July 2013 ///
Special Focus
New vessels and designs for deepwater drilling and completion are emerging. These designs feature more efficient handling, with increased safety features, for rig equipment, including drilling risers, drill pipe, casing, etc., to attain more cost-effective drilling and completion of deepwater wells.
Riserless light well intervention can effectively stimulate production in subsea wells, where workovers were once too expensive to justify.
A successful exploration campaign, in conjunction with a consequent appraisal program, revealed a troubled interval, with a risk of failures from downhole vibrations. Based on the large number of prospected wells, the operator acted to remove the projected risk, while still in the appraisal phase.
Features
An alternative method for gravel packing fishhook wells uses conventional service tool configurations and results in very low friction pressure during the treatment, making it applicable to wells with narrow frac/pore-pressure windows.
From swellable packers to port collars, one oilfield services company is tackling mechanical and non-mechanical cementing challenges around the world.
Part 2: Wireline Cased-Hole Logging, Coring, and Wellsite Evaluation—New developments include pulsed-neutron logging, casing integrity, flow profiling, intelligent tracers, nanoparticle contrast agents; wireline coring and pressure coring, core preservation, QC/QA of special-core analysis; cuttings-based correlation, mud-gas analysis, applications of advanced mud-gas analysis.
The region has one of the world’s leading oil and LNG sectors, with mega E&P projects coming onstream on a regular basis, despite a production decline in Nigeria, due to oil thefts and sabotage.
Oil and gas operators throughout the world are exploring for shale plays with the same fervor by which astronomers are scanning the universe for signs of life. If there’s life on Earth, shouldn’t there be life on some of the billions of planets out there? Applying the same logic, where are the Bakkens and Eagle Fords in the rest of the world?
Extensive bathymetric surveys and metocean work were critical for seismic coverage in a reef environment in Western Australia
Columns
Pramod Kulkarni, World Oil
Person-to-person interaction in the Facebook age
David Blackmon, Contributing Editor
Texas legislators do minimal harm to producers in latest session
William J. Pike, World Oil
TGS, CGG are on the move
Jim Redden, Contributing Editor
And, the twain shall meet
Dr. Anas Alhajji, Contributing Editor
Syria’s oilfield nightmare grows bigger by the day
Thomas Böhm, EagleBurgmann
Innovations from the new API 682 standard for mechanical seals and supply systems
John Betz, World Oil
Michael Woelk: Leak detection hits the streets
Kurt Abraham, World Oil
Canada’s upstream exudes cautious optimism
News & Resources
New products and services
Shale Technology Review
A recent survey found a number of shale-related issues that operators and technology providers are concerned about. It also found a significant trend toward greater natural gas usage in high-horsepower applications.
Shale Technology Review: New Products & Services
Exploitation of unconventional resources, such as shale, calls for new exploration tools to address unique challenges.
Water is, by far, the largest component of frac fluids, and is usually the most difficult to source, recycle and dispose. There are many ways to minimize the amount of water that must be handled, but its effective treatment for reuse or disposal is becoming an increasingly critical aspect of shale development.
Significant progress has been made in hydraulic fracturing over the last several decades, but several crucial factors remain to be addressed, particularly as pertain to horizontal sections.
Horizontal drilling and multi-stage fracturing have been the technology enablers for shale gas and liquids exploration and production. In the early days, the operators thought this was all the technology they needed—drill down to the shale formation, kick off a horizontal lateral somewhere in the shale and start fracing. The results, of course, were inconsistent. Some wells produced at exceptionally high initial rates; others were low producers. Moreover, the wells were expensive to drill and produce.
Amid tight economics, shale enables drilling technology development in an unequaled spurt of creativity.