Issue: November 2016
Special Focus
Five trends in well integrity (WI) for production operations have emerged, with significant implications for the industry’s future direction.
As shown in a case study at a North American field with a CO2 – Water Alternating Gas (WAG) flood operation, this anticipated line reduction method for field monitoring now provides operators an additional tool for managing and optimizing asphaltene treatment programs.
Features
Well integrity, the overarching driver in the industry’s quest to achieve safe, efficient and long-term production, is achieved by efficiently establishing critical well barriers, including proper mud weight and casing/cement, that provide reliable isolation and mitigate the risk of an uncontrolled release of formation fluids.
International land and global offshore rig demand continues to drift lower, as markets seek to rebalance. The North American land rig market is slowly improving, after finding a cyclical bottom in late May.
Coring operations require careful planning to prevent operational risks and unbudgeted costs. The latest technology combats these issues and leads to quality coring operations.
Efficient subsea safety systems isolate a well in a controlled manner during exploration, completion and intervention. By utilizing a landing string system (LSS), non-productive time (NPT) is reduced significantly during shutdown, disconnect or drive-off, by providing controlled isolation of the wellbore and associated hydrocarbons. The LSS facilitates critical hydraulic and electrical feed-through to subsurface completion components. This yields potential rig time savings of 24-plus hr in shallow water, and up to 48 hr in deep water.
In a dark market, the Permian basin keeps the light on
Unleashing potential hinges on government policies
Packers Plus has been at the forefront of multi-stage ball-activated completions in Argentina since 2007.
Any such system established by the federal government will become subject to too much bureaucratic control and thus act as an economic drag.
Columns
Newfoundland continues to exude promise
Systemic analysis shows a failure of systems to match up
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better
Between a rock and hot place
Trial separation
Umbilicals are key enablers for subsea production
Indonesia has a new oil and gas strategy
Looking to the future of subsea processing
Brian Richards: Inventing a way out
It ain’t going away
News & Resources
World of oil and gas
Industry at a glance
People in the industry
Companies in the news
New products and services
World Oil Awards
The 2016 World Oil Awards honored those “Rising to the Challenge” during a difficult period for the upstream oil and gas industry.