Oilfield Chemistry
Jonathan Wylde, SPE, Head of Global Innovation, Clariant Oil Services
The growth in deepwater production Deepwater formation conditions (or subcooling)

is apparent to anyone who works even that can exist.
vaguely close to this section of the indus-
subsea flowlines The early commercial use of AA chem-
try. Deepwater production continues to offer an almost perfect istry in the oil field goes back as far as
increase and is an important part of oil hydrate-formation the 1990s. Since then, many advance-
growth up to and beyond 2030, when ments have been made and reported in
it may be as high as 12 million–13 mil- environment, the scientific, academic, and patent lit-
lion BOPD. Deepwater production is and control measures erature. In recent years, advancements
fueled by the Golden Triangle of Brazil, have occurred at a tremendous rate,
the Gulf of Mexico, and West Africa. must be taken. which is in line with the almost expo-
One of the more technologically chal- nential growth in deepwater activity.
lenging production-chemistry applica- Several methods exist for hydrate The featured papers and recommend-
tions in deep water is the control of gas control, and they can be classified ed additional reading summarize the
hydrates. Hydrates are a high-pressure/ broadly into mechanical (e.g., insula- state of the art for LDHI AA research
low-temperature phenomenon where, tion, hot-oil circulation) or chemical and development and have been select-
under the correct conditions, produced solutions. The chemistry can be divided to give readers a broad indication
gas will complex with water and form ed into thermodynamic inhibitors (e.g., from both academia and industry around
catastrophic ice-like blockages in subsea alcohols, glycols) and low-dose hydrate the world. JPT
infrastructure. Deepwater subsea flow- inhibitors (LDHIs). Antiagglomerates,
lines offer an almost perfect hydrate- or AAs, are a major class of LDHI and
formation environment, and control are exclusively used in deepwater envi- Recommended additional reading
measures must be taken. ronments because of the severe hydrate- at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
OTC 29660 Biodegradable
Antiagglomerant Chemistry for Hydrate-
Jonathan Wylde, SPE, is the head of global innovation at Clariant Plug Prevention in Various Production
Oil Services in Houston and an honorary associate professor at Conditions by Deepak Steven Monteiro,
Heriot-Watt University. He holds a BS degree in geology and a Halliburton, et al.
PhD degree in physical chemistry from the University of Bristol, OTC 28935 Early Project Low-Dose
UK. Wylde is the author of more than 150 papers and holds sev- Hydrate-Inhibitor Dosage Assumptions
eral patents. He serves on the JPT Editorial Committee and on vs. an Extensive Laboratory Study
committees for the SPE International Conference and Exhibition by P. Conrad, Assured Flow Solutions, et al.
on Oilfield Scale, the SPE International Symposium on Oilfield BHR 2018 143 Measurements of
Chemistry, and the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition. Wylde is also a Dispersant Additive on Hydrate/
technical editor for SPE Production & Operations and SPE Journal. He can be reached Ice Slurry Transport by A. Melchuna,
at jonathan.wylde@clariant.com. Colorado School of Mines, et al.

Benefits of Low-Dosage Hydrate Inhibitors
T his paper summarizes historical

advancements in low-dosage
hydrate inhibitors (LDHIs) over
kinetic hydrate inhibitors (KHIs) and
antiagglomerants (AAs).
KHIs increase the induction time for
guideline is 5 gal LDHI/bbl of condensed
water. Breakthrough of formation water
with a saline content of at least 3 wt%
the past 2 decades, discusses their hydrate formation by interfering with the would reduce the rate to between 0.5 and
advantages and limitations, and nucleation process or the crystal-growth 1.0 gal LDHI/bbl of formation water, al-
their selection criteria. Historically, process. Special surfactants disperse hy- though it should be recognized that this
hydrate risk has been managed by drate particles as they form, reducing would be a different LDHI from the one
keeping fluids warm, removing water, the tendency of hydrates to stick to the used with condensed water.
or injecting thermodynamic hydrate pipe’s inner surface, reducing the chance Oil System. For an oil system, the dos-
inhibitors (THIs), commonly methanol of plug formation. age rate guideline is 1–3 gal LDHI/bbl of
(MeOH) or monoethylene glycol AAs modify the agglomeration of hy- water, a guideline based upon a limited
(MEG). THIs require high dosage rates; drate particles, decreasing hydrate- number of oil tests in the Gulf of Mexi-
therefore, that technique can pose crystal size by affecting hydrate mor- co. In a number of these tests, LDHIs had
limitations to production systems in the phology. This leads to a hydrate slurry to be combined with other chemicals to
form of supply, storage, and umbilical- flow, which decreases the chance of pipe- ensure satisfactory performance, which
injection constraints. Additionally, line blockage. Inhibition mechanisms of should be taken into consideration when
high dosages of MeOH can cause both KHIs and AAs are discussed in detail dealing with waxy, asphaltic crudes.
crude contamination for downstream in the complete paper, as is the historical
refineries. LDHIs continue to offer development of these LDHIs. Temperature Limitations. Some LDHIs
significant efficiency and cost benefits will degrade at elevated temperatures
over other techniques. LDHI Applications over time and will cease to be effective. If
Performance Parameters. The two pri- temperature-performance data are not
Introduction mary parameters for LDHI performance available on the actual LDHI to be used,
THIs have long been used by the indus- measurement include the following: it is recommended to consider 99°C as
try because of their ability to shift the Hold Time. This is defined as the time an upper temperature limit. Any pro-
hydrate-equilibrium curve toward high- between when a rapidly cooled fluid is duction exposed to these temperatures
er pressures and lower temperatures by at a constant temperature below the for an extended period of time should be
changing the activity of water molecules. hydrate-equilibrium temperature and considered to be degraded. Therefore,
MeOH and MEG have proved the most when hydrates first appear. For KHIs, the these sections will need to be purged of
popular types of THI because of their low hold time decreases steeply with the in- degraded LDHIs before use in planned
cost and widespread availability. Though crease in subcooling. shutdowns. Depending on the size and
THIs are low-cost, the volume require- Dosage Rates. To establish actual dos- length of downhole tubing, this could
ment per barrel offsets the cost benefit. age rates for a LDHI in a specific fluid, amount to an extra 30 gal of LDHI for
A group of chemicals developed later, technical-feasibility testing would be re- each planned shutdown.
LDHIs, differ from THIs because they do quired with the actual LDHI and fluid
not shift the hydrate curve; rather, they under actual pressure and temperature Viscosity. Because production systems
interfere with the process of hydrate for- conditions. An approximate range of ex- operate in wide pressure and temper-
mation through different mechanisms. pected LDHI dosage rates can be given as ature ranges, LDHI viscosity is a key
The dosage requirement of these inhibi- examples as follows. performance parameter. In general, the
tors is much lower than that required Gas System. For a gas system operating viscosity reduces with increasing tem-
for THIs. LDHIs include two categories, with condensed water, the dosage-rate perature and increases with increasing
pressure, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2.
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights LDHI Operations
of paper OTC 28905, “Advances in LHDIs and Applications,” by Y.D. Chin and KHIs. The physical properties of KHIs
A. Srivastava, Subsea Engineering Technologies, prepared for the 2018 Offshore are highly variable depending upon the
Technology Conference, Houston, 30 April–3 May. The paper has not been peer products used. Most KHIs are predom-
reviewed. Copyright 2018 Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission. inantly water-soluble polyamides that

120 70
AA 1
60 AA 5
100 AA 6
AA 1 AA 7
AA 2
Viscosity (cp) at 40°F

AA 3 50
80 AA 4
Viscosity (cp)
KHI 1
KHI 2 40
60 KHI 3
KHI 4 30
40
20
20 10
0 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 0 2,000 4,000 6,000 8,000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000
Temperature (°F) Pressure (psig)
Fig. 1—LDHI viscosity change with temperature. Fig. 2—LDHI viscosity change with pressure.
are formulated mostly in a solvent pack- LDHI Screening Considerations a separator may be required to melt the
age having a high flash point. Typical KHIs. Although KHIs are applicable hydrate crystals.
viscosities range between approximately under most producing scenarios, cer- Another consideration for AAs is that
10 and 100 cp at a temperature of 60°F. tain conditions must be considered the water cut should be less than 50%.
KHIs are only soluble sparingly in water when evaluating a potential application. Higher water cuts can invert the emul-
at temperatures above 104°F and care At water salinity levels greater than ap- sion from water-in-oil to oil-in-water,
must be taken that they do not precipi- proximately 17% sodium chloride, the therefore making the AA ineffective.
tate when injected in a hot production polymer may come out of the solu-
stream in which the temperature is high- tion, thereby reducing KHI effective- Conclusions
er than the cloud point. ness. A solution of KHI in water does LDHIs have provided considerable ben-
not provide protection from freezing or efits during the past 2 decades in com-
AAs. Operations with AAs are not dis- icing conditions in the line being treat- parison with THIs. Significantly lower
tinctly different from operations with ed or in the KHI storage tank. A solu- inhibitor concentrations (from 0.1 to
THIs as long as the system is designed tion of KHI cannot be used for melting 1.0 wt% polymer in the free-water
for using AAs. However, for AAs to per- ice or hydrate plugs. It is recommend- phase) result in lower dosage rates than
form optimally, a liquid hydrocarbon ed to have other strategies in place, those required for MeOH.
phase must be present to act as the car- such as a small quantity of THIs, for The advantages of LDHIs also include
rier of the hydrate crystals. AAs can be remediation purposes in the event of ◗◗ Lowering of inhibitor loss caused
used in gas/condensate systems when a blockage. by partitioning into the gas phase,
the volume fraction of hydrates is not The delivery system for KHIs must particularly in comparison with
higher than 40% of the total liquid vol- be designed to provide sufficient dos- MeOH
ume. For oil systems, this number may be age to achieve a hold time greater than ◗◗ Reduction of capital expenses
much lower (less than 20 vol%) because the water residence time in the pipe- through decreased chemical-storage
the viscosity of the suspension increases line. If the gas is undersaturated with and injection-rate requirements
with increasing viscosity of the carrier respect to water, the water in the KHI ◗◗ No requirement for regeneration
oil, whereas particles can also contrib- solution will evaporate and leave a high- because the chemicals are not
ute to the total solid loading of the oil, viscosity fluid. This can be addressed by yet currently recoverable. This is
which may impair pipeline-flow capaci- using more MEG. especially important for offshore
ty. AAs also have minimum requirements operations where payload and deck
for water salinity. AAs. As with KHIs, AAs are applicable space are critical.
Because AAs are designed to keep hy- under most producing conditions, but LDHIs have been reducing o perating
drates dispersed in oil or condensate, other factors must be taken into consid- expenses in many cases through de-
the hydrates separate exceedingly slowly eration when evaluating a potential ap- creased chemical consumption and de-
from the hydrocarbon liquid. The pro- plication. Some AAs have a maximum livery frequency and thus transporta-
duced suspension must be heated before salinity criterion that is normally not tion and handling costs. Additionally,
the water can be separated from the oil; exceeded with produced water. production rates can increase wherever
thus, a topside heater for hydrate slurry Because AAs disperse (i.e., emulsi- inhibitor-injection capacity or flowline
is required. fy) polar hydrate crystals in a nonpo- capacity is limited. LDHIs also lower the
AAs are superior to KHIs with respect lar oil or condensate phase (i.e., con- maintenance of pump and delivery sys-
to the maximum achievable subcooling. tinuous phase), they may sometimes tems, eliminate MeOH in topside and
In general, AAs have no limit to the maxi- require a demulsifier for oil and water downstream operations, and reduce en-
mum allowable shut-in time, which is an- separation. Furthermore, the addition vironmental and safety risks because of
other major advantage of AAs over KHIs. of a heater upstream or heat coil inside lower toxicity. JPT

Locally Sourced, Ecofriendly Hydrate Inhibitor
Effective in Simulated Offshore Environment
G as hydrates pose a serious flow-

assurance problem in offshore
environments where accessibility
low-dosage hydrate inhibitors (LDHIs)
do not stop hydrate from forming com-
pletely because they do not cause a
They form a stable foam in aqueous solu-
tions such as soap. Chemically, saponins
as a group include compounds that are
is restricted. The complete paper hydrate-curve shift. Once hydrate forms, glycosylated steroids, hypernoids, and
investigates gas-hydrate inhibition in a it cannot be eliminated by LDHIs be- steroid alkaloids. Saponins also prevent
simulated offshore environment using cause the operating conditions cannot be agglomeration and are surface-acting
a plant extract (PE) as a local inhibitor. changed (lowering pressures or raising agents with bubbles and foams acting as
The work aims to identify an effective temperatures); thus, a well is still at risk barriers that provide good stability.
biodegradable gas-hydrate inhibitor when LDHIs are used. THIs must still be
from locally sourced materials and available on site, especially when shut- Materials
ascertain its effectiveness compared ting in or starting a well. The materials used include compressed
with the conventional hydrate The local inhibitor is a water-soluble PE natural gas (CNG) of a specific gravity
inhibitor monoethylene glycol (MEG). containing flavonoids, tannins, alkaloids, of 0.5 and a makeup of mostly methane.
Experiments were conducted using a and saponins. Flavonoids act against in- A minihydrate mini-flow loop is used.
mini-flow loop, and involved mitigating flammation and are anticoagulants. They The stainless-steel loop is approximately
hydrate formation using varying weight are polyphenolic compounds found in 39.4 in. long, of 0.5-in. internal diameter
percentages of the inhibitor (1, 2, and vegetables, fruits, and beverages, acting encased in a skid-mounted, ArmaFlex-
3 wt%) and evaluating their effect on as powerful oxidants that protect against insulated 4-in. polyvinylchloride (PVC)
hydrate inhibition in the mini-flow reactive oxygen. Tannins are a hetero- pipe. A control panel houses the three
loop. Sensitivity charts for pressure, geneous group of high-molecular-weight switches that control the process, with
temperature, and time for both the PE polyphenolic compounds with the capac- a refrigerating unit used to simulate the
and MEG were made. In 1 and 2 wt% ity to form reversible and irreversible offshore environment. The setup con-
of the PE, better inhibitory capacity complexes. They are also found in fruits, tains three pumps, five pressure gaug-
than MEG was demonstrated, while legumes, and grasses. Polyphenolics are es, three temperature gauges with two
3 wt% of the PE and MEG had a close a class of chemical compounds consist- differential pressure gauges, including a
match. Because of its ecofriendly and ing of a hydroxyl group bonded directly manual pump, and seven valves. An in-
biodegradable nature, the PE is therefore to an aromatic hydrocarbon group. They hibitor/mixing vessel, a CNG bottle that
recommended for field trial. are otherwise called polyhydroxylphe- can withstand pressure up to 100 bar,
nols and are phytochemicals. They are a and a visual flowmeter are present in the
Introduction structural class of mainly natural prod- setup as well.
Kinetic hydrate inhibitors (KHIs) are ucts. Condensed tannins are the most-
water-soluble polymeric compounds that abundant polyphenols and are found in Experimental Procedures
prevent or delay hydrate formation. Anti- virtually all families of plants. Alkaloids The control panel is connected to the
agglomerants (AAs) function as surfac- are natural products that contain het- power source; then, the system is flushed
tants and prevent hydrates from sticking erocyclic nitrogen atoms and are basic in with ordinary water to ensure that the
together and clumping. The hydrate still character. They are synthesized naturally loop is free of debris or rust. To achieve
forms, but the crystals do not plug and by a large number of organisms including this, water is poured into the inhibitor
can be transported through pipelines. animals, plants, bacteria, and fungi. Sa- vessel and Pump 3 is switched on from
Unlike thermodynamic hydrate inhibi- ponins are a group of secondary metabo- the control panel. Water is drawn into
tors (THIs) such as methanol or glycols, lites found widely distributed in plant life. the loop until a pressure of 25 psia is at-
tained. The valve is closed and Pump 3
switched off. The water is then vented out
through one of three other valves. The
of paper SPE 193439, “Gas-Hydrate Inhibition in a Simulated Offshore Environment process is repeated three or four times.
Using a Local Inhibitor,” by E.V. Urunwo, SPE, S.S. Ikiensikimama, J.A. Ajienka, SPE, After this process, approximately
O. Akaranta, M.O. Onyekonwu, SPE, T.O. Odutola, SPE, and E.O. Okon, University 2660 ml of water is measured into the
of Port Harcourt, prepared for the 2018 Nigeria Annual International Conference and inhibitor vessel, water is drawn into the
Exhibition, Lagos, 6–8 August. The paper has not been peer reviewed. loop to approximately 25 psia, and then

160
140
120
uninhibited
Motivate
Pressure (psia)
100
1 wt% PE
80
1 wt% MEG
Inspire
60 2 wt% PE
40 2 wt% MEG
20 3 wt% PE
0
0 20 40 60 80
Time (minutes)
100 120 140
3 wt% MEG
Educate
Fig. 1—Plot of pressure and time for uninhibited, 1, 2, and 3 wt% of PE and MEG.
Valve 4 is closed. The CNG tank is turned began to rise to approximately 29.5°C
Nominate
on with Valve 1, then an orifice and Valve for another 35 minutes. This is an indi-
6 are opened to build the pressure up to cation that Type 1 or S1 hydrates have
150 psia, after which the valves and ori- begun forming. Pressure declined from
fice are closed. Pump 2 is turned on to 150 to 80 psia in 60 minutes, then de- Do you have colleagues who
draw water into the refrigerator and to clined steadily to 36 psia at the end of the are authorities in their fields and
allow water to circulate in the PVC pipe experiment, indicating the formation of experienced public speakers?
in order to lower the fluid temperature to hydrate in this system.
hydrate-formation temperature. Pump 1 When 1 wt% of local inhibitor was If you do, consider nominating
is turned on after Pump 2 (that is, after used, the pressure reduced from 150 to one or more of them for the
circulation is achieved through Pump 2) 132 psia in 2 hours. The temperature Society of Petroleum Engineers
and is set at 150 V or 250 ft3/hr to cause reduced from 28 to 9.5°C in the first
agitation in the loop. Ice blocks are added 85 minutes and then to 9°C for the rest of Distinguished Lecturer Program.
to the refrigerator (approximately 0.7 m the experiment. The differential pressure
of the 0.5-in. pipe is a spiral loop im- oscillated around 0.3 bar. This shows Learn more about the program
mersed in cold water in the refrigerator) good inhibitory characteristics. Also, for
at www.spe.org/go/NomDL.
to facilitate the cooling process. This spi- 2 wt% of the PE, pressure reduced from
ral portion aids in retention time for in- 150 to 105 psia, and temperature reduced
crements of the fluid under test in the from 30.5 to 6.6°C in 60 minutes and was Nominations are accepted
coldest part of the mini-flow loop where constant for another 25 minutes before until 15 March.
hydrate is most likely to form. The dif- it decreased again to 6°C and remained
ferent readings for temperature, differ- constant until the end of the experiment.
ential pressure, and pressures are noted Differential pressure was relatively sta-
at intervals of 5 minutes throughout the ble. No temperature increase was record-
duration of the experiment, which is ed, meaning that hydrate was inhibited.
120 minutes in total. For 3-wt% inhibitor addition, pressure
For inhibition experiments, the same reduced from 150 to 120 psia over a du-
procedure is followed, but instead of ration of 120 minutes, which shows very
water only, an inhibitor is added into the good inhibitory capacity. Temperature
inhibitor vessel. The inhibitor is added reduced from 31 to 22°C in 15 minutes
on the basis of the weight percent in the and to 16°C in another 10 minutes, and
water phase to be used for the experi- then decreased to 10°C and then 7°C until
ment (i.e., 1, 2, or 3 wt% of inhibitor in the end of the experiment. Differential
relation to the water used) and then the pressure was relatively steady. Hydrate
experiment is commenced per usual. was inhibited.
Comparison of the PE and MEG is The SPE Distinguished Lecturer
Results and Discussions shown in Fig. 1. For the various weight Program is funded by the
In the uninhibited experiment, the dif- percentages compared, 1 wt% PE had SPE Foundation, Offshore Europe,
ferential pressure dropped and then in- better inhibitory capacity than MEG. At
creased gradually until the end of the ex- 2 wt%, both inhibitors were close but AIME, and companies
periment. The temperature reduced from were outperformed by PE at 1 wt%. At that allow their professionals
30 to 27°C in 50 minutes, after which it 3 wt%, both were closely matched. JPT to serve as lecturers.

Study Evaluates Hydrate Antiagglomerants
A common hydrate-management
strategy involves the use of
large volumes of thermodynamic
required to better understand how AAs
affect hydrate blockage.
High-Pressure Visual Autoclave. A vi-
sual high-pressure sapphire autoclave
was used to measure the resistance to
inhibitors (THIs) to operate outside the Experimental Procedure flow of a hydrate slurry in the presence
hydrate-stability region. However, this Micromechanical Hydrate Cohesive of AA. The experiment was conducted
strategy represents significant capital Force. A third-generation MMF appara- isochorically, where the autoclave cell
expenditure and operating costs. Low- tus was used to measure the cyclopen- temperature was controlled by a gly-
dosage hydrate inhibitors (LDHIs), in tane hydrate interparticle cohesive force. col bath with constant cooling and in-
the form of kinetic hydrate inhibitors The MMF uses cyclopentane to create termittent heating. In this experiment,
(KHIs) and antiagglomerants (AAs), Structure II cyclopentane hydrates, the ultrahigh-purity methane was used
present an economical alternative same hydrate structure present in the to form hydrate, which forms Struc-
to THIs. In this study, a quantitative field. The cohesive-force-measurement ture I hydrates. While there are mild
micromechanical force (MMF) has been technique was adapted from previous re- thermophysical-property differences
deployed to study the performance search on hydrate cohesion and asphal- between Structures I and II, a single-
of seven industry AAs. The results tene cohesion. component gas was chosen to minimize
illustrate that an effective AA is one uncertainty in calculating hydrate vol-
that lowers the cohesive forces between Interfacial Tensiometry. An opti- ume fraction (HVF) caused by preferen-
hydrate particles. cal interfacial tensiometer was used to tial denuding of the gas phase.
measure the interfacial tension (IFT)
Introduction between water and oil phases at ambi- Results
AAs prevent hydrate agglomeration of ent pressure and room temperature. A In each MMF experiment, two hydrate
a steady-state hydrate slurry. Hydrate- hooked needle with the AA prepared in particles with radii between 100 and
philic AAs are surfactants that adsorb to paraffin oil was placed in a bulk phase of 350 µm were prepared and a hydrate/hy-
the hydrate/oil interface in preference to deionized water. The resolution of this drate baseline measurement was taken
the water/oil interface. Current operat- apparatus is typically ±1 mN/m and the (consisting of 40 individual pull-off
ing experience suggests that AAs may be threshold sensitivity is 1 mN/m. Typi- trials). To control for abnormal rough-
unsuited to the high water cuts that are cally, surfactant-free systems will rap- ness or morphological characteristics
characteristic of late field life. A success- idly reach equilibrium within 1 minute below the optical resolution of the mi-
ful hydrate AA lowers the cohesive force of creating an oil droplet in water. Con- croscope, the baseline measurement was
or surface free energy of hydrate parti- versely, the presence of a surfactant may compared with the baseline reported in
cles to prevent agglomeration. Rocking decrease the IFT as a function of time, the literature. If the experimental value
cells and high-pressure visual autoclaves asymptotically approaching a steady- was within ±30% of the baseline in
provide a semiquantitative assessment state value. Because the AAs studied con- the literature, the experiment proceeded
of hydrate blockage. However, a knowl- tain surfactant functionality, each IFT to AA trials. Hydrate/hydrate cohesive-
edge gap exists with regard to whether was measured for at least 20 minutes, force measurement at different mass
current industry AAs actually lower hy- after which point the IFT was not ob- fractions of AA-2 were compared with
drate interparticle cohesive and surface served to change with time. Each data oil/water IFT measurements of AA-2 at
free energy. Techniques to deconvolute point represents an average of at least varying mass fractions.
the mechanism of the action of AAs are four independent trials. The hydrate/hydrate cohesive-force
measurements are reduced by more than
80% from baseline at the highest con-
centration reported. In the case of AA-2,
of paper OTC 28578, “Quantitative Ranking and Development of Hydrate
similar behavior is observed for the
Antiagglomerants,” by Shane A. Morrissy, Temiloluwa O. Kuteyi, Mike L. Johns, oil/water IFT measurements where the
Eric F. May, SPE, and Zachary M. Aman, SPE, University of Western Australia, and IFT exists at an order of magnitude of
Stuart F. McKay, SPE, Woodside Energy, prepared for the 2018 Offshore Technology higher concentration. It can be con-
Conference Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 20–23 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed. cluded that AA-2 is a powerful surfac-
Copyright 2018 Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission. tant because it reduces the oil/water IFT

7 100
1st Gen AA 90
Radius Normalized Hydrate 6
(AA-5)
Hydrate Cohesive-Force
Cohesive Force (mN/m) 80
5 70
Reduction (%)
Hydrate Pull-Off Force
Baseline 4.3±0.4 mN/m 60
4
2nd Gen AA 50
3 (AA-6) 40
3rd Gen 30
2
AA (AA-7) 20
1 Current Gen 10
AA (AA-2)
0
0 1st 2nd 3rd 4th
0.0001 0.01 1 Gen AA Gen AA Gen AA Gen AA
(a) Surfactant Mass Fraction (wt%) (AA-5) (AA-6) (AA-7) (AA-2)
7 100
90
6
Radius Normalized Hydrate
Hydrate Cohesive-Force
80
Cohesive Force (mN/m)
5 70
Reduction (%)
Hydrate Pull-Off Force
Baseline 4.3±0.4 mN/m 60
4
AA-1 50
3 40
AA-2
30
2
AA-4 20
1 10
AA-3
0
0 AA-2 AA-1 AA-3 AA-4
0.0001 0.01 1 4th/Current Current Current Current
(b)
Surfactant Mass Fraction (wt%) Gen AA Gen AA Gen AA Gen AA
Fig. 1—Comparison of how hydrate cohesive force changes with surfactant/AA mass fraction (left) and the final hydrate
cohesive-force reduction (right) for: (a) four successive generations of AA formulations for a particular vendor and
(b) four current AA formulations. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals for the 40 measurements.
by over an order of magnitude (to the that surfactant adsorption reduces the chemistries provide much stronger re-
sensitivity limit of the apparatus, less hydrate/oil surface free energy. ductions in the hydrate cohesive force,
than 1 mN/m). This is suggestive of a Using the MMF technique, a quantita- and the produced effect is more consis-
strongly emulsifying chemistry which tive ranking of AAs was deployed to mea- tent. For all current-generation chemis-
may produce downstream emulsifica- sure how effective each AA was at reduc- tries, the hydrate cohesive-force reduc-
tion problems in the flowline. The re- ing hydrate cohesive force. This ranking tions exceed 80%. This consistent result
duction in the hydrate/hydrate cohesive is presented in Fig. 1, where two investi- can be used as a benchmark for the mini-
force is observed at a lower concentra- gations were conducted: mum reduction of hydrate cohesive-force
tion than the reduction in the oil/water ◗ Four generations of a vendor’s for AA performance; that is, a current
IFT. Strong reductions in the hydrate/ chemistry (compared in Fig. 1a) commercial AA should be generating a
hydrate cohesive force and the oil/water ◗ Four current chemistries on the greater than 80% hydrate cohesive-force
IFT likely imply that wettability changes market are compared (Fig. 1b). The reduction. The hydrate cohesive force
to the hydrate surface and water/oil in- plots on the right side are generated and oil/water IFTs were compared for
terface have taken place. by taking the highest hydrate- AA-2 using the MMF and IFT, respec-
Without any AA in the system, hy- cohesive force reduction measured tively. These results supported visual ob-
drates are water-wet and a water droplet at the highest concentration for servations in the MMF about wettability
will adhere favorably to the hydrate sur- each AA and reporting the reduction changes in the system prompted by the
face. With the addition of enough AA-2 as a percentage reduction from AA. It is unclear, however, whether AAs
such that it is saturated in the system, baseline. that strongly reduce hydrate cohesion
the hydrate surface was observed to be- The figure illustrates that all AAs re- must also change wettability.
come oil-wet and rejected a water drop- duce hydrate cohesive force, but not all While AA-2 is an effective AA, provid-
let with which it had come into contact. AA chemistries reduce hydrate cohesive ing a greater than 80% reduction in the
This evidence supports the hypothesis force equally. Later generations of AA hydrate cohesive force, it also has over

an order of magnitude reduction in the relative torque followed by a sharp spike Conclusions
oil/water IFT, modifying the system wet- at approximately 36% HVF is observed. In this work, the performance of seven
tability. However, other AAs produce a This is indicative of jamming behavior, a AAs in the MMF were compared and
similar reduction in the hydrate cohesive conclusion supported by observations of the maximum cohesive-force reduc-
force without the order of magnitude re- wall deposition in the cell. For current- tion obtained by each AA was reported.
duction in the oil/water IFT. generation AAs, low relative torques are These results have been compared with
To compare the results from the MMF observed (within a factor of two of the rel- the maximum oil/water IFT reduction for
with those of a more-traditional technique ative torque before hydrate formation). In each AA. Of the seven AAs studied, four
for AA qualification, all seven AAs were developing ranking criteria, a metric that were current-generation and three were
tested in a high-pressure visual sapphire a maximum relative torque of 1–2 for an previous generations of AA chemistries.
autoclave under the conditions outlined in AA can be considered a “pass” is consis- A general improvement in the cohesive-
the methodology section of the complete tent with the current data. Interestingly, force reduction exists with successive
paper. In this work, the authors have used AA-2 (purple diamonds, Fig. 1) limited generations of AA chemistry. Current-
a condensate from a field in northwest the total conversion of hydrate to approx- generation AAs reduce hydrate cohesive
Australia. An appreciable rise in relative imately 20% HVF, suggesting that the force more than 80% from baseline. An
torque after 25% HVF is observed and an AA likely has secondary crystal-growth- AA that strongly reduces hydrate cohe-
erratic torque signal in the autoclave in- inhibition characteristics. These might be sive force does not necessarily reduce
dicates substantial hydrate growth and slowing the growth such that full conver- oil/water IFT by the same amount. In
agglomeration. All AAs produce a lower sion is not achieved in the duration of the comparing these results with those of
relative torque than the one seen in the autoclave experiment, which is approxi- AA performance in a high-pressure vi-
blank system. In comparing systems at mately 24 hours. For all AAs, visual obser- sual autoclave, it is evident that current-
the same HVF, it can be inferred that the vation is critical because significant depo- generation AAs maintain the relative
hydrates must be more dispersed relative sition or ejection of hydrate outside of the torque of the system with hydrate within
to the blank system, implying that all AAs liquid onto the walls in the gas overboard twice the system torque before hydrate
disperse hydrates to a degree. Secondary can lead to an underestimation of the formation, indicating a good correla-
observations can be made with respect relative torque required to drive a certain tion between the results in the MMF and
to AA-6, where a much lower rise in the HVF in the fluid. the autoclave. JPT
SPE NEWS
SPE Sections Win Awards

Several SPE sections have received rec-
ognition for outstanding contributions Presidential Award for Outstanding Section
to the association. Nine SPE sections Aberdeen Brazil Macaé
have been awarded the 2019 SPE Presi- Abuja Chengdu Timan-Pechora
dential Award for Outstanding Section,
Benin City Nigeria Gulf Coast Warri Nigeria
the highest honor a section can receive.
These sections form the highest-ranked
Section Excellence Award
5% of SPE’s 203 sections around the
Astana Ghana Patagonia
world. Formerly known as the President’s
Award for Section Excellence, the award Azerbaijan Hassi Messaoud Permian Basin
scores the sections on their activities Balikpapan Ivano-Frankivsk Port Harcourt
for technical knowledge dissemination Bangalore Juba Qatar
(30%), section operations and sustain- Barmer Kingdom of Sabah
ability (30%), member benefits (20%), Calgary Saudi Arabia South Australian
outreach (10%), and innovation (10%). Colombian Lagos Suriname
The awards will be presented to sec- Croatian Lima Tashkent
tion officers at the 2019 SPE Annual Duliajan Mexico Tyumen
Technical Conference and Exhibition in Eastern Venezuela North India Ufa
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Edmonton Northeast Colombia Uganda
Thirty-seven SPE sections won the
Egyptian Northwest Russia Vietnam
SPE Section Excellence Award. Formerly
Erbil Oklahoma City
known as the Gold Standard, the Section
Excellence Award is given to 20% of eli-
gible sections. A certificate is emailed to
the award winners.

SPE HONOREES
Legion of Honor Inductees

SPE welcomes 86 members into the Legion of Honor, which observes 50 years of consecutive
membership in the Society. Each honoree becomes dues-exempt and receives a commemorative
plaque marking the milestone. The honorees are listed below under their respective sections.
Amarillo Petroleum Section Golden Gate Section Mississippi Section

Robert D. Grace Hugo Vargas Jeff Kirkwood
Argentine Petroleum Section Gulf Coast Section National Capital Section
Benjamin Coca Paul N. Stanton James C. New
Donald L. Whitfill
Austin Section Edward J. Hrkel North Texas Section
Larry D. McVay James C. Erdle Donald J. Hammerlindl
Rex G. Howell Peter A. Behr Kenneth C. Haggart Jr.
Archie Thompson Jr. Paul T. West
Brazil Section
Newton R. Monteiro James P. Noser William M. Kincaid
Prentice R. Owen
Chennai Section Robert N. Bradford Oklahoma City Section
Braj Nandan Allan L. Drewa Ernest L. Buttross Jr.
Alok Jain Thomas G. Farrell
Colombian Section Ernest L. Grebe II
Florencio Hernandez Fred R. Holasek Pacific Northwest Section
Hal B. Fullerton IV Russell Harold Trimble
Dallas Section J. Michael Gatlin
Thomas R. Sifferman James A. Kishpaugh Patagonia Section
Donald H. Burks John F. Greenip Eduardo H. Vila
Nelson N. Molina John L. Morgan
Philip J. Kreick Lamar E. Loyd Permian Basin Section
Larry J. Kinler James F. Lea Jr.
Delta Section
James E. Lockwood Larry Jay Jenkins Herbert F. Boles
Roger D. Linder Michael D. Keyes Joe M. Mach
Ruel Toups Jr. Olin R. Holt Joel E. Damron
Richard G. Ghiselin Thomas E. Gentry
Denver Section Robert N. Tuttle
John D. Wright Samuel J. Byington Pittsburgh Section
Fabian Oritsebemigho Iwere Robert S. Metcalfe
James C. Howell Illinois Basin Section H.B. Whitehead
Robert C. Herr III
East Texas Section Salt Lake City Section
John A. Musselman London Section James W. Styler
Larry G. Wright David W. Garford
San Joaquin Valley Section
Eastern North America Region Los Angeles Basin Section
Mahmoodur Rahman Jim Hussey
James S. Martin
John E. Peterson Jr.
Lou-Ark Section Santa Maria Section
Ted J. Gilbert Sr.
Evangeline Section Randal Lewis
Jack C. Hisaw Warner T. Smith
Southwest Texas Section
Fort Worth Section Michigan Section John W. Norris
Glenn A. Picquet David W. Tongue
Leonard West Southwestern North America
Franklin A. Hamisch Mid-Continent Section Region
Jon P. Stephenson Kenneth L. Haack Carmon H. Alexander
Larry O. Miller
Four Corners Petroleum Section Phillip W. Terry Vienna Basin Section
Douglas W. Hilchie Walter M. Fast Fritz Boschitsch

PEOPLE
In Memoriam
STEVE HOLDITCH, who served as SPE Presi-

dent in 2002 and was a fixture of the Texas
A&M University Department of Petroleum
Engineering, died 9 August. He was 72.
Holditch was born near Corsicana, Texas,
and moved several times in his youth as his
father pursued a career in the oil and gas
industry. After high school, he attended Texas A&M and became
a member of the Corp of Cadets there, an experience he said
taught him valuable lessons in leadership. That began a lifelong
association with the school.
“I felt like I needed to give back to the university that has been
so instrumental to my life and to my career,” he said about join-
ing the faculty there in a video taped by the school. “I have three Holditch was proud of his alma mater wherever he went
degrees from A&M, I love this place, and I’ve tried my best to and made a point to give back to the school whenever
he could.
help A&M every way that I can.”
Holditch earned a BS degree in 1969, an MS degree in 1970,
and PhD in 1975, all in petroleum engineering. He served on the ly missed,” said SPE CEO and Executive Vice President Mark
faculty at Texas A&M from 1976 until his retirement in 2013. Rubin. “He was a great leader who had a very positive impact
He was the head of the Harold Vance Department of Petroleum on SPE and the many people he worked with in the industry
Engineering from 2004 through 2012 and was former head of over the years. He epitomized a quote attributed to Harry Tru-
the Texas A&M Energy Institute. He taught both undergradu- man, ‘It is amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care
ate and graduate courses and supervised more than 100 MS who gets the credit.’”
and PhD students during his tenure there. Texas A&M named “Steve combined two very rare qualities: he was an incred-
Holditch a Distinguished Alumni in 2014 and created a posi- ibly smart man but was one of few words,” said Spath, 2014
tion in his honor, the Stephen A. Holditch ’69 Department Head SPE President. “He could simplify the most complex of prob-
Chair in Petroleum Engineering, which is currently held by for- lems into everyday terms and normally managed to interject a
mer SPE President Jeff Spath. In 2016, he was inducted into the bit of humor. I had the utmost respect for him.”
Corps of Cadets Hall of Honor. Holditch held numerous leadership positions in SPE and
Known for his straightforward style, Holditch found success received many honors for his volunteerism with the Society as
in industry and made significant contributions to oil and gas well as his technical expertise. Besides being SPE President in
technology. In 1976, he founded his own consulting company, 2002, he served as vice president–finance, was a member of the
S.A. Holditch & Associates, which assisted with petroleum engi- SPE Board of Directors during 1998–2003, and was named an
neering projects throughout the globe. After selling the com- SPE Honorary Member, the Society’s highest honor, in 2006.
pany to Schlumberger 20 years after its founding, he became He received some of SPE’s highest technical awards, including
a Schlumberger Fellow for 5 years and the Lester C. Uren Award, John Franklin
traveled internationally as a consultant. Carll Award, and Anthony F. Lucas Medal.
Holditch was elected to the US Nation- “Steve was a great friend and mentor
al Academy of Engineering, the highest to many,” said Nathan Meehan, manag-
honor that can be given to an engineer, ing director at Gaffney, Cline, and Asso-
in 1995 at age 49. ciates and SPE President during 2016.
“A leader of character is someone who “When I went back to college to pursue
makes the right decision and is always my PhD, he spent a lot of time counsel-
straightforward and honest,” he said in ing me and providing practical advice. I
a video produced by A&M when he was first served on the SPE Board of Direc-
named a Distinguished Alumni. “I’ve tors when he was SPE President; it was
always tried to act that way. When I say easy to see how much he loved and cared
something, I mean it. I’m not trying to for the Society and our members. He was
finesse anybody. That’s who I am.” fun to be around and mixed advanced
He had many admirers throughout the Holditch cited his training with technical knowledge with homespun wit.
oil and gas industry, both as a colleague the A&M Corps of Cadets as a We will all miss him and cherish our
key to his success.
and as a person. “Steve will be deep- memories of him.”

JUAN V. ROGER, SPE Distinguished Mem- tor from 1994 to 1996 and the first Latin American SPE
ber and the first SPE South America and President in 1999.
Caribbean Regional Director, died 5 August Roger began his career at Creole Petroleum Corp., an affili-
in Caracas, Venezuela. He was 89. ate of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and worked in east-
Roger was instrumental in the growth ern and western Venezuela oil fields before being transferred
of SPE in the Latin America and Carib- to Caracas in 1971 as chief of reserves evaluation. He became
bean region through his active partici- chief petroleum engineer of the company in 1975, and was
pation, both at the international and regional levels. He later in charge of the Lagoven production department in
became an SPE member in 1956 after graduating with a BS Houston. He returned to Caracas in 1984 as corporate man-
degree in petroleum engineering from Oklahoma Universi- ager of technology for drilling and exploitation for PDVSA and
ty. He was a member of the SPE Oil and Gas Reserves Com- retired from the company in 1993.
mittee in 1987, which produced the first version of what is Roger was awarded the SPE Regional Service Award for the
currently well known as the Petroleum Resources Manage- South America and Caribbean in 1992 and 1995, and became
ment System. an SPE Distinguished Member in 1996.
In 1989, Roger was elected the first SPE South America Honored as a Century Club Member for recruiting more
regional director, a position he held from 1990 to 1993. Dur- than 100 new members to SPE, in recent years Roger was part
ing his tenure, he supported the move to adopt the word of the board of the SPE Caracas Petroleum Section, a strong
“International” to the SPE title, as SPE is currently known. supporter of local student paper contests, and helped guide
He also promoted adding “Caribbean” to the name of the other Venezuelan SPE sections. He was the Caracas Petro-
South American region. Major SPE events were launched leum Section Scholarship Chairperson from 2008 to 2011,
in the region during his term, including the Latin Amer- and the treasurer of the section at the time of his death. He
ican and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference was also a member of the SPE Young Member Outstanding
(LACPEC). Currently in its 17th edition, the first LACPEC Service Award Committee and the Public Service Award Com-
was held in Brazil in 1990, and the second one in Caracas mittee at various times. His plaque of acknowledgment from
in 1992. Roger nurtured leadership participation from the the SPE Caracas Petroleum Section reads, “For his 60+ years
region in SPE. Among the SPE leaders he promoted was Gus- of unconditional, extraordinary dedication and leadership for
tavo Inciarte, who was the South America regional direc- the SPE in Venezuela, and South America and the Caribbean.”
ADVERTISERS IN THIS ISSUE JPT SALES

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Company Pilot Chemical Company Media Accounts Manager
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Page 45 Companies (S–Z)
Halliburton Rock Flow Dynamics Tel: +1.713.457.6823
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S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 • VO LU M E 7 1 , N U M B E R 9 JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY

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