The country's large oil and gas companies emerged from the crisis largely unscathed, though they were forced to cut investments. Uncertainty about demand in Europe and the FSU has Russia looking east for new markets.
Part 1 of 3: Misalignment of well objectives can complicate mitigation efforts and induce drilling hazards by limiting the ability to apply adequate hydraulic horsepower and to manage ECD.
Located in the Gulf of Mexico in nearly 8,000 ft of water, the Perdido project is the deepest spar application to date in the world and Shell’s first fully integrated application of its inhouse digital oilfield technology— called “Smart Field”—in the Western hemisphere. Developed by Shell on behalf of partners BP and Chevron, the spar and the subsea equipment connected to it will eventually capture about an order of magnitude more data than is collected from any other Shelldesigned and -managed development operating in the Gulf of Mexico. This article describes Shell’s digital oilfield design philosophy, briefly explains the five design elements that underpin “smartness” in Shell’s North and South American operations and sheds light on the process by which a highly customized digital oilfield development and management plan was put together for Perdido. Although Perdido is the first instance in North and South America in which these design elements and processes were applied in an integrated way, all of Shell’s future new developments in the Western hemisphere are expected to follow the same overarching design principles. Accordingly, this article uses Perdido as a real-world example to outline the high-level details of Shell’s digital oilfield design philosophy and processes.
As the industry moves to ultradeep water, mitigation alternatives will be critical to sustain production efficiency.
Numerous approaches have been published that derive fluid indicators (often called direct hydrocarbon indicators, or DHI) from AVO (Amplitude Variations with Offset) equations. The main idea behind these methods is to use the linearized Zoeppritz equations to extract petrophysical parameters such as P-impedance, S-impedance, bulk modulus, shear modulus, Lame’s parameters, and Poisson’s ratio, and infer the fluid content from cross-plots of these parameters. Russell et al. (2003) used standard poroelasticity theory (Biot, 1941, and Gassmann, 1951) to generalize the several of these methods using a parameter dependent on the dry rock Vp/Vs ratio. Also, In this study, we use the Han (1986) lab measurements to compare the generalized fluid method with other fluid methods.
The pressure on the oil and gas industry to meet the growing demand for energy when faced with fewer technical professionals, more complex reservoirs, and increased global competition is making it more critical than ever before for operators to make quick, accurate, and informed field development decisions that efficiently leverage the expertise of seasoned technical professionals. With experienced, technical professionals in short supply, the industry is looking for information technologies that can extend the reach of technical experts and better ground high- level business decisions in the scientific evaluation of the asset. Flexible workflow automation systems can now take technical production applications at the engineering level and put them in a computing environment where they can be integrated with business process management (BPM) systems to create automated asset-level workflows. In initial implementations, the results have included more efficient production operations, less personnel time required to complete repeatable production tasks, better incorporation of uncertainties into business level decisions, and most importantly, increased reservoir production. Halliburton has partnered with SIMULIA to deliver advanced technologies that have traditionally been used for complex manufacturing and design applications to the O&G industry. Halliburton has adapted the iSight® and FIPER® software into the normal day-to-day operations routine of an O&G production engineer and allowed him/her to become much more efficient. Halliburton commercially markets the SIMULIA iSight and FIPER technologies into the O&G industry re-branded as AssetConnect™ and part of Landmark's DecisionSpace® for Production™ technology suite.
Subsurface imaging using conventional seismic reflection techniques is challenging in areas where high-velocity rocks such as basalts are underlain by low-velocity rocks. The seismic image quality worsens in the presence of intercalated sediments within the basaltic rocks. This article presents an example showing possible complications expected in regions characterized by basalt flows. It further attempts to examine the applicability of using locally converted seismic waves to image the basalt layer as well as structures underneath them.
Neural networks are used to model the rate of penetration while drilling, thus giving greater control over real-time logging tools that often require the driller to slow drilling to a specific penetration rate.
This paper describes the successful planning and implementation of the world’s first kickoff from vertical in a 26-in hole using a rotary steerable system (RSS). The RSS assembly was used to kickoff and build angle in soft Gulf of Mexico (GoM) surface sediment in the riserless section. Previous directional attempts in 26-in hole in this formation using conventional positive displacement motors presented several challenges. These challenges included reduced rate of penetration (ROP) during slide drilling and increased wellbore exposure to the non-inhibitive drilling fluid. These factors together contribute to a significantly over gauged hole in the shallow, unconsolidated sediments, which has been estimated in some cases to be as much as 34-in. The impact of such large holes increases mud and cement costs and also greatly reduces the probability of a successful cement job. The risks for inadequate axial support, isolation of shallow hazards and wellhead subsidence increase almost exponentially with hole size. Soft shallow sediments provided two major challenges for the 26-in rotary steerable system: 1. Sustain enough side force to deflect the bottom hole assembly (BHA) as required to kickoff the well and build to the desired angle. 2. Improve overall ROP, therefore: reducing the hole susceptibility to washout, reducing consumables cost and lowering the risk and implications of unsuccessful cement jobs. The new RSS was tested on two 26-in sections, both of which required kickoffs at 300 ft below the mud line followed by a 1°/100 ft build rate to an angle of 25° for setting the 22-in casing shoe. In both cases the RSS was able to deliver the desired build rates as well as delivering an overall increased ROP that resulted in a reduction in hole washout. The introduction of rotary steerable systems for 26-in hole sizes now provides operators with the ability to drill wells from top to bottom with these systems and, therefore, fully exploit the advantages of improved borehole quality, maximized drilling efficiency, and ultimately reduced drilling costs.
