Issue: October 2010
Special Focus
Attaining success with drilling hazard management (DHM) depends on recognition of the project’s risks. If executed effectively, the process yields a comprehensive awareness that provides a foundation not only to mitigate risk but also to optimize operations.
Tapping the massive oil sands reserves at Suncor’s Firebag property in northeastern Alberta, Canada, requires the drilling of many pairs of wells, spaced close together, for steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).
When it comes to the science of making hole, the industry has been making progress bit by bit. This year is no exception. PDC bits remain the tool of choice for borehole construction; roller-cone and fixed-cutter bits are essentially mature products.
The first installment of this three-part series discussed the early commercial history and technical challenges encountered in the manufacture of polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) cutters and bits.
Features
During a four-year period starting in May 2008, 23 companies are collaborating in the Integrated Operations in the High North Joint Industry Project to develop a digital platform for use in an Arctic setting.
For roughly half a century, the offshore oil and gas industry has been learning how best to perform production operations on the seafloor.
High-resolution geological models built using seismic, geological and engineering data are often upscaled to smaller-size flow models for reservoir simulation. It is well-known that reservoir heterogeneities play a very important role in reservoir behavior.
El Paso E&P Company operates coalbed methane (CBM) wells in Alabama’s Black Warrior Basin. Because of low reservoir pressure and low liquid rates, the majority of these wells require artificial lift to remove water from the wellbore in order to allow the coal seam to produce gas.
As the global challenge to find, develop and produce new oil and gas resources continues, the upstream industry’s ability to boost recovery from existing resources has become increasingly essential.
The search for shale gas bounty has taken operators from the urban setting of the Barnett to the diverse rural settings of the Marcellus, Haynesville, Eagle Ford and Bakken plays.
In most of the North American shale plays, gas has been developed in pads of one or a few wells. However, for a remote development like the Horn River Basin of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, the economics of this small-scale type of development are daunting.
The Horn River Basin has attracted attention as one of the latest resource plays to emerge in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin.
The vast heavy oil reserves of Venezuela’s Orinoco belt are not easy to characterize. While there is no mystery as to the reservoirs’ location and massive volumes of oil in place, the Orinoco oil fields can become quite complex as one steps out from producing blocks.
Columns
Yogi Berra, the legendary baseball player and widely renowned master of the mangled message, counseled that when you come to a fork in the road, your best bet is to take it. Yogi’s unique version of fuzzy logic could very well describe the US attitude toward shale gas drilling.
With its recent burst onto the US shale gas market and a series of new oil and gas discoveries, it is rare for a week to go by without a major news headline about Reliance Industries.
Four British oil companies continue to drill offshore the Falkland Islands and are now scheduled to drill eight new wells before the year is out, despite an escalating war of words between Argentina and the UK over the self-governing British territory. The companies currently involved are all small explorers, either privately owned or listed on London’s junior AIM market.
Anyone keeping an eye on seismic advertisements in trade publications must have noticed the proliferation of azimuth, usually identified by the shorthand AZ as part of a larger acronym.
On Sept. 19, the Macondo 252 well was officially proclaimed dead, following a successful pressure test on the relief well. It was exactly one day short of five months since control of the well was lost.
News & Resources
Enterprise Products Partners will construct a 140-mi pipeline to transport crude oil from the liquids-rich Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas to an interconnect with its Sealy Station crude oil system.
Industry At A Glance
International Geophysical Activity
International Offshore Rigs
International Rotary Rig Count
International Rotary Drilling Rigs Graph
Monthly US Gas Prices and Trends ($/Mcf)
Selected World Oil Prices Graph ($/bbl)
U.S. Geophysical Activity
US Rotary Drilling Rigs
Rotary Rigs Running in US
Workover Rig Count
US Workover Rigs
World Oil and NGL Production
Workover Rig Count
