Preview of OTC 2003

Envision, Enable, Enact is this year's theme at the Offshore Technology Conference, May 5-8 in Houston. This year, World Oil asks the OTC management the relevant question: What are you doing to improve OTC?

 Special Report: Technology From Europe

As part of our OTC issue, this special section offers the latest offshore technology innovations from the main European players: United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Netherlands, France and Italy. A selection of intriguing technology developments and case history applications from the last 12 months (since the previous OTC) will be presented. There will also be interviews representative of the offshore policy/technology views of these countries.

 Production – Artificial lift

Part 1: From their base at Texas Tech University, our long-standing contributors, the duo of Herald Winkler and Jim Lea, will compile the first half of one of World Oil's most popular, annual features. Once again, they will assemble a fine array of exciting new developments/systems in the categories of Rod Pumping and Gas Lift. There will be ample photos and diagrams to accompany the featured items.

 Exploration

Predicting pore pressure is increasingly becoming an important issue, both for safety and operational reasons. Loren and Associates and Fairfield Industries present a method for prediction pore pressure, pre-drill, from seismic data. The authors present a study that used existing data with well control. The well data was held blind and used as verification of the technique..

 Drilling

Shell and Halliburton discuss how Kudu project's extreme technical and logistical challenges were handled in the remote location of offshore Namibia. Two wells with bottomhole temperatures exceeding 205°C (400°F) were successfully drilled with water-base fluid, necessitating careful design of both the well and the drilling fluid to maximize performance. Includes a "how we did it" overview of the Kudu project.

Peter Velez, Chairman, API Executive Committee on Drilling and Production Operations, lays out the need for setting a standard for safety in offshore oil and gas operations. The US offshore industry boasts a safety record that is the envy of many industries around the world, yet it is not resting on its laurels. Offshore standards and RPs are updated on an ongoing basis, both at regular intervals and whenever experience warns of a problem.