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CONTENTS
Volume 69 • Number 9

14 GUEST EDITORIAL • TECHNOLOGY’S ROLE FOR

TODAY’S NEW-LOOK, MULTIDISCIPLINARY TEAMS
For the oil and gas industry to move to the next level, automation
needs to be clearly defined beyond a catchword. Commercial
products and services are readily available today, but there is still
a long road ahead for every stage of the existing workflow to
be challenged.
30 THIS VISION OF ONSHORE SEISMIC MAY LOOK
STRANGE AT FIRST
Total is rethinking how it does seismic surveys in remote spots where
the terrain challenges the ability to gather data. The company’s vision
is to replace people and heavy equipment with drones and airships,
among other ideas that may change the face of survey work.
34 CLOUDS ARE FORMING AROUND THE UPSTREAM
SECTOR AND THAT’S A GOOD THING
Treated as just another buzz phrase a few years ago, cloud computing
is seeing increased adoption in the oil and gas business and some
Drones carry dart-shaped seismic
small firms are hoping to accelerate that uptake. receivers that will be dropped into
38 INDUCED EARTHQUAKES IN OKLAHOMA DROPPING, the forest below. The lead drone
BUT NOT OFF THE RADAR coordinates the automated work.
Source: Total.
Stricter wastewater injection limits and low oil prices are driving
Oklahoma’s earthquake rate lower. However, the rate is now stalling
and experts are not sure why.
40 FILLING IN THE BLANKS TO LIMIT EARTHQUAKE RISKS
The industry has learned that injecting too much waste water too fast
into a deep fault may cause an earthquake. The problem has been
most of those faults are only discovered after the event. Researchers DEPARTMENTS
are now working to map those features, and understand what it takes
to avoid trouble. 6 Performance Indices
43 OUTLOOK POINTS TO PEAK TRANSPORT DEMAND 8 Regional Update
FOR OIL 10 President’s Column
How will the industry look when the transportation demand for oil 12 Comments
peaks and levels off, which BP forecasts will happen around 2035? 16 Technology Applications
A BP economist discusses the forecast and its uncertainties and an 20 Technology Update
SPE Distinguished Lecturer offers a scenario in which peak transport
24 E&P Notes
demand occurs sooner.
101 People
46 CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS SHALE AS AN 102 SPE News
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
The panel sessions and technical presentations at the Unconventional 106 SPE Events
Resources Technology Conference highlighted topics such as 107 Professional Services
emerging approaches to improving oil and gas recovery from tight 108 Advertisers’ Index
rocks and induced seismicity risks.

An Official Publication of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Printed in US. Copyright 2017, Society of Petroleum Engineers.
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SPE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
OFFICERS
2017 President
Janeen Judah, Chevron
2016 President
Nathan Meehan, Baker Hughes
2018 President
Darcy Spady, Broadview Energy
Vice President Finance
Roland Moreau, ExxonMobil Annuitant
REGIONAL DIRECTORS
AFRICA
Adeyemi Akinlawon, Adeb Konsult
CANADIAN
Cam Matthews, C-FER Technologies
EASTERN NORTH AMERICA
Joe Frantz Jr., Range Resources
GULF COAST NORTH AMERICA
J. Roger Hite, Inwood Solutions
MID-CONTINENT NORTH AMERICA
Chris Jenkins, Independent Energy Standards
MIDDLE EAST
Khalid Zainalabedin, Saudi Aramco
NORTH SEA
Karl Ludvig Heskestad, Aker BP
NORTHERN ASIA PACIFIC
Phongsthorn Thavisin, PTTEP
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NORTH AMERICA
Erin McEvers, Clearbrook Consulting
RUSSIA AND THE CASPIAN
Anton Ablaev, Schlumberger
JPT STAFF
Glenda Smith, Publisher
John Donnelly, Editor
Pam Boschee, Senior Manager Magazines
Chris Carpenter, Technology Editor
Trent Jacobs, Digital Editor
Anjana Sankara Narayanan, Editorial Manager
Joel Parshall, Features Editor
Stephen Rassenfoss, Emerging Technology Senior Editor
Stephen Whitfield, Senior Staff Writer
Adam Wilson, Special Publications Editor
Craig Moritz, Assistant Director Americas Sales & Exhibits
Mary Jane Touchstone, Print Publishing Manager
David Grant, Digital Publishing Manager
Laurie Sailsbury, Composition Specialist
Dennis Scharnberg, Proofreader
Introducing PulseEight
Wireless Intelligent
SOUTH AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN
Anelise Quintao Lara, Petrobras Completion for the
SOUTH, CENTRAL, AND EAST EUROPE
Matthias Meister, Baker Hughes
'LJLWDO 2LO HOG
SOUTH ASIA AND THE PACIFIC
Salis Aprilian, PT Badak NGL
without limits
SOUTHWESTERN NORTH AMERICA
Libby Einhorn, Concho Oil & Gas
WESTERN NORTH AMERICA
Andrei Popa, Chevron
TECHNICAL DIRECTORS
DRILLING
Jeff Moss, ExxonMobil
HEALTH, SAFETY, SECURITY, ENVIRONMENT,
AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Trey Shaffer, ERM
MANAGEMENT AND INFORMATION
J.C. Cunha
COMPLETIONS
Jennifer Miskimins, Colorado School of Mines
PRODUCTION AND FACILITIES
Hisham Saadawi, Ringstone Petroleum Consultants
RESERVOIR DESCRIPTION AND DYNAMICS
Tom Blasingame, Texas A&M University
DIRECTOR FOR ACADEMIA
Dan Hill, Texas A&M University
AT-LARGE DIRECTORS
Khaled Al-Buraik, Saudi Aramco
Helena Wu, Santos Ltd.
The Journal of Petroleum Technology
registered trademark of SPE.
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ZZZ WHQGHND FRP
 PERFORMANCE INDICES

WORLD CRUDE OIL PRODUCTION+‡ HENRY HUB GULF COAST NATURAL GAS SPOT PRICE‡

THOUSAND BOPD
6
2017
O PEC JAN FEB MAR APR 5 USD/million Btu
Algeria 1340 1340 1316 1306 4
Angola 1658 1688 1630 1700
3
Ecuador 536 535 531 528
Gabon 200 185 190 210 2
Iran 4300 4300 4544 4544
1
Iraq 4565 4445 4431 4426

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

2017
JAN

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL
Kuwait1 2830 2770 2763 2763
Libya 680 690 590 535
Nigeria 1849 1869 1730 1780
Qatar 1487 1467 1507 1512
WORLD CRUDE OIL PRICES (USD/bbl)‡
Saudi Arabia1 10020 10040 9992 10022
UAE 3067 3047 3028 3008
Venezuela 2100 2090 2090 2080 2017
DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL
TOTAL 34632 34466 34342 34414
Brent 53.32 54.58 54.87 51.59 52.31 50.33 46.37 48.48

THOUSAND BOPD WTI 51.97 52.50 53.47 49.33 51.06 48.48 45.18 46.63

2017
NON-OPEC JAN FEB MAR APR
Canada 4097 4128 3607 3443
WORLD ROTARY RIG COUNT†
China 3855 3929 3903 3891

Egypt 490 489 489 487

Mexico 2054 2051 2053 2064 2017

REGION JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL
Norway 1660 1709 1750 1730
US 683 744 789 853 893 931 953
Russia 10733 10713 10654 10603
Canada 302 342 253 108 85 150 198
UK 970 944 945 915
USA 8858 9075 9107 9083 Latin America 176 179 185 182 190 192 196
Other2 13403 13422 13221 13209 Europe 98 107 94 91 95 91 82

TOTAL 46120 46460 45729 45425 Middle East 382 382 386 389 391 397 397

Africa 79 77 80 89 84 86 89
Total World 80752 80926 80071 79839
Asia Pacific 198 196 198 205 197 194 195

INDICES KEY
TOTAL 1918 2027 1985 1917 1935 2041 2110
Numbers revised by EIA are given in italics.
+
Figures do not include natural gas plant liquids.
1
Includes approximately one-half of Neutral Zone production.
2
Additional annual and monthly international crude oil production statistics WORLD OIL SUPPLY AND DEMAND‡
are available at http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/.
† Source: Baker Hughes.
‡ Source: EIA.
MILLION BOPD 2017
Quarter 3rd 4th 1st 2nd

SUPPLY 96.99 98.33 96.88 98.01

DEMAND 97.57 97.90 96.95 97.83
Supply includes crude oil, lease condensates, natural gas plant liquids, biofuels, other liquids,
and refinery processing gains.

6 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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 REGIONAL UPDATE
AFRICA
Z Sound Energy reported successful
operations at the Koba-1 well at Sidi
Moktar onshore Morocco. The company
said it had successfully re-entered,
completed, perforated, and flared gas
at surface from the Argovian reservoir,
which has been the main producing
reservoir in the Kechoula discovery.
After perforating a 16-ft interval at a
measured depth of 4,612 ft, where the
static pressure was measured at 98 bar,
Sound Energy confirmed a producible
gas accumulation. The company has
temporarily suspended the well to prepare
for a rigless extended well test. Drilled
at the crest of the Kechoula discovery,
the Koba well is close to infrastructure
and will have good access to Morocco’s
gas market.
ASIA
Z Repsol and Gazprom Neft have
signed a memorandum of understanding
(MOU) to increase collaboration between
8 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
both companies in West Siberia. The
MOU commits the companies to seek
new opportunities in collaboration to
increase regional exploration activity.
Either company will be able to pursue
opportunities individually after the
partner exercises a right of first refusal.
During 2014, Repsol announced two
hydrocarbon discoveries in the area
at Karabashsky blocks 1 and 2, for
which the recoverable resources are
estimated at 240 million BOE by the
Russian Federation’s Ministry of Natural
Resources and Environment.
EUROPE
Z Repsol Sinopec Resources UK said
that first gas has been delivered on
schedule from the Cayley field, the
third and final discovery to be brought
on-stream during the major Montrose
Area Redevelopment (MAR) project
in the United Kingdom Central North
Sea. Gross incremental production from
Cayley and the Godwin and Shaw fields,
previously started up, is estimated to peak
at 40,000 BOE/D. The new production is
expected to extend the life of the Montrose
facilities, which were installed in 1976, to
beyond 2030. Repsol Sinopec is the MAR
project operator with a 58.97% interest.
Marubeni Oil & Gas holds the remaining
stake. Repsol Sinopec is a joint venture
of Repsol and Addax Petroleum UK, a
subsidiary of Sinopec.
MIDDLE EAST
Z Total and the National Iranian Oil
Company (NIOC) have signed a contract
for the development and production of
phase 11 of South Pars (SP11), the world’s
largest gas field. The project will have
a production capacity of 2 Bcf/D, or
400,000 BOE/D including condensate. The
produced gas will supply Iran’s domestic
market starting in 2021. The SP11 project
will consist of a first phase in which 30
wells and two wellhead platforms will
be developed and connected to existing
onshore treatment facilities by subsea
pipelines, and a second phase in which
offshore compression facilities will be
built. Operator Total has a 50.1% stake
in SP11, with China National Petroleum
Corporation (CNPC) and NIOC holding 30%
and 19.9% interests, respectively.
NORTH AMERICA
Z Talos Energy has made a historic, major
oil discovery offshore Mexico. The Zama-1
well discovered an estimated 1.4 billion bbl
to 2 billion bbl of light oil in place, according
to published reports. As the country’s first
wildcat discovery by a private company
in almost 80 years, the find is a milestone
for Mexico’s recently reformed oil and gas
sector. While Eni made a discovery earlier
this year, it was in waters that had been
previously explored by Pemex. The Talos
discovery was in unexplored waters. The
Zama well lies in 546 ft of water on Block 7
of the Sureste Basin 37 miles offshore Dos
Bocas in the state of Tabasco. Talos, with
a 35% interest, is the operator and leader
of the project joint venture, which includes
Sierra Oil and Gas (40%) and Premier
Oil (25%).
SOUTH AMERICA
Z YPF, Total, Wintershall, and BP
have announced a USD 1.15-billion joint
investment to increase shale gas production
in Argentina. The provincial government
in Neuquén, where the resource-rich Vaca
Muerta Shale is located, has agreed to split
the Aguada Pichana area into two parts
and combine it with the Aguada de Castro
area. Total, with a 41% stake, will operate
the eastern Aguada Pichana section, where
48 horizontal wells are planned through
2021. BP’s Pan American Energy unit,
with a 45% stake, will operate the western
section and the Aguada de Castro area,
where 24 horizontal wells are planned. The
investments are expected to more than
double natural gas production in the area
to 4.5 million m3/d.
Z Petrobras and CNPC have signed a
memorandum of understanding in Beijing
to begin negotiations on a strategic
partnership, Petrobras has reported. The
companies agreed in the document to
jointly evaluate opportunities in Brazil and
abroad in key areas of mutual interest.
Petrobras, the Brazilian national oil
company, said in a news release on its
website that partnerships will represent an
important strategy in its 2017–2021 business
plan because of the potential benefits of
risk sharing, increasing investment capacity,
technological exchange, and strengthening
corporate governance. JPT
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 RISK AND REWARD
The Woman Question
Janeen Judah, 2017 SPE President
For my thirteenth and final column as
SPE president, I saved the subject that I
am asked about most often. After every
speech, I am asked some form of “the
woman question.” What’s it been like to
be a woman in the oil and gas industry?
How do you manage work/life balance?
Are there opportunities for women in
our industry? I am the fourth woman SPE president, but it has
been 11 years since the last one, making me the only female
president of this generation. So, I make a point to be visible to
the technical women in our industry and give them my frank
perspective on what my journey has been like.
I vividly remember 4 November 1980—as Ronald Reagan
was announced as the newly elected US president, I was eating
dinner at the old Petroleum Club in Midland, Texas. I was in
town for a job interview, and it was the first time I had dinner
with a table of executives who were evaluating me. The club
was about to move from the old mansion to a modern facil-
ity, but the Petroleum Club was still stuck in the past—women
were not allowed to join. I had just turned 21, had a month
until I graduated with my petroleum engineering degree, and
was ready to embark on my long career. I thought that the
1970s women’s rights movement had changed the workplace
for all of us and that the “gender wars” were over.
I was wrong.
To contact the SPE President, email president@spe.org.
10
What is it like to be a woman in a male-
dominated industry?
I can’t think of any profession that isn’t male-dominated,
except perhaps nurses, teachers, and social workers. Most
workplaces are predominantly male, so women must learn
to work within that environment. Women in the oil indus-
try must be at least as—and usually more—competent than
their male colleagues. To succeed or even just survive, we must
learn to speak “their language” and act in a more “male way”
at work. I believe that is where the stress comes in, where
women must constantly shift between their more “female”
socialized roles at home and a more “male” work environ-
ment—much like speaking one language at work and a differ-
ent language at home. The switching gets easier, but it’s never
completely seamless.
Why is the oil and gas industry so hard on
women?
It’s not just my opinion that the oil industry is significantly
harder on women than most other industries; studies prove
it. McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.org partnered in a com-
prehensive study of the state of women in corporate America,
Women in the Workplace 2016.
The study analyzed pipeline data from 132 diversified North
American companies in nine industry groups. Two broad
themes emerged:
1. Women are hired and promoted at lower rates than men,
so fewer become leaders.
2. At more senior levels, women shift from line to staff roles,
so very few end up on the path to CEO.
For the “energy and basic materials” industry group, women
are only 35% of entrants (women are only about 20% of US
engineering graduates). Only 14% of executives are women. In
my experience, almost all those women executives are in roles
such as human resources, finance, legal, and supply chain
management. Even in industry groups where entry gender
is evenly split (such as law, accounting, media/telecom, and
retail) or dominated by women (fashion, hospitality), all in-
dustries had 25% or fewer women executives. Lack of women
in leadership is a societal problem, not unique to the oil and
gas industry.
The McKinsey/LeanIn studies focus on North America; the
imbalance is more pronounced in other parts of the world. I
am still surprised at how few women oil and gas business lead-
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
ers I see in Europe (outside of Scandinavia) and very, very few
in other parts of the world. Just this July, the World Petroleum
Council and Boston Consulting Group (WPC/BCG) released a
comprehensive study on women in the oil and gas industry,
Untapped Reserves: Promoting Gender Balance in Oil and
Gas. It’s an excellent report that I highly recommend you read.
How can women get ahead in this industry?
The same way as men: Do an excellent job, build your skills,
impress someone high up with your ability, and have that per-
son sponsor your upward mobility. The issues are that women
are rarely sponsored by those in power (almost always men)
and, in my experience, are held to higher standards and pay
a higher price for mistakes. Then there is also the double-
bind problem—the same behaviors that are valued in men are
viewed negatively in women.
A key study on the double-bind (or lose-lose situation) for
women was published by Catalyst.org in 2007. Catalyst, a
global nonprofit that accelerates women’s progress through
workplace inclusion, outlined three predicaments that under-
mine women’s advancement options.
1. Extreme perceptions. Women are perceived as too soft or
too tough, but never just right.
2. High competence threshold. Women leaders face higher
standards and lower rewards than men leaders.
3. Competent but disliked. Women leaders are perceived as
competent or liked, but not both.
In my experience, all three of these unconscious biases exist
in the oil industry, and apparently in most other industries as
well. It’s not fair, but it is reality. Awareness helps, and women
can practice shifting between “masculine and feminine” com-
munication styles to walk the balance.
How can I manage dual-career issues?
Over the years, I have found that couples tend to manage dual
careers either by picking a city or a company. With a city, both
decide to work in the same place, realizing that their upward
trajectory is limited if they aren’t willing to move. Others
pick a company—both work for the same company and move
around together. Many couples are not comfortable relying on
one employer for both careers—and with our industry’s histo-
ry of layoffs, can you blame them?
However, a time will come, somewhere mid-career, when
one spouse quits full-time work while the other climbs the cor-
porate ladder. I know both women and men who quit to sup-
port their executive spouse. Often, they don’t quit work entire-
ly, but move to a more flexible alternative while the climbing
spouse stays with their corporate employer. In my experience,
it is extremely rare for a high-level executive, male or female,
to have a working spouse.
How do you manage work/life balance?
This question is usually a coded reference for “how do you
manage your second job at home?” Most women have a sec-
ond job because all studies show that even full-time working
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
women with nonworking husbands still do most of the work
at home. Life is full of compromise, not perfection. Plan for
the important things, do the chores you enjoy (I like to cook),
pay someone else to do the unimportant things, and let go
of perfectionism.
I don’t believe there is work/life balance; rather, there is
work/life compromise. Sometimes (OK, usually) work takes
precedence and sometimes family takes priority. Most mod-
ern supervisors are flexible about employees taking off for
a child’s weekday event because we can all make up for the
work at home. But beware: The higher up the ladder, the less
work/life balance you will have. When you manage operations
or a large team, your employees expect you to be available
24/7. That’s another reason I actively promote the technical
career ladder (vs. the management career ladder) for better
work/life balance for both men and women.
What’s Next?
The WPC/BCG study offered several recommendations, which
I won’t list here because you can review the report if you are
interested. It’s all about accountability by business leaders,
not delegation to human resources or diversity professionals.
We can change the future for diversity because we proved
we could improve safety programs. In the 1980s, safety was
the responsibility of the safety man. Injuries and fatalities
were just part of life in the oil field. The dual tragedies of Piper
Alpha and Exxon Valdez changed all that. Now, safety is an
accountable metric for all business leaders, and our industry
safety performance has improved very dramatically. Visible
metrics and accountable leaders make a difference.
It can be the same with diversity. Development of people
should be an accountable metric for all business leaders. Every
male leader should mentor at least one high-potential female.
Women leaders should not be expected to mentor all the
women. Diversity should not be concentrated in staff support
roles such as human resources, finance, and legal.
Visible metrics and accountable leaders can change the
face, literally, of our industry. I regret that it didn’t happen in
my generation.
It has been my privilege to be a member of SPE for 40 years
and to serve as your 2017 president. Thank you for letting me
represent you to the world. JPT
For Further Reading
Women in the Workplace. 2016. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey &
Company, https://womenintheworkplace.com/ (accessed
3 August 2017).
Untapped Reserves: Promoting Gender Balance in Oil and Gas.
2017. World Petroleum Council and Boston Consulting Group,
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2017/energy-environment-
people-organization-untapped-reserves.aspx (accessed
3 August 2017).
The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Damned
if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t. 2007. Catalyst, http://www.
catalyst.org/knowledge/double-bind (accessed 3 August 2017).
11
 COMMENTS EDITORIAL COMMITTEE
Bernt Aadnøy, University of Stavanger

Syed Ali—Chairperson, Consultant

Tayfun Babadagli, University of Alberta

At What Price Profitability? William Bailey, Schlumberger

Mike Berry, Mike Berry Consulting

John Donnelly, JPT Editor Maria Capello, Kuwait Oil Company

Frank Chang, Saudi Aramco

Simon Chipperfield, Santos

Consensus is growing around the idea that oil prices will fluctu- Alex Crabtree, Hess Corporation
ate in the $45–60 bbl range, both in the short term and perhaps Gunnar DeBruijn, Schlumberger
even for the long term. This has led to a rash of studies about Mark Egan, Retired
what this means for operators and service companies in the
Mark Elkins, Retired
“new normal.”
Alexandre Emerick,
On the operator side, much of that depends on what oil price Petrobras Research Center
translates to profitability, both in the unconventional and con-
Niall Fleming, Statoil
ventional sectors. Some anecdotal evidence is trickling in. Pub-
Ted Frankiewicz, SPEC Services
lic companies reported second quarter earnings in late July and early August. Accord-
Stephen Goodyear, Shell
ing to earnings reports, 15 of the largest shale producers posted total net losses of
$470 million. During that time (April–June), WTI oil prices averaged $48/bbl. That was Omer M. Gurpinar, Schlumberger

a marked improvement over the past quarter and past year. Those same companies A.G. Guzman-Garcia, Retired
reported total losses of $3.7 billion in the first quarter of 2017 and losses of $7.4 billion Greg Horton, Retired
in the second quarter of 2016. The financial improvement in the second quarter came John Hudson, Shell
from more efficient operations, cost cutting, and a rise in oil prices. Morten Iversen, Karachaganak Petroleum
But at what oil price are shale producers profitable? Analysts have thrown around
Leonard Kalfayan, Hess Corporation
figures of as low as $40/bbl, but a detailed study of the issue by consultancy Wood
Thomas Knode, Athlon Solutions
Mackenzie sheds new light on the subject and is examined on page 47 of this issue. The
Sunil Kokal, Saudi Aramco
consensus is that $50/bbl brings most companies closer to profitability than $40/bbl,
but perhaps needs to be over $50/bbl to be sustainable. Marc Kuck, Eni US Operating

Operators are taking the “lower for longer” outlook seriously and are adapting. Jesse C. Lee, Schlumberger
Occidental Petroleum announced that it was tying a company-wide compensation plan Douglas Lehr, Baker Hughes
to the firm being profitable at $40/bbl. Some of the largest majors are beginning to Silviu Livescu, Baker Hughes
sanction projects once again—although cautiously. More new oil and gas fields were Shouxiang (Mark) Ma, Saudi Aramco
given the green light in the first half of this year than in all of last year, including proj-
John Macpherson, Baker Hughes
ects by ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP. But about three-fourths of those conventional proj-
Stéphane Menand, DrillScan
ects are expansions of existing fields or satellite developments that tie back to exist-
Graham Mensa-Wilmot, Chevron
ing pipelines and platforms, according to Wood Mackenzie. Shell, for example, is now
tying its Kaikias project in the US Gulf of Mexico to its existing Ursa production hub Badrul H. Mohamed Jan, University of Malaya

to limit costs. When BP reported its earnings, Bob Dudley, the company’s chief execu- Zillur Rahim, Saudi Aramco
tive, said the firm was planning on the basis of oil prices being at current levels for the Eric Ringle, FMC Technologies
next 5 years. Noted oil historian Daniel Yergin agreed, adding, “The industry is in the Martin Rylance, BP plc
middle of re-engineering its processes and its technologies to be a $50/bbl industry, Robello Samuel, Halliburton
not a $100/bbl industry.”
Otto L. Santos, Retired
Major oilfield services companies Halliburton, Schlumberger, and Baker Hughes
Luigi A. Saputelli, Frontender Corporation
reported increased revenue for the second quarter of 2017 compared with the first
Sally A. Thomas, Retired
quarter, with revenue up 15.8% for Halliburton, 8.2% for Schlumberger, and 6.3% for
Baker Hughes. Halliburton earned a slight profit while the two other companies post- Win Thornton, BP plc

ed net losses. Dave Lesar, chairman of Halliburton, sees a bit of a slowdown coming in Xiuli Wang, Baker Hughes
shale, saying that producers were “tapping the brakes” on drilling as oil prices remain Mike Weatherl, Well Integrity
under $50/bbl and the global supply glut appears to have life left in it. JPT Scott Wilson, Ryder Scott Company

Jonathan Wylde, Clariant Oil Services

Robert Ziegler, Weatherford

To contact JPT’s editor, email jdonnelly@spe.org.

12 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Change the
way you drill.
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© 2017 National Oilwell Varco | All Rights Reserved

 GUEST EDITORIAL

Technology’s Role for Today’s New-Look,

Multidisciplinary Teams
C. Andrew Poon, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Outsiders

As we are getting used to the new nor- transferred by training classes? Does
mal of USD 50/bbl oil, buzzwords such the young engineer walking onto an off-
as efficiencies, automation, best prac- shore drilling rig immediately notice the
tices, and partnering have become stan- small things that “just don’t seem right”
dard in our discussions. This is all well that an “old hand” might? How can we
and good but how real are these new leverage communications technolo-
processes? Like the cyclical nature of gy to make a sustainable step change
our industry, will these processes also in efficiency and lower costs with-
become cyclical, soon to be relegated to out compromising quality, safety, and
small incremental change, rather than the environment?
the needed step change as the price
of oil recovers, or as our experienced Three Critical Areas
people ride off into the sunset? What Firstly, we need to consider key per-
are the real opportunities for disruptive formance indicators (KPIs). A famous
step change that will help us to catch up quote from Lou Gerstner, IBM’s CEO
and leapfrog other industries that have from 1993 to 2002, “People don’t do
given rise to companies such as Ama- what you expect but what you inspect,”
zon, Google, and Apple, and have driv- is often quoted as, “Inspect what you
en the renewal of the auto, airline, and expect.” In other words, we need to mea-
transportation industries? sure performance. However, the metrics
Today, companies are patting them- used in tracking KPIs must be directly
selves on the back for handling the “great related to the expected outcomes, the
crew change,” and rightly so. But is this component data easy to manage, and
really cause for celebration? Should we the outputs statistically meaningful.
be celebrating simply for doing our job? KPIs can be divided into two main
Would the great crew change be man- groups. Lag indicators are typically mea-
ageable if activity and the price of oil sures of present or past performance,
had not crashed? What about the indi- easy to measure but difficult to relate
viduals who have lost their jobs in the to future or improved performance.
downturn and have not been able to Lead indicators are harder to measure
recover? Can experience really be fully as they typically relate to processes or
C. Andrew Poon, SPE, is a consultant at Chief Outsiders, helping
companies grow their businesses within a market-based
framework. He has more than 35 years of oilfield experience,
starting with Schlumberger as a field engineer, with progressive
assignments in operations, sales, and marketing in Latin America,
North America, the Middle East, and Europe. He has also worked
in acquisitions and divestitures, with an integrated seismic
company, a microseismic startup, and with Weatherford as a
subject matter expert on unconventionals and new technology introduction. Poon
holds BSc and MSc degrees in physics and an MBA, and is a chartered engineer in the
UK. He can be reached at apoon@chiefoutsiders.com.
activities to improve performance, but
are equally important as lag indicators.
Lag indicators enable valid data analyt-
ics, benchmarking, and target metrics
or “par” values for performance. Data
analytics provide “calibration points”
to track continuous improvement and
ideas on lead indicators by identify-
ing processes that consistently give
good results.
An example of KPIs being used to
drive and improve operational efficien-
cy in drilling was presented by Nabors
at an industry conference in May. Down-
time is a standard lag indicator and min-
imizing downtime is of course absolute-
ly necessary in any economy. However,
this metric does not in itself indicate
how efficiency can be improved. The
KPI that downtime addresses is non-
productive (NPT) time. Digging a little
deeper, the idea of invisible lost time
(ILT) makes NPT more sharply focused
and clearly identifies the opportuni-
ty cost of less efficient drilling as lost
time and a problem to be fixed. The
reduction in ILT then translates direct-
ly into improved efficiency, quantifying
the value of joint teams with the client
to dissect the operations into discrete
steps with the appropriate KPIs. Prag-
matically, to make this work, Nabors
automatically collects all drilling data
into a central database for analysis.
Lag KPIs in production might be
the current ones related to production
rates. These are great KPIs and, as with
downtime in drilling, have stood the
test over decades. It is time perhaps that
operators more fully quantify the value
in working with service providers by
(a) using focused lead indicators, and
(b) sharing production data with their
service partner.

14 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

The Possibilities of Automation sion speeds for data from downhole to interest or aptitude to work in the field
Secondly, “automation” needs to be surface to remote offices to allow reli- or young engineers more interested in
clearly defined beyond the buzzword able automation based on accurate data robotics than getting their hands dirty
if as an industry we are to move to and appropriate human intervention? or working long hours.
the next level. Standards for data accu- Is cybersecurity part of our culture and We might still want to attract and har-
racy are critical, whether in automat- best in class? Are we still attracting the ness some of this talent if the experi-
ed closed-loop systems downhole, rig best young minds and are we taking enced folks could remain integral parts
floor operations, a combination of the advantage of the wealth of experience of the teams. The new multidisciplinary
two, or in database management. Real- in our young, over-65 professionals? team might include the IT talent, the
time and remote access to data, elec- Should we encourage and facilitate free- young genius, and the experienced guru,
tronic data recorders at the wellsite, lancers to develop new apps with open along with the traditional engineers and
the cloud, and phenomenal data trans- systems, akin to app development for geoscientists. The ability to leverage the
mission rates open up endless possi- Windows or Mac? experience and expertise of operations
bilities, including intelligent rigs and Thirdly, how can we best leverage per- experts who are at the stage where they
processes integrating the talents of sonnel and open systems with IT? The do not want to retire but want a more
engineers, geoscientists, information great crew change primarily replaces flexible work schedule could be a game
technology (IT), business, and the col- the retirees with the younger folks by changer. Many of the young, over-65s
lective field experience of our industry. training. The need to truly think out- would be happy to be part of remote
NOV, Nabors, and other companies have side the box and continuously bring new teams sharing their experience on proj-
made major investments in automating technology to the industry requires the ects while mentoring younger engineers
drilling processes. Commercial prod- best and brightest in each field, includ- who want a more balanced work and
ucts and services are readily available ing software developers who have no social life. JPT
today, but there is still a long road ahead
as we challenge every stage of the exist-
ing workflows.
During Gerstner’s tenure, IBM’s mar-
ket capitalization rose from USD 29 bil-
lion to USD 168 billion as the company
refocused on its unique competitive
advantage—its ability to provide inte-
grated, broad-based IT solutions for
its customers.
Why are we so far behind in the use of
DATA. DRIVEN. DRILLING.
IT? We have had to be focused on oper-
ations due to the hazardous nature of
the job; secondly, competition has been
based on proprietary processes and ser-
vices; and thirdly, as an engineer-driven
industry, we have tended to be resistant
to change.
The oil and gas industry needs to
remain focused on safe operations
but perhaps we should be research-
ing completely new rig designs, not
just improvements to current designs.
For example, the auto industry is not
only researching new battery designs
to extend the range of electric vehi-
cles, but also a completely new motor
design and driverless cars. We have had
Real-Time Drilling Analytics: Engineered for Lower Well Costs
our fair share of innovations over the
years, but given lower oil prices, the
growth of renewables, and fewer people
wanting the nomadic life of working on www.petrolink.com
remote oil rigs, are we innovating fast
enough? Are we using optimal transmis-

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 15

 TECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS
Chris Carpenter, JPT Technology Editor
Hydrocarbon Recovery
Technology
Improving the ability of well interven-
tion technologies, such as hydraulic
fracturing and remediation, to stimu-
late productivity effectively and efficient-
ly remains a challenge. Steep produc-
tion declines after high initial production
and less-than-optimal fracturing results
indicate that significant proppant quan-
tities are not reaching the available
induced or natural fracture network. Nis-
san Chemical America (NCA) introduced
nanoActiv HRT, a high-efficiency hydro-
carbon recovery technology (HRT) well-
intervention additive package, to address
this challenge. NCA’s nanoActiv HRT
particles penetrate beyond the induced
fracture network on a nanoscopic scale,
rapidly and extensively saturating a sig-
nificant portion of the natural fracture
network. Producing a diffusion-driven
mechanical process known as “disjoin-
ing pressure,” nanoActiv HRT particles
deliver long efficacy in the recovery of
hydrocarbons, fragmenting them into
smaller droplets and enabling an effi-
cient backflow to the wellbore (Fig. 1).
Over the past 2 years, this new tech-
nology has been applied in more than
45 Permian Basin wells in several reser-
voirs (Wolfberry, Wolfcamp B, Wolfcamp
Sand, Brushy Canyon, Woodford, and San
Andres) and also in North Dakota (Three
Forks, Bakken, and Codell-Niobrara). In
Fig. 1—Hele-Shaw time-lapse tests consistently demonstrate that nanoActiv HRT
(left) delivers higher efficiency, better fragmentation, and more production of oil
to the surface than other widely used products (center and right).
16
packer in position as many times as needed
to perform multiple operations in a single trip.
these applications, nanoActiv HRT has
significantly reduced decline rates after
stimulation while consistently delivering
higher oil cuts and gas/oil ratios in con-
ventional and unconventional reservoirs.
w For additional information, visit
www.nanoActiv.com.
Mechanical-Inflow-Test Packer
The CLEARMAX mechanical-inflow-test
(MIT) packer provides wellbore cleanup
and inflow testing in a single trip. Opera-
tors can reset and lock the packer in posi-
tion as many times as needed to perform
multiple operations in a single trip, which
reduces rig time and helps to prevent
unintended release (Fig. 2). The packer
has been tested to American Petroleum
Institute (API) 11D standards. The pack-
er can be run in combination with the
Weatherford ISO MAX packer to test mul-
tiple liner laps in a single trip. Functional-
ity can be further enhanced by adding the
MIT packer to a wellbore-cleaning string.
The string includes the CLEARMAX Selec-
tive Rotation and Circulating Re-Locking
Tool (SRCT/RL), which is a weight-
activated circulating tool with a quick
Fig. 2—Operators
can reset and lock
Weatherford’s CLEARMAX MIT
cycling mechanism that improves dis-
placement efficiency and reduces the
risks associated with ball-activated subs.
The SRCT/RL is included in the clean-
up string with the MIT packer and fea-
tures a clutch assembly to avoid twist-
off incidents as friction increases during
drilling-mud displacement. The CLEAR-
MAX portfolio includes mechanical,
chemical, and filtration-based tech-
nologies for comprehensive wellbore-
cleaning services for the complete life
cycle of any well. This suite of tech-
nologies removes well debris and res-
idue, leaving a clean, solids-free, and
completion-ready wellbore.
w For additional information, visit
www.weatherford.com.
Onshore-Rig-Operation
Utility Winch Series
Ingersoll Rand introduced the Hydrau-
lic Force Series, a new portfolio of util-
ity winches for onshore rig manufac-
turers and operators in North America.
The Hydraulic Force Series winches are
built to support material-handling needs,
from lifting equipment to racking and
stacking pipe (Fig. 3). The winches save
customers time and resources with sim-
ple plug-and-play installation and come
fully tested as a complete system. They
are currently available in 8,000- and
12,000-lb capacities; 1,000- to 3,000-
and 6,000-lb capacities will be avail-
able in late summer 2017. All models
come equipped with a variety of control
options and a wireless-compatible inter-
face to help maximize performance and
align with advancing technology trends.
The 8,000- and 12,000-lb winches can
be configured to include texted controls;
hydraulic gear motors, which operate
smoothly even in harsh environments;
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 Saltel External
Casing Packer
EXPANDABLE STEEL, HIGH-PRESSURE
PACKER FOR ANNULUS INTEGRITY

A Saltel external casing packer, part of a casing string that became

stuck in a well, was rotated, pushed, pulled, and abused for several
hours before being freed and returned to surface. After washing and
inspection, the packer was run back into the well and set as planned.

Ensure successful cementing and reliable

annular isolation integrity
Preventing crossflow or gas channeling is essential for successful primary cementing. Cement support and
annular isolation are necessary for successful stage cement jobs. Achieve both requirements with Saltel
external casing packers. Robust enough for the rigors of running into the well and setting, Saltel external
casing packers can set and seal in mud, water, or cement, even after intense handling.

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 Fig. 3—Hydraulic Force Series winches
from Ingersoll Rand come equipped
with a variety of control options and a
wireless-compatible interface.
rope guides and press rollers; drum
guards, which help protect the opera-
tor while maintaining visibility of spool-
ing; automatic negative static multidisc
brakes, which ensure safe operation even
if the system were to lose pressure; and
pedestal bases. All Hydraulic Force Series
winches ship with a test certificate veri-
fying operation of the complete system.
w For additional information, visit
www.ingersollrandproducts.com/
hydraulicforce.
Wave- and Ship-Motion
Forecasting System
General Dynamics Applied Physical Sci-
ences introduced FutureWaves, a wave-
and ship-motion forecasting system.
FutureWaves provides a tool that uses
remote measurement of the ocean waves
around a ship to provide a deterministic
forecast of the ship’s motions for minutes
into the future. This technology was orig-
inally pursued by the US Navy to support
seabasing operations involving transfer
of personnel, vehicles, and equipment
between ships at sea (Fig. 4). The Future-
Waves output provides recommenda-
tions for the best ship heading and speed
to minimize ship motions and identifies
upcoming large-motion events and qui-
escent periods. At the core of the Future-
Waves system is the remote wave sensor,
a specialized X-band Doppler radar able
to measure the orbital motions of ocean
waves. These measurements are fed to
a specialized processing chain to gener-
ate a mathematical representation of the
18
Fig. 4—The FutureWaves wave- and ship-motion forecasting system from
General Dynamics Applied Physical Sciences provides recommendations for
the best ship heading and speed to minimize ship motions and identifies
upcoming large-motion events.
waves, using a least-squares inversion
technique. This representation of the
specific waves in the region of the ship is
then evolved forward in time according
to wave-propagation physics to produce
forecasts of future waves. An embedded
simulation tool provides forecasts of the
associated ship motions, allowing opera-
tors to anticipate and respond to upcom-
ing motion events. This capability has
been demonstrated at sea on a num-
ber of Navy vessels ranging in size from
120 to 950 ft.
w For additional information, visit
www.aphysci.com.
Insert Safety Valve
The Torus insert safety valve enables
single-trip, rigless deployment of
production-enhancement equipment
with an American Petroleum Institute
(API) 14A-tested safety valve. The valve—
which enables passage of through-
tubing coiled tubing, capillary lines, or
cables—provides fail-safe protection
while allowing faster, more economi-
cal operations to extend the productive
life of existing wells. Although installing
electrical submersible pumps, gas-lift
systems, velocity strings, and chemical-
injection systems are common approach-
es to boosting production, maintaining a
well barrier during installation and the
subsequent production phase is complex
and cost-prohibitive. This is because tra-
ditional safety valves with flapper-style
closure mechanisms require an unob-
structed inside diameter for operation.
Consequently, a rig has to be mobi-
lized to install these valves deeper in
the well below the production enhance-
ment equipment, driving up costs and
health, safety, and environmental risks
and often delaying operations. By use of
a patented sliding-sleeve design to con-
trol flow instead of a flapper mechanism,
the Torus valve maintains functionality
during installation and production while
providing a permanent conduit through
its center (Fig. 5). The valve allows oper-
ators to carry out rigless insert string
installations in wells that require a qual-
ified safety valve, reducing operational
expenses by an average of 50%. JPT
w For additional information, visit
www.bhge.com.
Fig. 5—
The Torus
insert safety valve
from Baker Hughes,
a GE company, uses a patented
sliding-sleeve design to control flow
instead of a flapper mechanism.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 TECHNOLOGY UPDATE
Data Aggregation and Distribution
With Human Factors Incorporated
M. Behounek, SPE, Apache, and P. Ashok, SPE, Intellicess
To optimize the value of surface and
downhole drilling data, an operator, a
software company, and a service com-
pany have combined forces to develop a
system to seamlessly integrate all forms
of data, file types, and communication
protocols. To ensure that people on the
rig and in the office are able and willing
to act on the data, the system includes
human-factors engineering.
The upstream oil and gas industry first
began to gather and stream data from
rig sensors in the 1970s and introduced
real-time data centers in the early 1980s.
Since those early efforts, the industry has
made only incremental progress in using
available drilling data. These changes
typically are limited to improving visual
displays, upgrading relational databases
for easier reporting, and providing web
services for integration.
Today, the widespread use of drilling
data remains limited by technology defi-
ciencies in rig sensor measurement qual-
ity, sensor accuracy and reliability, rig-
site aggregation methods, data sampling
rates, and the inability to easily share
data between proprietary vendor sys-
tems. In addition, drilling electronic data
recorder (EDR) technology has not kept
pace with the technology of other indus-
tries or that of other oil and gas sectors.
Typical service company aggrega-
tion systems use outmoded software
and hardware. Consequently, these sys-
tems are costly to alter, require long
cycle times to add features, cannot pro-
cess the high-frequency data that are
collected by modern sensors, and can-
not easily accommodate different back-
end engines provided by third parties. In
addition, because they have closed archi-
tecture, changing user interfaces is noto-
riously difficult.
20
To address these shortcomings, an
operator has built a system that easi-
ly accommodates back-end engines,
enables rapid prototyping and deploy-
ment of new ideas, and separates the
back-end from user interfaces. Unlike
traditional systems that use only rig data,
this new system also uses well informa-
tion from other data sources.
The design basis was to provide users
with higher frequency (up to 100 Hz)
and higher-quality data than traditional
data-aggregation and -distribution sys-
tems. This allows drillers to access real-
time models and algorithms for analy-
ses, such as stick/slip mitigation, stuck
pipe avoidance, optimal tripping practic-
es, hole cleaning, geosteering, and other
drilling methods.
The Fix
Researchers evaluated 30 process con-
trols and other industry applications
before selecting a software solution for
the data-aggregation and -distribution
system that was then prototyped, test-
ed, and deployed on 20 North America
land rigs over 18 months. The solution
devised by the group, which includ-
ed a Houston-based operator, a soft-
ware company, service industry person-
nel, and research scientists, was built
through an incremental, iterative devel-
opment method that used empirical
feedback to enable quick deployment of
updated versions.
The group employed an enterprise data
historian, typically used for large indus-
trial plant process controls. A historian
collects and stores large volumes of time-
series data, which facilitates multiple lay-
ers of access for faster data archiving,
better live data streaming, and reliable
handling of communication failures.
The new system was designed to seam-
lessly integrate all forms of data, file
types, and communication protocols. A
modular back-end engine that uses tech-
nology initially developed at the Univer-
sity of Texas at Austin was integrated
for rig state determination, data qual-
ity verification, drilling analytics, and
smart alarms. In addition, the system is
designed to integrate data from rig sen-
sors with the daily drilling-report data-
base, real-time visualization, and an
open application layer with a human-
machine interface.
To facilitate telecommunications for
streaming data to operators’ offices and
interoperability between applications,
developers divided the system into sub-
systems and installed automated moni-
toring and diagnostic tools for admin-
istrative support. Each rig application
communicates to the office and con-
nects to the enterprise historian. All data
interruptions are flagged, investigated,
and resolved.
The data acquisition model allows each
rig and each well to have a customized
data model. The model facilitates the
actual data aggregation by collecting and
storing in one database all the various
data types, file types, and protocols. All
data can then be viewed on customizable
charts, which allows engineers to easily
compare historical data while drilling the
well and afterward, while eliminating the
need for manual data manipulation.
The new system uses a physics-based
Bayesian network model to monitor real-
time data quality. The model assigns
a quality value to each data point by
comparing it to a predicted value that
is based on the physics of the sub-
system. This process of data cleansing
ensures high-quality input data and thus,
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 TM

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more sand, higher rates—and no runaway fracs.
Multistage Unlimited® pinpoint fracturing delivers maximum SRV with far less risk of frac hits and
well bashing during infill and high-density field development, compared with plug-and-perf. You put
fracs where you want them, and you control how much sand you pump into each one, preventing
“super clusters” that can hurt production from offset wells. With repeatable frac placement from
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 higher-quality analyses than would be
otherwise possible.
The Human Factors
Automated drilling software only adds
value when key individuals on and off
the rig properly interpret and act on
the information provided. Most current
drilling-data-aggregation systems were
built by engineers at a time when the use
of data to increase drilling efficiency and
safety was mostly an afterthought. In
addition, current systems typically use
legacy software that is run on outdated
hardware, which makes the systems dif-
ficult to improve upon and expand.
Developers incorporated human fac-
tors into the new system through a pro-
tocol aimed at answering the “who, what,
when, why, where, and how” of dissem-
inating results from its real-time data
analysis module (Table 1). Researchers
focused on understanding the human-
computer boundary and on maximiz-
ing the probability that the human will
relate to and take action on computer-
generated information.
To achieve this goal, system designers
followed a process of first building inter-
faces that appear similar to those typical-
ly seen by end users (drillers, company
staff, and drilling engineers) and slow-
ly modifying them as user confidence
in the system increased. This required a
platform that accommodated easy dis-
play modification and creation. Alerts
required designers to consider data over-
load, salience, end-user attention, inter-
ruptibility, and data visualization.
Displays
In developing the main display for the sys-
tem, designers looked to reduce the men-
tal workload of the human by creating a
display that appeared familiar to the end
user. This included retaining vertical strip
charts and the ability to customize the
tracks, tabs, and buttons. The main dis-
play also includes default tracks and tabs
that are agreed upon at an organizational
level. This was done to allow all users to
bring up identical displays and thus cre-
ate a collaborative work environment.
To further users’ comfort with the dis-
play, the placement of transitional but-
tons mimics the typical layouts famil-
22
TABLE 1—THE 5Ws AND 1H
QUESTIONING FRAMEWORK*
What What is the feature?
Why Why is this feature needed?
Who Who is going to be interacting
with this feature?
How How is the interaction expected
to happen?
When When is the interaction going
to happen?
Where Where is this feature available?
*From Paper SPE 184743
iar to most rig personnel and allows end
users to customize certain vertical and
horizontal tracks. Users are able to add
more vertical strips to the display for
temporary viewing and view them by use
of a slide bar at the bottom of the display.
Based on the users’ preference for visuals
that display numbers indicating rig oper-
ation status, without having to look at
detailed strip charts, the designers added
editable boxes.
Rig and office personnel can edit and
manipulate each track on the display and
include features such as minimum, maxi-
mum, and average values within the time
frame shown. Drillers can change plot-
line thickness and style and, in cases of
high-frequency data, filter out noise to
smooth the track for better visualization.
To ease data distribution, a feature was
added to the display system to allow per-
sonnel to email screenshots. Other fea-
tures include
w The ability to easily reset the view
immediately to real time if, for
example, a user had scrolled back
in time
w The ability to easily toggle between
time and depth views
w The addition of a directional-driller
rosebud target plot to facilitate the
visualization of directional-drilling
steering in real time
Reports
To improve drilling performance, the
operator wanted to deliver real-time
daily reports to field personnel. How-
ever, this would have required employ-
ees to download and check the data, run
database macros, and format the plot for
interpretation. But because the volumes
of rig data are so large, technical resourc-
es at times are constrained for keeping up
with the task. Addressing this problem,
developers automated the process while
continuing to present the data in report
forms that are familiar to field personnel.
The first report developed was the
“Drilling Parameters Plot,” which con-
sists of a series of vertical charts that
replicated most EDR screens. The output
includes data plotted by depth and data
from an offset well overlaid on the cur-
rent well drilling to allow drilling person-
nel to compare parameters and perfor-
mance between the two wells. Because
offset well data are imported into the his-
torian database, the operator can choose
parameters from different offset wells for
comparison to the drilling well.
The system generates automated daily
intelligence reports delivered from the
rig to the office or other locations. All
the data are stored locally at the rig,
and a background process publishes the
data to the system receiver in the office
at a lower update rate. Some alerts are
accompanied by a pdf file that docu-
ments the event, which helps receivers
determine the nature of the alarm and
the proper response.
By creating easily understood real-time
displays and reports, a properly designed
data-aggregation and -distribution sys-
tem can add significant value to drilling
operations. To overcome the shortcom-
ings of current systems, this new system
was designed to be easily adaptable by
using a modern technology platform. By
placing due emphasis on human-factors
engineering, the new system also ensures
that humans can easily understand and
act upon the large volumes of data at
their disposal for optimal impact on drill-
ing performance. JPT
This article contains highlights of paper
SPE/IADC 184741, “Taking a Different
Approach to Drilling Data Aggregation
to Improve Drilling Performance,” by
Michael Behounek, Evan Hofer, and Taylor
Thetford et al., and paper SPE/IADC
184743, “Human Factors Engineering in the
Design and Deployment of a Novel Data
Aggregation and Distribution System for
Drilling Operations,” by Michael Behounek,
Taylor Thetford, and Lisa Yang et al. Both
papers were prepared for the 2017 SPE/
IADC Drilling Conference and Exhibition,
The Hague, The Netherlands, 14–16 March.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 PP-17-010_JPT-AD.pdf 1 2017-07-24 1:35:28 PM

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 E&P NOTES
Researchers: Models Overstate Technology
Impact, Understate Location Impact for
Unconventional Wells
Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor
The role of new technological improve-
ments in the increasing productivity of
tight oil and shale gas wells is likely
being overestimated because of mod-
els that inadequately consider the influ-
ence of drilling in reservoir core areas, a
pair of researchers at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Energy Initia-
tive (MITEI) have said in a new paper.
With the steep fall in oil prices since
late 2014, field operators are drilling
fewer wells and have shifted their targets
to only the most prospective acreage.
The oil industry’s often well-publicized
gains in well productivity significantly
reflect the impact of drilling and hydrau-
lic fracturing operations focused on
reservoir “sweet spots,” MITEI’s Justin
Montgomery and Francis O’Sullivan
write in a paper in Applied Energy.
49.0
48.5
Latitude
48.0
47.5
47.0
–104.0 –103.5 –103.0
Longitude
Expected first-year production of oil wells in North Dakota’s Bakken formation
is shown by use of regression-kriging—a modeling method that reflects spatial
variability with a high resolution. Drilling activity has shifted toward the core
(dark red) areas, an approach known as “sweet-spotting.” Current industry
models are not able to capture spatial variability at this level. Source: MITEI.
24
This strategy, known as “high-
grading,” makes economic sense. How-
ever, industry modeling may prove
less successful in the long run as core
areas become drilled out and improved
technology fails to yield productivity
benefits at expected levels. The risk of
such an outcome highlights the impor-
tance of accurate modeling that can
separate the influence of technology
from that of targeting the best geologi-
cal locations.
Impact of Technology
vs. Locations
Montgomery, a graduate student in civil
and environmental engineering and
an MITEI researcher, and O’Sullivan,
research director at MITEI, describe in
their paper a statistical approach that
Predicted First
Year Production
(MBbl)
(40,70)
(70,100)
(100,130)
(130,160)
(160,190)
(190,220)
(220,250)
–102.5
can distinguish reliably between the
impacts of changes in technology and
changes in location on well productivity.
“There has not been a rigorous
attempt to disentangle the effects of
technology and sweet-spotting,” Mont-
gomery said. “We realized that there was
an opportunity to both provide a better
understanding of what this balance has
been in a particular tight oil basin and
at the same time present a methodology
that can be used in other basins.”
In research supported by MITEI,
Montgomery and O’Sullivan ran tests
on five models that used data obtained
from almost 4,000 wells in the Middle
Bakken and Three Forks formations in
North Dakota over 42 months.
Models Lack Needed Flexibility
The researchers found that models in
use, including a type of model that the
US Energy Information Administration
uses to develop its Annual Energy Out-
look, tend to overestimate technological
impact because they lack the flexibility
to account for the data impact of short
distance variations in well locations that
can represent the difference between a
sweet spot and a considerably less pro-
spective target.
Montgomery and O’Sullivan found
that half of the Bakken/Three Forks well
productivity gains analyzed resulted
from where rather than how the wells
were drilled.
Seeking ways to separate the techno-
logical influence from that of location,
the researchers benefited from examin-
ing earth science models for estimating
the accumulated snow on a mountain or
variations in soil properties by location.
They sought to understand hidden spa-
tial patterns that can influence data and
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
methods to find a statistically more rig-
orous modeling template.
Combined Approaches
The researchers’ efforts led them to pro-
pose the use of two approaches: spatial
error modeling and regression-kriging.
Both have been used in earth science
modeling but not in well productivity
simulations. However, because they can
account for changes in location with a
much greater resolution than other meth-
ods, they can enable modelers to make
considerably more accurate predictions.
“It is a very powerful predictive
model, and you can essentially estimate
what the expected productivity would
be at any location in the field with a
realistic technology design,” Montgom-
ery said. “It’s a very challenging eco-
nomic situation for developing wells in
Drilling Boom Goes Flat
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
Growth in the US rig count stalled in mid-
July, in what could be a sign of things
to come.
After doubling over the previous 12
months, the rig count remained flat, slip-
ping to 949 as of 11 August, according to
the Baker Hughes Rig Count.
But surveys of industry insiders by
the Federal Reserve banks of Dallas
and Kansas City see that rally running
out, with shrinking spending on capital
expenditures (Capex) and drilling.
“We see the expected Capex and
expected drilling number are still posi-
tive. It is a lot less positive than in the first
quarter and certainly in the fourth quar-
ter of last year,” said Chad Wilkerson, the
branch executive and economist at the
Kansas City Fed’s Oklahoma City branch,
adding, “Leveling seems to be the story.”
Both surveys were done in May after
the price of oil had slumped to around
USD 45/bbl and natural gas to around
USD 3.00/MMBtu. If prices fail to rise to
well over USD 50/bbl, which those sur-
veyed do not expect this year or next,
operators are expected to lose their
appetite for growth because for many it
will be a money-losing proposition.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
these fields right now, but this research
should help both policymakers and
commercial entities better understand
what can be expected from these impor-
tant resources going forward.”
In addition to the Bakken/Three Forks
results just published, the researchers
have looked at and will continue to study
other basins and formations where
unconventional drilling and develop-
ment is contemplated or ongoing. That
includes the Permian Basin in west
Texas and New Mexico, the world’s lead-
ing location for current unconventional
development activity.
‘Focused’ on Permian Basin
“Absolutely, we’re focused on the Perm-
ian,” O’Sullivan said. “The Permian cer-
tainly is a more complex geology. And
there are some issues with respect to
The Dallas Fed described second quar-
ter activity as robust for the 3 months
ended 30 June, but the survey com-
ments section questioned whether it will
be sustainable.
“Hoping that OPEC will adhere to
their production goals is fantasy,” said
one, adding, “Couple that with our
incredible advances technological-
ly and you have a market ripe for con-
tinued softness.”
Continued low oil prices due to a global
supply glut “have increased uncertainty
and reduced cash flow. Coupled with cost
increases for pressure-pumping services,
drilling rigs, tubulars, and other drill-
ing and completion services, our rates of
return are reduced from last quarter and
this time last year.”
The ceiling for rigs working could be
around 1,000, said Mark Richard, senior
vice president for global business devel-
opment and marketing for Halliburton,
according to a Reuters report.
“I think it might level off then. If our
customers put too much out there, it’s
costing too much and putting too much
demand on service companies to provide
equipment and people,” he said.
the commingling of legacy produc-
tion, legacy wells. However, we’re com-
fortable now, based on the work in
the Bakken and some other plays that
were more virgin shale plays, that the
tool is robust within that kind of more
complex environment.”
While applicable to plays that include
considerable developed acreage, the
tool was designed especially for pro-
spective areas. “We are quite keen to be
able to have the tool deployable across
a range of the shale plays, particular-
ly those where there’s a lot of unde-
veloped acreage,” O’Sullivan said. “One
thing that I’m particularly interested in
is actually being able to take the tool to a
place like the Vaca Muerta in Argentina.”
Although not discussed in the recent
paper, the tool could also be used in
asset valuation, he said.
While that number is about half the
level during the drilling boom, gains in
drilling efficiency over the past 2 years
narrow the actual gap, reducing the
breakeven cost.
If companies can produce far more oil
per well, that could also improve the eco-
nomics. “There have been some remark-
able wells that came on line” recent-
ly, said Jozef Lieskovsky, an analyst for
the US Energy Information Administra-
tion. His responsibilities include track-
ing the growing number of wells drilled
but uncompleted.
Brutal Margins
For now, service companies are experi-
encing a price squeeze.
While service companies have been
able to raise prices this year, after see-
ing their rates slashed during the previ-
ous 2 years, the Dallas Fed survey showed
that the cost of providing those services
has gone up far faster.
Chasing growth opportunities now is a
costly proposition. To hold project costs
in line, operators expect performance
comparable to the highest-specification
rigs. Those bringing back older equip-
25
 ment are looking for ways to upgrade
them to compete. Completing those
wells will require paying to put neglect-
ed pressure-pumping equipment back
into service.
And the big growth limiter is the cost
of hiring and training people. Hallibur-
ton has expanded its fleet of trucks doing
fracturing jobs in west Texas by 30%
in recent months and has been hiring
about 100 workers per month to run
them, according to a story in the Midland
Reporter-Telegram, quoting Halliburton.
The company is holding job fairs in
places ranging from Alabama to Nevada
to bring workers back to this sparsely
populated region where many of those
laid off during the last bust are not likely
to return.
“The boom region of the Permian has
by far the highest people turnover,” said
Richard Spears, vice president of Spears
& Associates, which provides drill-
ing information. He added that “abso-
lute growth in activity in the region is
constrained by people who earn far less
than they earned in 2014 due to a vari-
ety of factors, but largely because ser-
vice prices are still a shadow of their
2014 levels.”
US Daily Oil Production To Break Record in 2018
Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor
Average total crude oil production in
the United States is expected to reach a
record level of 9.9 million B/D in 2018,
the US Energy Information Administra-
tion (EIA) said in its latest forecast.
The projected output would surpass
the 9.6 million B/D that the US pro-
duced in 1970. The forecast said that
total US crude oil production will average
9.3 million B/D this year, an increase of
500,000 B/D from 2016.
Most of the production growth from
June through the end of next year is
expected to come from tight rock for-
mations in the Permian region of Texas
and from the Federal Offshore Gulf of
Mexico (GOM).
The Permian region is expected to pro-
duce 2.9 million B/D of crude oil by the
end of 2018, which is about 500,000 B/D
26
Drilling faster and longer laterals
takes a toll on the hardware used to mea-
sure while drilling (MWD) and the mud
motors powering drilling for laterals
running 10,000 ft or more.
“MWD systems fail after 300 hours in
the hole, not the usual 1,000 hours. This
is probably because we drill three times
faster today than just a few years ago and
this is punishing for the MWD systems
and the motors,” Spears said.
The loss of skilled people adds to
the problems.
“Performance drilling motors—used
to drill these 10,000-ft and longer later-
als—are in short supply today,” Spears
said. Suppliers are limited because “the
machinists who used to work at the
motor repair and manufacturing centers
left the industry for safer jobs in 2015.”
Others have observed the cost of
deferred maintenance. “In the indus-
try as a whole it is a significant issue.
Frankly, there is not a lot of capital to
put into maintaining tools. Failure rates
have gone up really quickly,” said Todd
Benson, CEO of Motive Drilling Tech-
nologies, which sells a system that offers
turn-by-turn advice for directional drill-
ing. The cause of the problem is “tool
above the estimated June level and would
represent almost 30% of total produc-
tion in 2018. The region predominate-
ly spans the Permian Basin of western
Texas and southeastern New Mexico and
covers 53 million acres.
Historically Prolific Formations
Within the Permian Basin are smaller
subbasins, which include the Midland
and Delaware basins. All of them contain
historically prolific nontight formations
and multiple prolific tight formations,
such as the Wolfcamp, Spraberry, and
Bone Spring formations.
With the large geographic area of the
Permian region and stacked plays, oper-
ators can continue to drill through sev-
eral tight oil layers and increase pro-
duction—even with sustained prices for
providers are not making profits. It is
hard to justify buying spare parts and
new inventory.”
Raising capital to support growth
remains difficult. The survey by the Kan-
sas City Fed showed the index for bor-
rowing slipped into negative territory
during the second quarter.
The relative decline was not signifi-
cant. The actual effect will vary based on
the lenders, with less money available
from banks and bond markets. More has
been available from private equity firms
this year to those that meet the firms’
expectations, Wilkerson said.
One stabilizing factor is the number
of companies that locked in a price for
their production using hedging strate-
gies. Those methods depend on finding
favorably priced contracts on the futures
or options markets, which will only be
available if oil and gas prices rally.
And the oil industry people surveyed
by the two Federal Reserve banks were
seeing only modest price increases this
year or next.
“Over the next 6 months to 1 year
we are not expected to get back to even
what is considered a profitable level,”
Wilkerson said.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude
below USD 50 per bbl.
According to the Baker Hughes June
monthly average rig count, 366 of the
915 onshore rigs in the contiguous 48
states are operating within the Permian
region. EIA estimates that the number
will fall slightly in the second half of
2017 to 345 at year-end and grow to
370 by the end of 2018.
Positive Cash Flow
In addition to responding to WTI price
changes, rig count increases are relat-
ed to cash flow. Permian operators have
maintained positive cash flow because
of lower costs, higher productivity, and
increased hedging activity. Many produc-
ers have sold future output at prices high-
er than USD 50/ bbl. Available cash flows
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 B:8.375”
T:8.125”
S:6.8”

A LINE HAS BEEN DRAWN.

BETWEEN THE SAME WAY AND A NEW WAY.

BETWEEN ENERGY DEMAND AND ENERGY POTENTIAL.

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TODAY, A LINE HAS BEEN DRAWN.

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S:10”

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 could contribute to regional rig count
growth despite relatively flat prices since
December 2016.
Based on EIA’s Drilling Productivity
Report, Permian region productivity—
measured by new-well oil production per
rig in bbl per day—is forecast to decrease
month-over-month for the 10th consecu-
tive month in June. The decrease is likely
because of operators drilling more wells
than they are completing, i.e., casing,
cementing, perforating, and hydraulically
fracturing wells to prepare for production.
These wells reflect drilling activity but not
additional output until put on production.
The trend of drilling but postponing
completions does not have a clear cause.
However, a widening of the WTI-Midland
IEA: US May Be Top LNG Exporter by 2022
Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor
The US may become the global leader
in liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports,
according to a new report by the Inter-
national Energy Agency (IEA). To ascend
to the top spot, US LNG shipments
must surpass today’s leading exporters,
Australia and Qatar.
The IEA called US LNG a “catalyst
for change” and highlighted how pro-
duction from tight shale gas fields is
transforming the world’s natural gas
marketplace. The Paris-based organiza-
tion also said the country’s exports will
help fuel economic growth in develop-
ing countries.
“The US shale revolution shows no
sign of running out of steam and its
effects are now amplified by a second
revolution of rising LNG supplies,” said
Fatih Birol, the executive director of the
IEA. “Also, the rising number of LNG-
consuming countries, from 15 in 2005
to 39 this year, shows that LNG attracts
many new customers, especially in the
emerging world.
“However, whether these coun-
tries remain long-term consumers or
opportunistic buyers will depend on
price competition.”
The IEA forecasts that global gas
demand will rise by 1.6% annually to
2022. In that time, the world’s consump-
28
crude oil price discount to the WTI-
Cushing [Oklahoma] price since the start
of 2017 suggests that there may be some
minor transportation constraints. The lags
in completions may also reflect an operat-
ing strategy of drilling multiple wells from
a single pad and not deploying completion
equipment until all wells are drilled.
Average output per well shows that
productivity based on initial production
(IP) rates continues to increase in the
Permian region. IP based on average out-
put per well year-to-date is higher than
the 2016 annual average. Many operators
continue to experiment with completion
techniques to maximize output per well,
which suggests that the 2017 annual aver-
age IP rate could continue to increase.
The Corpus Christi gas liquefaction facility spans 1,000 acres in Texas and
with its five trains will produce up to 22.5 million tons of liquefied natural gas
annually upon its scheduled start up in 2018. Source: Cheniere Energy.
tion will swell from 2016’s figure of
3,630 billion cubic meter (bcm) to nearly
4,000 bcm.
China will represent 40% of that
growth as its industrial sector takes over
as the top consumer of gas, while the
US is expected to be producing more
than a fifth of the global supply. The US
is already the planet’s top producer and
consumer of natural gas.
Much of that additional output will
come from the Marcellus Shale play in
Pennsylvania, which is set to see gas pro-
duction increase by a staggering 45%.
The IEA says low gas prices will not
Gulf of Mexico Drilling
The dynamics related to drilling
in the GOM differ from those in the
contiguous-48-state onshore regions.
Because of the time needed to complete
large offshore projects, GOM oil pro-
duction is less sensitive to short-term
oil price movements than US onshore
production. Eight GOM projects came
on line in 2016, contributing to produc-
tion growth. Another seven projects are
anticipated to come on line by the end
of 2018.
Based on anticipated production at
new and existing fields, GOM crude oil
production is expected to increase to an
average of 1.7 million B/D this year and
1.9 million B/D in 2018.
stop this growth as operators learn to
drill more efficient wells with fewer rigs
than before.
Even without these new supplies, the
IEA says the world is already facing an
“LNG glut” that has lowered prices and
made countries such as Pakistan, Thai-
land, and Jordan LNG buyers.
Other importing countries have seen
the new supplies result in rigid con-
tracts becoming more relaxed, a change
that “will be accelerated by the expan-
sion of US exports, which are not tied
to any particular destination,” the
IEA said. JPT
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 This Vision
of Onshore
Seismic
May Look
Strange at First
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
I magine a swarm of drones hovering
over a remote tropical forest drop-
ping what looks like large darts. The
darts are actually seismic receivers
delivered from the air as shown in an
animated video from Total. They are
part of a project to rethink how sur-
veys are done in remote spots where the
jagged landscape limits movement on
the ground.
The goal is to find ways to sharp-
ly reduce both the cost and the envi-
ronmental impact of gathering the
volumes of data needed to illumi-
nate oil and gas deposits in complex,
hard-to-image formations.
Their testing ground, Papua New
Guinea, is a perfect example of the prob-
lem. Florent Bertini, Earth Imaging R&D
program director at Total, describes it
as “one of the most challenging places
on Earth for seismic acquisition.”
30
This airship, called the HA2t, can lift 2 tons
into remote areas, and can be shipped in a
And there are enough other locations
where the barriers to generating the
booming sounds needed for seismic and
recording how it reflects off the layers
below are great enough to justify taking
on some extreme technical challenges.
“Tomorrow’s most promising on-
shore oil and gas exploration acreages
are located in foothills, yet these areas
have been underexplored as traditional
exploration methods are not suitable to
deal with these complex environments,”
Total says in the video.
Rather than hacking paths through
dense forests to set out lines of seismic
receivers, they are building and testing a
system using drones to drop thousands
of receivers that will biodegrade after
the survey.
A lead drone will coordinate the
flight. It will ensure the drones remain
safely above the tree tops. And it will use
standard cargo container. Source: Total.
an infrared scanning system to ensure
there are no large animals below before
ordering the release, Total said.
A radio communication system devel-
oped by Wireless Seismic, called the
Downfall Air Receiver Technology
(DART) links the dropped DARTs to a
control and processing center that mon-
itors the quality of incoming data and
makes changes if there are problems.
Total said the rewards justify some
tall technical challenges.
“Poor accessibility remains the larg-
est challenge for seismic programs in
these settings, which drives up cost,
time, and HSE exposure,” Total said.
Frontier Technology
The current version of the system will
be tested later this year when a single
drone will be used to drop 100 of the
DARTs over a 0.2-km2 area. That will
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
This dart-shaped seismic receiver picks up data and sends them to a central processing center during a seismic survey.
Source: Total.
show if a new carrousel on the underside
of the drone, which carries four DARTS,
can drop them one at a time at locations
along its route.
They will also see how reliably the
DARTS can record and transmit data.
This will require landing them in a near-
ly vertical position for reliable data gath-
ering, and then transmitting the infor-
mation to a central processing center.
The drone test is the next step in a
project that began in 2014 to devel-
op the multiphysics exploration tech-
nology integrated system (METIS).
Total is building toward an “industrial-
scale” pilot project, which it hopes will
be ready in 2021, to deploy 40,000 to
50,000 DARTs over a 100-km2 area,
said Bertini.
The partners need to prove that
they can efficiently and safety deliver
DARTS on the scale required to gath-
er a large volume of data over a wide
area that is required for the advanced
image-processing methods. Current
survey methods often result in ambig-
uous images for those interpret-
ing them.
Airborne Delivery
Automated drone flights carpeting the
forest floor are just one of the aerial
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
departures from conventional ground-
based, data-acquisition methods.
To move in heavy loads without a
road or runway, Total is working with a
French company with an apt name, Fly-
ing Whales, to develop a new airship,
called the HA2t. The name of the 40-ton
blimp stands for hybrid air, 2  tons,
which will allow it to bring in buildings
for the operations center. It is designed
to be packed inside a standard ship-
ping container for rapid delivery around
the world.
Before any heavy equipment arrives,
data from satellite imaging and air-
craft surveys using a variety of meth-
ods—hyperspectral, radar, and LiDAR
(Light Detection and Ranging)—are
used to create detailed maps of the sur-
face and near surface. Those will be
used to choose the best locations for
seismic sound sources and receiv-
ers, and plan how best to manage
the operation.
Airborne surveys will be used to
determine the height of the tree tops—
drones are generally expected to fly
about 20 m above them. They will
also be seeking openings in the forest
canopy, which Bertini calls “sky holes.”
These natural openings would reduce
the cost and impact of creating clearings
for an operations center and the sound
sources, which cannot be dropped
in place. In early testing, the sounds
required will come from buried explo-
sive charges.
The third partner in the project, Geo-
kinetics, is designing, acquiring, and
processing the data in an environment
where the difficult terrain will define the
location and number of sound sources
and receivers.
Technically speaking, good imaging
of complex rock requires high trace den-
sity. That is a measure of the quality of
the subsurface illumination, which is a
function of the number of seismic sourc-
es and receivers. More receivers can
compensate for fewer sound sources,
and vice versa. And they must be even-
ly distributed to ensure the entire area
is covered. Adding receivers is likely
to be the best option for increasing the
trace density.
“By adopting a carpet receiver
approach, where receiver stations are
located on average 50 m in all direc-
tions, METIS reduces the dense source
requirement” by using more receivers,
Bertini said.
“In foothills environments, current-
ly available source technology is sig-
nificantly more costly, dangerous, and
31
 LiDAR data are used to map the contours of the survey area during the planning process. Source: Total.
damaging to the environment than
deploying additional receivers,” he said.
To verify the system is delivering the
required quality and quantity of data,
the communication system will provide
real-time data, which will be analyzed
to create preliminary images. Those will
be used to ensure the quality of the data
and to seek out any gaps, which could
include further DART drops.
Innovation Required
Keeping the work off the ground, and
minimizing the impact when it does
touch down, will require signifi-
cant advances.
For the same reason the compa-
ny needs to avoid placing receivers, it
wants to be able to avoid collecting them
afterward. Bertini said such an opera-
tion would require as many as 1,000
people for the 100-km2 pilot test. Their
solution is for the DARTs to biodegrade
after the survey is done. The DART case
is already made of biodegradable mate-
rial, and the company is working on
32
finding ways to mass produce batteries
and sensors that fade away.
Bertini said it has identified likely
solutions. Total has made significant
investment in projects to develop bio-
plastics and recently bought a battery
company called Saft that has expertise
in that area.
There are ways to make a biodegrad-
able circuit board. Bertini said adapting
those methods to create seismic compo-
nents will “take significant effort.” And
while there are prototype biodegradable
batteries, more development is needed
for full-scale field application.
To get more out of each DART, the
company is working to extend the bat-
tery life, with a goal of 21 to 28 days of
recording time. To conserve power, the
devices can be turned off by a signal
from the central data recorder when
not needed.
And there is a plan to change the
sensors to eliminate the need to stick
the landing. For the upcoming test, the
pointed DARTs will need to be standing
within 15° of true vertical to record good
quality seismic data. The company is
working on replacing the geophone with
multidirectional accelerometers (3-axis
MEMS) that are smaller, lighter, and can
record a wider range of data, even if the
DART is not upright.
Total is also looking for an alternative
to explosive sound sources that can be
delivered to difficult-to-reach spots. It
will also be dealing with a nontechnical
issue—the likely reactions if people liv-
ing on the ground begin seeing DARTs
around them.
“There is clearly a cultural challenge
to be handled at a very early stage of any
kind of operation (seismic, drilling, etc.)
in any foreign country, more particu-
larly where cultural or education differ-
ences are high,” Bertini said. “For such
specific challenges, we have in Total
and in our partners’ teams, some high-
ly skilled professionals used to dealing
with socialization and technical educa-
tion of local populations” working with
the staff in those areas. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
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 Clouds are Forming Around
the Upstream Sector, and
That’s a Good Thing
Since 2009, global spend on cloud technology has outpaced that of conventional IT infrastructure by 4.5 times.
This trend is now becoming clearer to see in the oil and gas business. Source: Getty Images.
T he oil and gas business knows that
it is on the slow track when it comes
to leveraging many of the latest digital
technologies. However, this may be a
bit of an overstatement when discuss-
ing the influence of cloud computing—
which allows businesses to crunch data
faster than ever before thanks to a near-
ly unlimited ability to scale up process-
ing power.
Fatima Alsubhi is the chief executive
officer of Certis Information Services,
a Houston-based information manage-
ment firm that has helped some of the
biggest names in the oil field transi-
tion their data and files into the cloud.
That experience tells her that cloud plat-
forms are well on their way to becom-
ing the norm in the upstream busi-
ness, comparable to how advanced
34
Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor
oilfield software became mainstream
years ago.
“If someone says they increased reli-
ability by 10%, you know part of that
is because of the use of software—and
now it’s the same thing happening with
the cloud,” she explained, adding that
the early adopters no longer see cloud
services as simply rented server space.
The growing consensus is that cloud
platforms combined with software-as-
a-service represent a powerful data tool,
the limits of which have only begun to be
tested. “This is going to evolve and keep
moving forward because it just makes
sense,” emphasized Alsubhi. “The cloud
is cheaper, it’s faster, and it’s easier.”
Plenty of others appear to be in agree-
ment. Take for instance just a few news
items from July including an announce-
ment that BP is transferring proprietary
information out of its own data centers
and into Microsoft’s Azure cloud-based
analytics processing platform.
The shift is notable because it repre-
sents the latest step in BP’s strategy to
shutter its on-premises data centers and
fully embrace public cloud platforms. At
a recent conference the company said
the effort has already cut its IT costs by
around 40%.
Also in July, ConocoPhillips made
clear its feelings about cloud technolo-
gy by appointing the founder of a cloud-
based analytics company to its board
of directors. Around the same time,
Amazon Web Services noted in a press
release that Halliburton’s Landmark
software product line is among the ear-
liest users of a its newest cloud product
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 WoSldwide Spending on Public Cloud Computing, 2015–2020 (USD B)
Average Compound Growth Rate, YE2015–YE2020, 19%
IT Spending Average Compound Growth Rate,
YE2015–YE2020, 3%
USD 82
USD 67
2015 2016
Research sponsored by Salesforce shows the anticipated trajectory of public cloud investments. Source: IDC.
built to support intensive 3D visualiza-
tions and virtual reality applications.
These examples all highlight how big
oil is warming to the biggest players
in cloud technology. But because the
cloud market is growing at a far fast-
er rate than traditional IT spend, more
small and medium-sized oil and gas pro-
ducers are expected to begin follow-
ing suit.
Startups Lowering the Barrier
At least one factor holding back many in
the industry—high costs—appears to
be eroding thanks to startup companies
like Antaeus Technologies.
The Houston-headquartered soft-
ware-as-a-service firm is going up
against tech giants and service com-
panies by charging an annual fee of
only USD 500 per user for its cloud
database. The next rung up carries
an annual fee of USD 3,000 per user
which gives users access to custom-
developed petrophysics and geome-
chanical modeling plugins, with more
on the way.
These are prices that Pierre Jean
Daniel, the chief executive officer
of Antaeus, believes operating com-
panies of any size can afford. “Our idea
is to democratize more of this cloud
technology and make it accessible to
everyone,” he said, adding that some
of his competition charges a first-
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
USD 117
USD 99
2017 2018
year all-in cost of USD 50,000 for the
same services.
Moreover, sophisticated oilfield plug-
ins are commonly priced a la carte, and
may get more expensive depending on
the client company’s market cap.
“We are more like the Netflix model
though, where you get all-you-can-eat
for a single subscription,” Daniel said,
noting that Antaeus is bucking one more
conventional pricing practice by not
charging early termination fees for its
services. “This is the way software is
going; you will pay as you go.”
Connecting Dots Above
and Below
Petrabytes is another Houston-based
startup that is targeting the independent
upstream sector with half-a-dozen cloud-
based analytics and modeling products.
One of the programs aims to make find-
ing sweet spots faster and easier through
an artificial-intelligence-driven approach
to seismic survey analysis
“It quickly processes through a lot
of seismic images and then identifies a
trend, or certain geo-bodies, and also
the specific rock types,” explained Sashi
Gunturu, the chief executive officer
of Petrabytes.
Although this product may be more
suited to the mid-sized producer, Petra-
bytes says such cloud-based tools have
attracted pilot projects with two undis-
USD 162
USD 138
2019 2020
closed majors. The two oil companies
have partnered with Petrabytes to
expand their capabilities in fiber-optic
analysis, specifically distributed acoustic
sensing (DAS).
DAS helps shale companies literal-
ly hear how their hydraulic fracturing
treatments performed. The problem is
that the data generated during a sin-
gle job are measured in terabytes (TB),
which makes it impossible for most
operators to use DAS in real time. Their
alternative is to store the data on a hard
drive until someone can look at it and see
what happened.
“They literally ship those drives—and
for 2 or 3 weeks, there is no analysis,”
said Gunturu, who added that the solu-
tion he is working on involves the devel-
opment of an edge device. These small
computers can be installed at the wellsite
to collect only the most critical pieces of
the DAS data.
“You then transmit that knowledge to
the cloud” via a network connection or
when a field technician returns to an
office, explained Gunturu. At the same
time, other edge devices may be collect-
ing and sending data to the cloud plat-
form which automatically searches for
larger patterns in a company’s well stim-
ulation performance.
Through a new subsidiary, Petrabytes
has also developed software for emerg-
ing drone technology, which is finding
35
 With security concerns being eased, more companies in the upstream business are expected to begin handing over
proprietary data sets to public cloud systems which are less expensive than maintaining a private cloud built with
on-site server farms. Source: Getty Images.
a niche market for quick and cheap site
inspections. Some people view drones
as flying computers, ones that take mea-
surements with high-definition camer-
as or even lasers, infrared, and various
types of scanning radar.
“The fundamental thing is that you
are imaging the data,” with a drone, said
Gunturu. This means that drone infor-
mation can be integrated with other data
sets, such as the seismic interpretation of
a reservoir.
“I think that will be the holy grail,”
he said. “You now have the entire site
analyzed—of what’s above and what’s
below—and then you can combine that
as one unified model. That’s where we
are headed.”
No Wi-Fi, No Problem
Another central piece of Antaeus’
big pitch to oil companies is how the
easy-to-access nature of the cloud
will make business and engineering
36
collaborations more time-efficient.
While working for Schlumberger for
much of his upstream career, Daniel
saw how the simple act of sharing
project files via email was leading to
big slowdowns.
“Clients were giving me data drop
by drop and I couldn’t work,” he said.
“Going back and forth like this, we saw
how easy it was to lose a week or 2
weeks—especially when you throw dif-
ferent time zones on top of it.”
Daniel also knows firsthand the
challenges of working with partners
in poorly networked locations where
sharing files can be a hit or miss opera-
tion. To overcome connectivity issues
in remote areas, he said the company
has developed a low-bandwidth capa-
bility and a portable device that dupli-
cates the most critical aspects of its
cloud platform.
“When you go on location, you can syn-
chronize your database onto this box,”
which Daniel explained will have around
1 TB of storage and can use mobile net-
works to provide Wi-Fi for a group of
engineers or field techs. “You just put it
on the table and everyone inside a truck
can work from it.”
Laggards May Not Be Ready
Alsubhi started Certis more than a
decade ago and in that time has seen
how oil companies have matured in
their views on data management. Still
though, the trained petroleum engi-
neer turned data specialist knows
that many in the business are sim-
ply not ready to take full advantage of
cloud technology.
“The systems connected within
an organization are often very much
messy,” she said, explaining that a com-
mon result is that important data some-
times get lost.
Without clearly defined lines of
where data comes from and where it
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
A Cloudy Revolution
The small cloud and data management providers
highlighted in this article were all featured at an SPE

OUR PROVEN
Gulf Coast Section event held in Houston earlier
this summer.
Styled as a faux shark tank, the event allowed each of
the firms to pitch their unique business models before a
panel of industry experts and observers who delivered RELIABILITY.
YOUR
candid feedback. No actual investors were involved, and
in full disclosure, this writer sat on that panel which was
selected by members of the Entrepreneurship Cell, an
SPE-sanctioned subcommittee.
Moji Karimi, a co-founder of the Entrepreneurship Cell
and the business development manager for the DNA
SPECIFICATIONS.
reservoir diagnostics startup Biota, said the firms show
that using data to create value is a real and growing
industry trend.
The technology areas they specialize in will,
according to Karimi, open doors to real-time and
automated decision making, increase field efficiency,
and improve safety—all while reducing costs. “The
industry has no choice but to adapt,” he said, adding At Pyromation, we’re dedicated
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work duplication.
All of this is to say that when a company is ready to make sensor needs.
the leap, its first step may not be to call on the cloud service
vendors but rather a data management firm that can do the
required housekeeping. The pitfall of investing in cloud plat- GET A QUOTE !
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260.209.6341
Alsubhi gave a real-world example from one of the largest
oil companies in the US, name withheld, that involved sim-
plifying its overly complex seismic analysis workflow. “When
we mapped it out and put it in front of them, they saw if they
just did step No. 12 first, then they didn’t need all the steps in
between,” she said.
Her simplest advice to oil and gas companies is to be specific
about why they want to improve how they use data and stored
files, and not simply view it as something that must be done in
order to join the cloud.
“They need to do [information management] with a vision in
mind and one that adds real impact to the business itself, not
just pockets of unconnected projects,” she said. “So if the goal
of a company is to find new prospects or improve its comple- NEC Rated · FM/CSA Approved
tions, then it needs to do data management projects that help
that goal.” JPT

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 Induced Seismicity
Induced Earthquakes in Oklahoma
Dropping, But Not Off the Radar
I n 2015, Oklahoma recorded just over
900 earthquakes of at least a 3.0 mag-
nitude. In 2016, the total fell to 623
and this year’s figure is on track to be
about 300.
Since the vast majority of these earth-
quakes are linked to produced water
injections, the trend line is welcome
news to the state’s oil and gas industry.
However, for Jeremy Boak, director of
the Oklahoma Geological Survey, 300 of
these generally small earthquakes is still
too many.
“We are seeing seismicity decline,” he
said. “But I’m a little uneasy that it’s flat-
tening out at a rate that I have a hard time
believing will be acceptable in Oklahoma.”
Boak offered his thoughts on the topic
of induced earthquakes while speaking
on an expert panel at the Unconventional
Resources Technology Conference. Strict-
er wastewater injection limits and low oil
prices are driving the drop in Oklahoma’s
earthquake frequency, but Boak said it is
not known why that drop is “stalling out”
instead of continuing, and for that reason
he stressed that the issue continues to
demand constant monitoring.
Boak’s agency, which is not a regula-
tor but reports its seismic observations
and findings to one, determined in 2015
that swarms of daily earthquakes were
being caused by disposal well injections
of produced water into Oklahoma’s deep-
est sedimentary formation (known as the
Arbuckle) that sits just above a myriad of
pre-Cambrian fault lines.
The panel discussion on which he sat
revealed how much regulators, the seis-
mology community, and the oil industry
have all learned in the past few years about
disposal wells and how they can trig-
ger earthquakes. The talk also served to
highlight the unfinished business on the
38
Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor
matter, and why Texas may become the
next hot spot for induced earthquakes.
‘All Predictable’
One of the positive developments to
come from this problem is the actionable
research that has been produced by peo-
ple like Mark Zoback, a renowned profes-
sor of geophysics at Stanford University
in California and one of the leading voic-
es on induced earthquakes.
During his turn behind the lectern,
Zoback explained how new models that he
has helped create are painting a “robust
picture” of the seismic situation in north-
central Oklahoma, home to about 95% of
the state’s most recent spate of quakes.
“If you know about the stress state
and the fault, you can calculate what per-
turbation of pore pressure might make
a fault slip,” Zoback said. “It’s all pretty
straightforward, but there’s uncertainty
in all the parameters involved.”
One of those uncertainties is the fault
lines themselves. Zoback said that the oil
industry has handed over data that have
helped gain critically important under-
standings of Oklahoma’s stress state and
faults lines—but the data are incomplete
because even the best seismic technolo-
gy may not pick up a fault until it moves.
Although when armed with adequate
data sets, the Stanford seismic model
has proven to be accurate. Zoback said it
found that the fault associated with the
second biggest earthquake in Oklahoma
history, the 5.7-magnitude Prague quake
in 2011, had a 50% chance of slipping.
Further history matching showed that
other recent earthquakes “were all pre-
dictable” had the model and the required
data been available.
“The real problem in the analysis is that
there’s not a good correlation between
the earthquakes and the mapped faults,”
Zoback said.
Permian Basin Shaking?
While not all faults can be seen by seis-
mic, many of them have been detect-
ed but nevertheless remain invisible to
researchers and regulators alike. This
is particularly the case in the Permian
Basin region of Texas where Zoback said
induced earthquakes may be on the rise.
Due to the recent surge in drilling and
completion activity there, he said some
operators are seeking alternative injec-
tion formations that can handle excess
volumes of produced water. But because
the existing fault maps are “extraordi-
narily inadequate,” Zoback said that
modeling the Permian’s risk zones for
induced earthquakes cannot move for-
ward until more data are obtained.
And while praising industry partners
in Texas for sharing stress-state data, he
said oil and gas producers should now
hand over the other half of the earth-
quake equation: the fault maps. “There
is a lot of good 3D seismic data out there
that is not contributing in a proactive
way to the solution to this problem,”
Zoback said.
Staying on this point, Boak said that
he has found that the biggest obstacle
to obtaining the right data sets is usually
corporate counsel. “The hardest part of
this negotiation, in trying to free up some
of these 3D seismic plots, has been try-
ing to figure out how to protect propri-
etary information and make the lawyers
happy,” he said.
Zoback expects that the fault data will
see the light of day, but only when the
earthquakes in west Texas begin adding
up and force the hand of operators to
share more.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
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UPTON COUNTY WOLFBERRY FORMATION Treated Well A
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Average Production
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Well B
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220 MBOE (126 MBO)
Type Curve
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· © 2017 All Rights Reserved · 1594
 Induced Seismicity
Filling in the Blanks
To Limit Earthquake Risks
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor
I t is known that a well injecting a lot of
water near a big fault can lead to earth-
quakes. The problem is, more often than
not those faults are not known until after
a tremor.
“Only 34% of these earthquakes occur
within 2 km of any known fault,” said Jer-
emy Boak, director of the Oklahoma Geo-
logical Survey, which is working on mul-
tiple studies to describe and understand
how water injection activates critically
stressed faults to cause earthquakes.
“We are learning where many faults
are,” Boak said at the American Asso-
Earthquake epicenters over residual free-air anomaly, red dots 4.0
First vertical derivative residual free-air anomaly, red dots 4.0
Maps plot the earthquake epicenters over maps showing various versions of
gravity and magnetic studies. Source: RPSEA 12122.
40
ciation of Petroleum Geologists annual
meeting this spring, where he delivered
a paper (2017) along with researchers
from Texas, Kansas, and Colorado talk-
ing about what they are doing to fill the
knowledge gaps.
While the Oklahoma Geological Sur-
vey is not a regulator, its work has guid-
ed what the state has done to reduce
the number of earthquakes by lim-
iting injection in those areas with the
most problems.
“The drop is due to decreases in injec-
tion,” related to a slowdown in activity
Earthquake epicenters over magnetic anomaly, red dots 4.0
First vertical derivative magnetic anomaly, red dots 4.0
since oil prices dropped and the orders
to reduce injection in affected areas by
the regulator, the Oklahoma Corporation
Commission, Boak said.
Speaking at the Unconventional
Resources Technology Conference in
July, Boak predicted that the number
of earthquakes strong enough to feel
will total around 300 this year—one-
third of the number of the peak that
occurred in 2015. Boak said it is far from
an acceptable rate of activity in a state
where the annual average used to be
1.6 events a year.
He and others working on this prob-
lem are concerned about big gaps in
the information needed to measure and
avoid spots predisposed to seismic activ-
ity if too much water is injected. That is
as big a problem in Texas and Kansas as
it is in Oklahoma.
The future economics of oil explora-
tion in these areas depend on identify-
ing specific solutions—problem places
or practices—rather than wholesale lim-
its on saltwater disposal.
A study in Colorado identified a pre-
viously unmapped fault zone to avoid,
which was responsible for a cluster of
earthquakes within the Denver Basin.
Identifying and avoiding places and
practices that trigger problems can
answer the public pressure to ban salt-
water injection, according to the paper
by two graduate students at the Colo-
rado School of Mines (Harty and Bauer
2017). They estimated that treating
the water could cost six times more
than disposal.
“We need to improve our knowledge
of subsurface faults and fractures,” said
Tandis Bidgoli, an assistant scientist for
energy research at the Kansas Geological
Survey. Kansas recently completed a new
fault map of the state, which shares a bor-
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 Induced Seismicity

der with Oklahoma, with support from quakes and determine if the direction of Magnetic and gravity studies were
the US Geological Survey. natural stresses is aligned in a way that also used in a major Oklahoma study
could lead to movement along a stressed (RPSEA 12122). That project, backed
Looking Deep fault if injected water was added. by RPSEA, a federally backed research
The faults that cause problems often go “We used this to create a stress map organization, concluded that a study
unnoticed because they are buried in to identify where there would be critical of earthquake clusters in two counties
the basement. stress in the basement that could trigger “clearly illustrate the need to acquire
More accurately, the faults and faults,” said Bauer. He added that “these new high-resolution gravity, magnetic,
fractures are found in the crystalline zones are also confirmed by the seismic and geologic data along with improved
basement rock. These ancient lay- history in the DJ basin.” geologic models of the sedimentary for-
ers, often Cambrian and Pre-Cambrian
rock, are found under the sandstones
or carbonates that hold hydrocar- Basic Emulsifiers
bon reservoirs.
“These are important because a lot
of epicenters occur along the faults and
fractures in the pre-Cambrian,” said Har-
vey Eastman, a consulting geologist, who
did a study mapping faults in Johnson
County, Texas, which is in the Barnett for-
mation (Eastman and Murin 2017).
As water flowing down from higher
levels reaches critically stressed faults
it can cause changes, which when com-
bined with natural stresses can cause
the opposing rock faces to slip, causing
an earthquake.
Researchers are studying old seismic
surveys turned over by oil companies WHY PAY FOR THIS,
looking for faults and fractures in the
zones above the basement that transport
injected water down to it. These images
have their limits. The features are rela-
tively small compared to the resolution of
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ly not designed to image below the layers The same goes for your emulsifier purchases.
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JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 41

 Induced Seismicity

10 5
M2.8+ Earthquakes ing and fracturing has moved west to the
9 684 Arbuckle Well Injection Permian Basin.
OK Oil Production x10
8 4 The induced seismicity in that sparsely

Daily Injection/Production
6 Month Moving Average
Earthquakes per Day

populated area has not been an issue, but

(Millions of barrels)
7
produced water disposal has grown with
6 3 the number of wells.
5 Bridget Scanlon, an economist for
4 2
the Bureau of Economic Geology for the
University of Texas at Austin, said she
3
has heard that saltwater injection wells
2 1 are going deeper, sending brine into the
1 Ellenberger, a formation just above the
basement rock like the Arbuckle in Okla-
0 0
homa, which was the target for high-
Jan-11 Jan-12 Jan-13 Jan-14 Jan-15 Jan-16 Jan-17
volume injection wells there.
Earthquakes in Oklahoma have risen and fallen with wastewater injection rates. “Injecting water into the Deeper Ellen-
Source: RPSEA 12122.
berger could cause induced seismici-
mations and structures above the crystal- ture to shift, potentially causing an earth- ty,” Scanlon said, during a talk on her
line basement.” quake, said Alan Morris, a staff scien- study of alternative uses for the water in
tist at the Southwest Research Institute in the Permian.
Managing Risk San Antonio. While no state has experienced the
The fix can be as simple as reducing the The program is designed to evaluate level of earthquakes that hit Oklahoma,
injection rate per well. “The first-order the risk of seismic activity using “data that could change. “I am not sure there is
thing that creates pore pressure is the inputs that can range from an educated more faulting in Oklahoma than in other
volume per well,” Bidgoli said, adding, “if guess as to the stress state, to seismic states nearby,” Boak said. JPT
you go from 16,000 B/D in one well and activity and wellbore data and full 3D
make it 8,000 B/D in two wells, the pres- fault interpretations from seismic reflec- For Further Reading
sure reduction is substantial.” tion studies,” he said. The program’s RPSEA Project 12122-91. 4D Integrated
In Kansas, the total amount of brine quick turnaround time allows a user to Study Using Geology, Geophysics,
disposed in two counties was about the consider multiple possible outcomes Reservoir Modeling & Rock Mechanics to
same—84 million bbl each in Ellis and when using differing inputs that reflect Develop Assessment Models for Potential
Harper counties in 2015. Much of the the level of uncertainty in the data. Induced Seismicity Risk by Jeremy Boak,
earthquake activity was concentrated in The example Morris uses to explain Oklahoma Geological Survey et al.
Harper County, while there was none in how it works is an injection well outside AAPG. 2017. Patterns of Induced Seismicity
Ellis County, which had twice as many of Youngstown, Ohio, that triggered a in Central and Northwest Oklahoma by
injection wells, according to Bidgoli and 4.0 magnitude earthquake in 2011. In the Jeremy Boak, Oklahoma Geological Survey.
Jackson (2017). month before the earthquake there were AAPG. 2017. Induced Seismicity in the
Reducing the depth of an injection small events below the level which could Denver Basin Prompts Updated Basement
well may also help by cutting off flows be felt, which had no impact on the injec- Stress and Fault Configuration Model
down to the basement rock. In Colorado, tion rate. At the time, the well operator was by Michael J. Harty and Matthew Bauer,
a 10,800-ft-deep injection well associ- seeking permission to increase injections. Colorado School of Mines.
ated with a cluster of seismic events in “Careful analysis of these smaller AAPG. 2016. Induced Seismicity in the
Weld County was plugged back, so the events could have identified the fault Denver Basin Prompts Updated Basement
deepest injection point was at 9,800 ft. before the magnitude 4.0 earthquake Fault Configuration Model by Matthew
That change reduced the rate of earth- occurred,” Morris said, adding that the W. Bauer and Michael J. Harty, Colorado
quake events, suggesting “reduced or program “could then have highlighted School of Mines.
removed basement communication,” the potential for a felt earthquake before AAPG. 2017. Operational Practices and
according to a previous paper by Bauer it happened.” Their Influence on Injection-Induced
and Harty (2016). But as is often the case, the warning Earthquakes: Lessons Learned From a
Kansas researchers used software signs and the underlying fault were only Statewide Survey of Brine Disposal in
from the Southwest Research Institute to studied after the fact, which in that case Kansas by Tandis S. Bidgoli and Christa
analyze how the stress on a fault or frac- led to the shutdown of the injection well. Jackson, Kansas Geological Survey.
ture could be altered by injections. Induced seismic activity in Texas AAPG. 2017. Geologic Characterization
The 3D Stress program was creat- dates back to the booming years of the of Johnson County, Texas by Harvey
ed to point to spots where subsurface first shale play, the Barnett around Fort Eastman, consulting geologist, and
stress change may cause a fault or frac- Worth. Now the epicenter for shale drill- Timothy Murin, AECOM.

42 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 Outlook Points to Peak
Transport Demand for Oil
Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor

Transportation is the linchpin of oil
consumption, responsible for more
than 50% of the oil that the world uses
every day and almost 70% of that con-
sumed daily in the United States. Fore-
casters all agree that the global vehicle
fleet, the dominant factor in transpor-
tation demand for oil-based fuels and
the major source of transport-sector
growth, will expand greatly in the next
20 to 30 years.
Thus, it is notable that BP in its 2017
Energy Outlook forecasts, as a base case,
that by the mid-2030s, transport demand
growth for oil will slow to a trickle, while
demand for noncombusted oil use—par-
ticularly in the petrochemicals indus-
try—will become the chief driver of oil
demand growth.
Specifically, over the outlook period
of 2017–2035, the growth in transport
demand will decelerate from 1 mil-
lion B/D per year to 0.4 million B/D per
year and level off, while the demand for
noncombusted oil use will increase by
6 million B/D.
Not every forecast agrees with this.
The International Energy Agency and
ExxonMobil, for example, believe that
transport demand will continue to drive
oil consumption growth for substan-
tially longer. On the other hand, Shell
Chief Executive Officer Ben van Beur-
den recently said that oil demand as a
whole could peak in the early 2030s and
possibly sooner with higher biofuel use.
There are forecasts from outside the
industry that show oil demand peaking
and starting to decline sooner rather
than later.
Implications for Industry
The point is not that one forecast or the
other is correct, but rather to start think-
ing about the implications of a transport
demand for oil that no longer increas-
es. It is bound to happen at some point,
even if the more robust demand fore-
casts prove correct. What will the indus-
try begin to look like when transport no
longer delivers market growth?

Liquids demand Liquids demand growth

Mb/d Mb/d, average annual growth
120 2.0
Power Power Buildings
Industry Non-combusted
100 Buildings Transport Total
1.5
Industry
80
1.0
Non -combusted
60
Ships, trains & planes
0.5
40
Trucks *

Transport 0.0
20
Cars†
0 -0.5
2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2005- 2010- 2015- 2020- 2025- 2030-
* Trucksinclude SUVs 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035
†Cars include two-wheelers and other light duty vehicles

Liquids demand and demand growth to 2035 are shown in BP’s 2017 Energy Outlook. Source: BP.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 43

 But first, what is the case for anticipat-
ing a slowing and leveling in transport
demand by approximately 2035?
“It’s largely the significant improve-
ment in the fuel efficiency of the world’s
vehicle fleet,” said Mark Finley, general
manager of global energy markets and
US economics at BP, who was on the team
that produced the latest Energy Outlook.
Vehicle Fleet Growth
“The growth of the vehicle fleet will
remain robust as many people join the
middle class over the next 20 years and
can afford to buy cars,” he continued. “But
mainly due to policy pushing for greater
fuel efficiency, we’re projecting that the
average car will go from about 30 miles a
gallon in fuel efficiency currently to about
50 miles a gallon 20 years from now.”
While the Trump Administration in the
US is looking at weakening fuel-efficiency
standards for future new car models, Fin-
ley indicated that such a move might not
affect the outlook projection very much
because US new vehicle fuel efficiency
has already been deteriorating for sev-
eral years. It is the market rather than
regulatory reasons that have brought this
about, as low gasoline prices have stimu-
lated sales of larger vehicles, he noted.
US Only One Piece of Puzzle
“There are fuel-efficiency standards in
Europe and even in China that are on the
books and are very aggressive,” Finley
said. “So what happens in the US is only
one piece of a much bigger puzzle.”
As for the projected market expan-
sion for the use of noncombusted oil,
What the Oil Industry Might Look Like
Joel Parshall, JPT Features Editor
One person who has given a lot of thought
to what the oil and gas industry might
look like when it can no longer count on a
growing consumption from the transport
sector is Iskander Diyashev, an instruc-
tor for PetroSkills and a former SPE
Director who is serving as an SPE Distin-
guished Lecturer in 2017–18 for the sec-
ond time. His current lecture topic is The
Future of Oil.
44
primarily as petrochemical feedstocks,
he said, “It’s simply the continued growth
in the world economy. These are the
basic building blocks of the economy,
and they grow more or less in line with
it. They also have few substitutes in their
many applications.”
Crude oil, particularly its light frac-
tions and condensate, would compete
with natural gas sources, such as gas liq-
uids and liquefied petroleum gases, in the
chemical feedstock markets. This compe-
tition already takes place and is strongly
affected by relative prices throughout
global markets, Finley said.
Gas vs. Oil for Feedstocks
For example, the shale revolution has
yielded an abundance of gas-based feed-
stocks that has spurred the considerable
expansion—and even global insourc-
ing—of chemical production in the US.
However, many markets elsewhere are
characterized by high natural gas pric-
es, which in some cases are indexed
to oil in long-term contracts, and oil-
based feedstocks may have a competi-
tive advantage.
Finley noted that the growing exports
of US natural gas, principally through liq-
uefaction and regasification, will help in
the long run to cause gas prices globally
to converge.
He stressed that there is more to the
outlook than the base case that has prin-
cipally drawn attention.
Base Case Uncertainty
“The approach we bring to our Energy
Outlook is not to focus too much on the
Diyashev has taught petroleum, res-
ervoir, and production engineering and
advanced classes in reserves evalua-
tion, well test design and analysis, and
gas reservoir management. He previous-
ly held engineering and leadership roles
at S.A. Holditch and Associates, Schlum-
berger, Sibneft, Geo-Alliance, and NRK-
Technology. He holds a PhD degree in
petroleum engineering from Texas A&M
base case because it’s so tremendously
uncertain,” he said. “We like to do a base
case to force ourselves to make our choic-
es. But we don’t want to be too confident
in it. We have to place some uncertainty
bands around it.”
The Energy Outlook projects contin-
ued growth in oil demand through 2035,
even with slowing transport demand,
with overall oil consumption potentially
peaking in the mid-2040s and then start-
ing to decline.
However, there are alternative cases
that weigh differing plausible scenari-
os for
w Economic growth
w Fuel-efficiency improvement
w The speed and shape of the
mobility revolution, including
the uptake of electric and
alternative-fuel vehicles,
autonomous vehicles, car
sharing, and ride pooling
w Climate policy
The outcome of these cases could lead
to an earlier or later peak oil demand.
“Although the eventual peak in oil
demand will be symbolic of a world tran-
sitioning away from oil, it would mark
only the first point of decline,” the out-
look said. “Oil is likely to remain a signif-
icant source of global energy consump-
tion for many decades.”
For Further Reading
BP. BP Energy Outlook 2017.
https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/pdf/
energy-economics/energy-outlook-2017/
bp-energy-outlook-2017.pdf
(accessed 3 August 2017).
University and BS and MS degrees in
molecular and chemical physics from Mos-
cow Institute of Physics and Technology.
To Diyashev, a leveling off of transport
demand should be closely linked chrono-
logically with peak oil consumption. As
demand starts to fall shortly thereafter,
prices will begin a long-term downward
trend. He believes it will happen rela-
tively soon.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
‘Sluggish Growth in Demand’ because at first you’re going to have to
“We might have five or maybe 10 years displace all of the coal, and coal will be
more of sluggish growth in demand,” displaced by solar and natural gas. The
he said. “And when the consumption chances are there will also be displace-
decreases, I think we will start seeing ment of nuclear power generation.”
depressed oil prices. Not depressed like However, continued improvement in
now. What we see now we will come to battery technology for energy storage
think of as the good old days when pric- will drive the strong expansion of solar
es were high. Oil unfortunately is a very and wind energy in the power market.
inelastic product in terms of demand. “For gas to stay competitive as a fuel
If you have an extra 2 million barrels on component, its cost for power generation
the market, the price drops by a factor will need to stay in a range of [USD] 0.03
of three.” Iskander Diyashev per kilowatt hour,” Diyashev said. “Its
With unconventional production price will need to remain low, maybe
methods having essentially eliminated [USD] 3.00 or 4.00 per BTU.”
the prospect of a resource shortage, there because it will be the expensive, higher- Investments under way in China and
would be little reason to expect prices to value product,” he said. Saudi Arabia will give impetus to solar
resume a major uptrend. energy as a growing source of global elec-
As the price becomes very low, trans- Strength in Natural Gas tric power.
portation will become a substantially The other strength for the industry will “Saudi Arabia is planning to build 10
higher portion of the final delivery cost. be the natural gas market, although it will gigawatts of solar power and has already
As a result, the market could begin to see increasing competition in the power secured the financing. Ten gigawatts is
fragment and become less global with sector from renewables. quite significant,” Diyashev said. “There
customer supply lines becoming shorter, “I think there is a reasonably long- is a lot of desert in the Middle East,
Diyashev said. term future for natural gas; I can imag- a lot of places to put large-scale solar
ine that it’s 30, 40, or 50 years,” Diya- generating facilities, and the land is not
Impact of Electric Vehicles shev said. “It’s a reasonably long future so expensive.” JPT
Electric vehicles (EVs) will soon begin to
penetrate the market and “start destroy-
ing demand” for oil, he said. Their pres-
ence will grow and eventually become
dominant. Diyashev noted China’s com-
mitment to EV development. “If you look
at the 20 best-selling electrified vehicles
in China, almost all of them are Chinese-
made and -designed, except for one Tesla
model,” he said.
It is plausible that the increasing
urbanization of the developing world
coupled with the long distances between
cities, particularly in China, could spur
increased air travel and the consumption
of jet fuel. However, that potential could
be limited.
“China is building a high-speed
[magnetic-levitation] railroad net-
work very, very quickly and efficient-
ly across the central part of the coun-
try,” Diyashev said. “So that could
likely become a more important mode
of transportation between cities there
than aviation.”
With the overall change in the trans-
portation market, petrochemical demand
will assume added significance for the oil
industry. “It will become very important

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 45

 Speaking at the Unconventional Resources Technology Conference opening
plenary session were (from left) Gene Beck, senior VP for US onshore, Statoil;
Tom Blasingame, Texas A&M; Alex Archila, president, North America shale, BHP
Billiton; and Greg Guidry, executive VP, unconventionals, Shell.

Conference
Highlights Shale
as an International
Business
T housands gathered in Austin, Texas, in July to attend
the 2017 Unconventional Resources Technology
Conference which reflected several of the biggest
themes shaping the shale sector and its emergence as
an internationally discussed business.

Several of the technical presentations highlighted the

progress in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale play while
international operators such as BHP Billiton and Statoil
discussed development plans for their US assets.

Technical discussions held during the 3-day event, which

is sponsored by the SPE, AAPG, and SEG, focused on
emerging approaches to improving oil and gas recovery
from tight rocks and exploring where the risks still lie with
induced seismicity.

Other important themes such as applied data analytics

solutions, improving refracturing techniques, and how to
deal with interwell communication were also highlighted.

46 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 Unconventional Resources

Will Shale Oil Ever Make Money?

Quite Possibly Next Decade
Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor

T he biggest unconventional oil pro-

ducers have revolutionized global oil
markets and driven down prices. Still on
generating considerably more cash than
they are spending to produce far more
barrels of oil per day than they are now.
the list of things to do: Consistently turn “They will be transitioning out of the
in strong profits. capital-intensive phase and moving into
By the next decade, that is likely to the harvest phase” as these enormous,
change according to a report by Wood long-term developments reach critical
Mackenzie, which predicts margins mass, said Benjamin Shattuck, principal
will grow for the biggest, most efficient upstream analyst for Wood Mackenzie,
independents around 2020. who was part of the team that produced
The actual prediction is “the five the recent report: When Will Tight Oil
leading tight-oil specialists will start Make Money?
to deliver significant positive free cash The timing reflects the number of
flow in three years’ time, based on our years the energy information and con-
USD 66/bbl Brent oil price assumption sulting firm expects it will take for oil
for 2020.” demand to catch up with supply—result-
Which would mean that five com- ing in improved oil prices—and also
panies whose business depends on pro- when the number of producing wells
ducing liquids and gas from ultratight will reach the level where the investment
formations—Continental, Devon, EOG, required to sustain and expand produc-
Newfield, and Pioneer—would begin tion goes down.
But price predictions are notoriously
unreliable, even if the prediction is for
next month. A big variable will be con-
tinued support from investors that have
made it possible to add millions of bar-
rels a day of oil production by investing
USD 33 billion in the long-term growth
plans of these companies.
By 2020, Wood Mackenzie expects
these companies to be shifting their
focus to balance growth with consis-
tently rising profits. While the report
shows they now have the cash flow to
sustain operations, the goal is to earn
considerably larger amounts of money
to provide a payoff for the tens of bil-
lions of dollars invested in building
the business.
Failure to downshift the growth
engine could have serious negative
consequences.

Corporate-level costs Tight Oil Inc.

FCF from yet-to-drill wells Non-tight-oil peer group
FCF from onstream wells 3
FCF: net 2
20
1

15 0

–1
USD/boe

10
–2
USD billion

5 –3

–4
0
–5

–5 –6

–7
Q1 2010

Q1 2011

Q1 2012

Q1 2013

Q1 2014

Q1 2015

Q1 2016

Q1 2017

–10
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030

Revenue from producing wells for five of the biggest The free cash flow for five producers focused on tight oil,
unconventional oil producers is now a bit above the cost dubbed Tight Oil Inc., has been catching up with their
of adding wells resulting in some free cash flow (FCF peers focused elsewhere in the business. Source: Wood
shown by green line). FCF is expected to turn upward in Mackenzie.
the next decade. Source: Wood Mackenzie.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 47

 Unconventional Resources
“The myopia of a sector focused on
growth means our 2020 vision of surg-
ing cash flow could quickly become a
mirage,” because investors lose hope
that oil prices, and profits will rise, the
report said.
The coming years will also weed out
those companies that are not strong, low-
cost survivors. Winners will range from
majors that exploit their ability to do
major, technically challenging projects,
to small companies with a nimble, inno-
vative, cost-cutting culture.
“We do not believe every company will
reach profitability,” Shattuck said, add-
ing, “but the good tight-oil operators are
poised to weather the risk.”
Bulking Up
While this group of tight oil producers is
still short of being consistently cash flow
positive, the gap has narrowed between
Wood Mackenzie’s tight-oil focused com-
panies and peers in other sectors. Over
the past 12 months they have been mov-
ing into positive territory.
In part that is due to cost cutting
since 2014, with producers squeezing
discounts out of suppliers. They also
focused on finding more efficient meth-
ods and targeting the most productive
spots to drill and fracture.
While the competitors outside of tight
oil focused on similar goals, their cash
flow has remained within the same range.
Those working in unconventional for-
mations have more room for improve-
ment and potential for growth. These
formations also cover huge areas, with
opportunities magnified by the number
of layers available to exploit, allowing
production growth for decades without
the risk of drilling a discovery well.
“Led by the Permian, tight oil’s huge
inventory of undrilled wells allows oper-
ators to recycle free cash flow from pro-
ducing wells immediately into new, low,
breakeven wells that generate similar,
attractive returns,” the Wood Mackenzie
report said. In comparison, conventional
exploration requires “sporadic, lumpy,
and large-scale investment decisions.”
By the year 2020, larger tight-oil oper-
ators will have developed enough produc-
ing wells that the cash they generate will
support the operation. Studies by Total
48
have concluded that a diversified portfo-
lio of producing wells of various vintages
reduces the number of drilling rigs need-
ed to sustain or expand the output.
Simulations run on Total’s software
show large developments made up of
wells that rapidly decline in their early
years behave quite differently as a group
over time.
As more wells are added the produc-
tion volatility is reduced because the fast
declining recent wells are balanced off by
the steadier output from the many older
wells. It works like a diversified portfolio
of stocks and bonds.
This means that “the more you feed”
the asset base by adding wells, the less
drilling is required to sustain or add pro-
duction, said Philippe Charlez, a senior
technology advisor for Total, during a
presentation.
“Even if there is a big change in price,
production will resist the change. Pro-
duction strongly resists a drop in work-
ing rigs,” Charlez said.
That muted reaction gives operators
the flexibly to turn spending on and off
as prices fluctuate, without killing pro-
duction. Those operators also move
money to the lowest-cost play, which is
the Permian, while reducing investment
in higher-cost areas, such as the Bakken,
where a small number of rigs working
has been able to mute the decline.
Faster drilling, or more productive
wells, further reduces the number of
drilling rigs required, he said. And this
year, gains have been required to help off-
set the rising cost of labor and services.
The large amount of energy, water,
sand, and chemicals required to get oil
out of this tight rocks means that there
is a tight relationship between costs and
the value of assets. Wood Mackenzie said
a 30% increase in development-capital
costs will lead to a 30% fall in company
asset value.
When predicting the future, technolo-
gy is “a big wild card.” While Wood Mack-
enzie expects productivity gains could be
“more limited than in the recent past,”
a breakthrough such as proving that
natural gas injections can improve ulti-
mate recovery rates well past 10% could
have a large impact on the economics of
the business.
Another change, which was outside
the scope of the report, was the large
and growing presence of major oil com-
panies in the Permian. While they are
late to the shale business, their financial
muscle and technical skills may give them
an edge in managing complex, long-term
projects demanding huge investments,
Shattuck said.
Price Worries
The biggest barrier to profitability for
tight-oil producers has been their pro-
lific production growth. As a result of a
lingering oil glut between now and 2020,
Wood Mackenzie and Charlez see prices
fluctuating in a band around USD 50/bbl
during this decade.
By 2020 Wood Mackenzie expects
that world demand will exceed what
US unconventional producers can sup-
ply, and deep exploration cuts in places
like deepwater plays will have stymied
growth elsewhere.
The USD 66/bbl prediction comes with
a lot of assumptions. One is that Saudi
Arabia and other OPEC countries con-
tinue to limit their output, that offshore
development remains down, and by then
the growth rate of tight-oil production in
the US will slow.
Wood Mackenzie acknowledges that
slowing represents a break from the
strategy that has been the norm for US
shale producers, which have built aggres-
sive growth targets into the formulas
used for setting executive compensation.
For now production growth remains
“the principal metric by which Tight Oil
Inc. is measured and rated by the mar-
ket.” And by its calculation, the greatest
long-term payoff is produced by drilling
now rather than slowing down to gener-
ate greater cash flow.
But by 2020, it expects the inves-
tors who have provided the billions that
fueled growth will begin pressuring oper-
ators to begin managing growth to deliv-
er a greater return.
How companies “manage the tran-
sition to lower operational growth
beyond 2020 and returns to sharehold-
ers (including dividends) will be impor-
tant concerns for investors looking to
see evidence of capital discipline,” the
report said.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
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 Unconventional Resources Unconventional Resources
SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS
ANNUAL TECHNICAL
CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION
San Antonio, Texas, USA
9-11 October 2017
www.spe.org/go/join17ATCE
REGISTER NOW
What’s New for ATCE
• The technical program received
2,521 paper proposals—the highest
number ever. This response ensures
a high-quality technical program,
covering the latest innovations
and applications.
• Senior executives in the Opening
General Session will address the
industry’s responsibility to provide
affordable and environmentally
sustainable energy for the world.
Three Alternative Paths
To Maximizing
Unconventional Resources
Stephen Whitfield, Senior Staff Writer
A s pioneering shale gas plays and
tight oil formations mature and
decline in production, operators are
trying to find emerging formations and
resources to replace them, enabling con-
tinued growth in US production. While
the industry will continue identifying
new domestic unconventional shale and
tight sand resources, an expert said that
the methods of discovery may differ from
traditional approaches.
At the 2017 Unconventional Resourc-
es Technology Conference, Vello Kuusk-
raa discussed the alternative pathways
companies may take to discover uncon-
ventional resources while maximiz-
ing existing plays in the near future.
Kuuskraa is president of Advanced Re-
sources International.
Kuuskraa’s presentation focused on
three such pathways. He defined the first,
“Looking in Your Own Backyard,” as the
search for additional productive horizons
in existing basins, either above or below
already developed target formations. An
example of such a strategy is the Meramec
formation, located approximately 1,000 ft
above the Cana-Woodford Shale in the
northern portion of the Anadarko Basin.
In 2008, a small group of operators
began exploring the formation, com-
pleting 22 horizontal wells over a 4-year
period while also drilling deeper for the
Woodford Shale. The Meramec has now
emerged as an attractive shale play for
operators. The play has doubled in size,
from approximately 1,300 sq miles to
more than 3,000 sq miles, with hydro-
carbon windows ranging from deep dry
gas in the western part of the play to shal-
lower volatile oil in the east. Kuuskraa
said that the economics of the area have
benefited from the infrastructure already
in place from previous operator activ-
ity, as well as the geological knowledge
gained from assessing the uphole portion
of logs drilled for in the Woodford.
“This is a very recent phenomenon,”
Kuuskraa said of the Meramec. “Here in
2013, it was viewed as an area with some
gas, some condensate, and some oil in a
limited type of area. In a matter of 3 to 4
years, this area has become much more
complex. It’s beginning to really push the
envelope of the oil window, a lower matu-
rity oil window that is recoverable.”
The second pathway, “Turning from
Vertical to Horizontal,” involves a change
in well design for plays that have already
been heavily drilled. Kuuskraa said that
verticals have been the well design of
choice for decades when developing tight
gas sands, particularly in east Texas,
west Texas, northern Louisiana, and the
Rocky Mountains. The logic behind this
strategy was that, given the extensive
thickness and layered nature of forma-
tions in these regions, only a vertical well
would be able to contact enough net pay
to make the well economically viable. In
recent years, some operators have pur-
sued progressively closer well spacings
to promote additional gas recovery in the
midst of steadily declining well produc-
tivities and reserves.
One such play, the Spraberry tight oil
formation in the Midland Basin portion
of the greater Permian Basin, saw a drop
in the rate of production decline after
operators installed horizontal wells in
the western core area of the play.
In the prolonged oil price downturn,
Kuuskraa said the third pathway, “Push-
ing the Technology Envelope,” is critical to
maintaining economically viable uncon-
ventional development. This could involve
the use of longer horizontal laterals, more
intensive well completions, increased
drilling efficiencies, and lower operating
costs. Kuuskraa said advances in tech-
nology can lead to lower unit costs and
improve resource recovery efficiency, sig-
nificantly expanding the technically recov-
erable shale and tight-sand resource base.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
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 Unconventional Resources

A Typical Well is Hard To Define

Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor

A type curve is a quick way to answer

a critical question—what does
a typical well produce over time in a
given place?
On the plus side this simple calculation
can be done using only basic math skills.
“The conventional approach is to deter-
mine the arithmetic average of produc-
tion during a given month from different
wells in a reservoir of interest to create a
type well,” according to SPE 178525.
On the downside, the next sentence is:
“This method is deeply flawed.”
The flaws include “different results by
different evaluators” that are “overesti-
mates or underestimates (usually over-
estimates” of future production, accord-
ing to the paper, whose authors include
John Lee, a professor at Texas A&M Uni-
versity who is well known for his work on
reservoir production analysis.
The negatives have become all the more
pronounced by the rise of unconvention-
al oil and gas developments, where the
output varies, and is unpredictable from
well to well, with decline curves that do
not fit conventional norms.
“The problems are simply different
(and usually harder to solve) in uncon-
ventionals,” Lee said.
That has lead Lee and other mem-
bers of a committee within the Society of
Petroleum Evaluation Engineers (SPEE)
to set off on creating a new standard
method to more accurately calculate type
curves for wells. Lee said the 10 vol-
unteers hope to complete SPEE Mono-
graph 5, providing recommendations
and workflows for constructing Typical
Well Production Profiles (type wells) for
unconventionals by 2018. But he would
not be surprised if it takes longer.
Since those who do type curve calcu-
lations cannot wait, Lee recently offered
some advice on how to do meaningful
estimates of the reserves or production
added by a typical well at a breakfast ses-
sion during the Unconventional Resourc-
es Technology Conference.
One change he is sure about: He wants
to change the widely used label, type
curve, to type well to better describe how
to create a model well, and avoid confu-
sion with a method used to analyze field
data to determine reservoir and comple-
tion properties.
After that, there are a lot of things
that are not so certain. “It is not the final
thinking; we have a lot to learn to bring
in as much science and objectivity to type
well construction” as possible, Lee said.
His presentation was clear, concise,
well-organized, and generated enough

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A plot of 50 Barnett shale wells in Tarrant County shows how the actual numbers (shades of gray) can diverge from the
average (red line). Source: SPE 178525.

52 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017


questions to make it clear that the com-
mittee has some tough work ahead of it.
Those challenges range from recogniz-
ing the economic limits on production
from high-cost tight reservoirs to the
production decline likely when an older
well is hit by nearby fracturing.
Lee acknowledged that to create
a system that generates sound results
based on a reasonable amount of time
and data “we will have to have some
clever approximations.”
Goal Oriented
The goal is a statistically valid prediction
of a typical well with an approach based
on “what you are trying to do,” he said.
The process will vary depending on
whether the goal is predicting the esti-
mated ultimate recovery for a typical
well, a production profile for the first 5
years of a well’s life, or the discounted
value of the critical early years of these
fast-declining wells.
Knowing the endpoint will guide the
critical work of gathering a statistically
significant sample of actual production
data—his talk suggested 200 or more
wells—sorted into bins of 50 or so wells
with common characteristics.
While the total needed will rise or fall
based on the level of variance, if data are
available from only a few wells the result
will be less reliable.
Company 1 Company 2
4
EUR (bcf)
1
2006
Wells from one operator (company 4, purple) outperformed three other companies in four out of five Barnett wells, in
two cases by a wide margin. Source: SPE 158867.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Unconventional Resources
Steps Toward a Type Curve
◗ Identify the objective of the type
well calculations.
◗ Select wells to sample that are in
keeping with the objective, with a
total of 200 or more.
◗ Divide the wells into bins of
about 50 based on significant
differences.
◗ To limit the number of bins, choose
ways to normalize well production
when there are differences, such as
wells with various lateral lengths.
◗ Observe good practices to gather
individual well data, such as
forecasting each well separately
rather than grouping wells.
◗ Include abandoned rates with zero
production rates in the total.
◗ For wells with a short production
history, forecast future production
rather than leaving them out.
◗ Validate results by comparing with
similar wells not in the sample.
“I have seen examples of type wells
based on three wells to produce thou-
sands of wells to sell an investment,”
Lee said, adding, “If that is all you have,
that is all you have. But the uncertainty is
just enormous.”
Wells within each bin need to be
grouped using characteristics that “real-
Company 3 Company 4
2007 2008
Year
ly seem to matter.” Those groups in the
large sample are needed to reflect the
fact that within “a given resource play,
wells in different areas are likely to fol-
low somewhat dissimilar production
paths from completion to abandonment,”
Lee said.
While a lot of things can matter, the
characteristics used to sort the wells
need to be limited to the most significant
to make it possible to create bins large
enough for reliable statistical analysis.
A list of key variables could include
the well location, spacing, the date of
first production, geological similar-
ities, and the operator. The time of
the completion and the operator can
be significant because “the wells are
tending to get better and the best oper-
ator is really learning how to do that”
(SPE 158867).
A statistical check is advised to ensure
that wells belong in the same bin, Lee
said. When plotted the members should
generate a log-normal distribution.
In some cases, differences that signif-
icantly affect production, such as hori-
zontal wellbores that are twice as long
as others, can be eliminated by finding a
common unit of measurement.
One option for comparing the output
from laterals lengths of 5,000 ft and
those 10,000 ft and more is the oil and
gas production per foot of wellbore. Lee
2009 2010
53
Purchase Your
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Reservoir Modeling
by Shahab D. Mohaghegh
Data-Driven Reservoir Modeling
introduces new technology and
intelligent systems for applying
data analytics to solve real-world,
reservoir engineering problems.
The book describes how to
utilize machine-learning-based
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Through data manipulation via
artificial intelligence, the reader
learns how to exploit imprecision
and uncertainty to achieve robust,
low-cost, and effective solutions.
Preview sample pages from this new
book and order your own copy by
visiting www.spe.org/go/DataDriven.
said “that is an oversimplification we
need to improve on” because it fails to
reflect how the rate changes farther out
on really long laterals.
Lee said it is important to include the
failures. The total needs to include the
zero-production totals for wells that did
not produce. Leaving them out will risk
overestimates by introducing a “survi-
vor bias.”
He also said that with wells that have
limited production histories, projec-
tions of future output should be includ-
ed in the data used to calculate the
type curve.
A questioner asked how they would
express production lost due to fracture
hits. “We must find a way to do that. Frac
hits are more common. In older data sets
we did not see that, but we are seeing that
today,” Lee said.
Overly Optimistic
A common flaw of type wells is that the
numbers are higher than the ultimate
reality. Some of that is a reflection of the
difficulty in creating a methodology to
generalize groups of wells, which some-
times vary widely and unpredictably.
Unconventional development is
focused on ultratight rock where the
location targeted is critical, as are the
skills of those planning and executing the
well. This is still young technology where
everyone in the business is working to
improve the shape of production curves
over time. And price changes affect how
operators manage wells.
One questioner pointed out that the
cost of maintaining production in these
fields tends to remain high. Lingering
low prices can force operators to shut in
those wells sooner than expected when
doing the type curve.
Lee agreed economic and technical
considerations are needed because “a lot
of people have had to de-book reserves.”
And no matter how good the sys-
tem, there are always going to be over-
ly optimistic type curves where the out-
come is shaped by a desire to make a
case to investors or sweeten the value
of assets for sale.
“We need to be skeptical of whatever
we are presented,” Lee said, adding,
“None of the practices address the prob-
lem of a deliberately overoptimistic bias.
We can only deal with that by doing our
own work.”
When Monograph 5 becomes available,
the hope is to offer help for checking
the results.
“We are not regulators, and we can’t
enforce anything,” Lee said, adding,
“We hope to be able to provide trans-
parent recommendations that will
allow investors, and possibly even reg-
ulators such as the SEC [US Securi-
ties and Exchange Commission], to ask
the right questions of type well cre-
ators and determine whether a given
type well satisfies reasonable criteria for
confident application.”
For Further Reading
SPE 137748 An Unconventional Rate
Decline Approach for Tight and
Fracture-Dominated Gas Wells
by A.N. Duong, ConocoPhillips
Canada. http://dx.doi.
org/10.2118/137748-MS.
SPE 178525 Methodology for
Construction of Type Wells
for Production Forecasting in
Unconventional Reservoirs
by Ayush Rastogi and John Lee,
University of Houston. http://dx.doi.
org/10.15530/URTEC-2015-2152273.
SPE 158867 A Practical Guide to
Unconventional Petroleum Evaluation
by Boyd Russell and Randy Freeborn,
Energy Navigator. http://dx.doi.
org/10.2118/158867-MS.
SPE 175967 Creating More
Representative Type Wells
by Randy Freeborn, SPEE, Energy
Navigator, and Boyd Russell, SPEE,
Energy Navigator. http://dx.doi.
org/10.2118/175967-MS.
SPE 171658 Entering a Liquid-Rich
Shale Play Near the Top of the
Learning Curve: Early Quantification
and Application of Development
Best Practices by David Braun, Brad
Powell, Rong Guo, Shell Canada et al.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/171658-MS.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Validating the Smooth
Success of HEAL System
Trent Jacobs, JPT Digital Editor
I t has apparently taken one emerging
technology to help validate another.
HEAL Systems is a joint-venture with
Schlumberger which manufactures a
downhole flow-regulating device by the
same name. The innovation promises to
remedy one of the unconventional sec-
tor’s most common problems: slug flow.
PipeFractionalFlow is a spinoff start-
up from the University of Texas at Austin
that is using new theories and equations
to make modeling complex multiphase
more affordable.
Together, the two technology devel-
opers completed a simulation and his-
tory matching study on four horizon-
tal wells in the US and Canada that
shed light on how the HEAL system
works. The research is detailed in an
SPE paper published at the Unconven-
tional Resources Technology Conference
(URTeC 2670789).
Jeff Saponja, the chief executive officer
of HEAL Systems, said during the paper
presentation that a multiphase flow
model has helped his company see how
high velocities of gas moving through
a horizontal well are the driving force
behind slugs.
“This kind of learning was very impor-
tant to us because it said the issue is in
the bend, the curved section—so slug
flow mitigation is not out in the horizon-
tal,” he said.
The paper’s authors concluded that
the HEAL System smooths out slugs as
they enter its sized-regulating string and
when the flow exits it is efficiently sepa-
rated into liquid and gas phases, both of
which increase the lifespan of a down-
hole pumping unit.
HEAL Systems is trying to build on
its early success of more than 250 well
installations in every major shale basin
in the US and Canada, a figure that
Saponja said is growing by about 30
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Unconventional Resources
Don’t
let your
SPE member
benefits
a month. Visualizing how the HEAL
system is able to constrict and reform
slugs is aimed at furthering its technol- run dry.
ogy development.
Anand Nagoo, chief executive officer
of PipeFractionalFlow and co-author of
the paper, said the flow model he helped
develop offers operators an “indepen-
dent and unbiased” way to validate the Membership in the
HEAL System and select candidate wells.
“Now you can explain what slug flow Society of Petroleum
mitigation means,” he asserted.
As Nagoo explained, the typical artifi- Engineers is a
cial lift strategy is devised by combining
an asset management plan with a sur-
continuous well of
veillance and measurement plan. “That career-enhancing
will give you ‘the whats, the whys, and
the whens,’” of which artificial lift sys- opportunities for
tems to use, he said. “What we are pro-
posing, is that in addition to asset man- E&P professionals.
agement and surveillance, there could be
predictive modeling and optimization to Whether you want to enhance your
go with it.” knowledge, expand your network, or
Nagoo said his model also clarified develop your leadership skills, it pays
how the HEAL System reduces solids
to remain engaged with SPE.
migration inside the wellbore—anoth-
er common cause for pump failures in Stay connected to all that SPE
the unconventional sector. It showed has to offer:
that reducing the bubble length of the
slug, along with breaking up the slug’s Publications and Journals
structure, directly diminishes the trans- Events and Training Courses
portability of sand along the wellbore,
which tends to inch forward just like Local Section Activities
the small dunes beneath the waves
Volunteer Opportunities
at a beach.
“The slugging behavior is what’s mov- Online Communities and Resources
ing the solids … It picks up the sand, and
it bounces it along,” said Nagoo, who
added that with this effect significantly
reduced, operators should be able to add Keep your SPE member benefits
more sand or proppant to their fractur- producing for you.
ing treatments without worrying that it
will jam up a pump later on. Renew today at
This may also help wells be more pro- www.spe.org/go/17Renew.
ductive, since sand is critical to keeping
fractures open and conductive.
 Unconventional Resources

Study Provides Guidelines for Community

Input in Unconventional Development
Stephen Whitfield, Senior Staff Writer

A lack of community input can have a

destructive impact on new uncon-
ventional energy projects, particular-
ly in environmentally sensitive areas.
However, a recent study conducted by
Texas A&M University and the Hous-
ton Advanced Research Center (HARC)
showed that while negative commu-
nity opinion can be difficult for own-
ers and operators to overcome, engag-
ing in a dialogue with communities
pre-development could have significant
economic, social, and environmental
benefits and should be a factor in any
evaluation of a new project.
Speaking on the second day of the
Unconventional Resources Technolo-
gy Conference, Clark Adams, a profes-
sor emeritus in the Wildlife and Fisher-
ies Sciences department at Texas A&M,
outlined some of the steps companies
could take to address community anx-
ieties over new energy development.
These steps were explained in a paper
(URTeC 2664652) written by Marian Hig-
gins, David Burnett, Urs Kreuter, and
Richard Haut.
The paper focused on a study conduct-
ed with residents of Matagorda County
in southeast Texas using questionnaires,
focus group discussions, and personal
interviews to gauge their opinions on a
hypothetical low-temperature geother-
mal energy (LGTE) project. The study
aimed to determine whether the manner
in which new information is presented
could affect its acceptance, and whether
the use of various framing techniques as a
means for transferring knowledge could
induce people to be more willing to listen
to information, rather than dismissing
that information out of hand.
Matagorda County was chosen as the
area of study for a number of reasons.
Higgins et al. wrote that its location on
the US Gulf of Mexico, encompassing
rivers, bays, wildlife refuges, and a bar-
rier island, made it an environmentally
sensitive area. The county also has what
the paper terms an “atypical” history of
energy production. In addition to having
decades of experience with oil and gas
operations, it is one of two counties in the
state of Texas with an operating nuclear
power plant.
The research group began its study by
conducting an LGTE literature review,

Hiring faculty position

The Mewbourne School of Petroleum & Geological Engineering at the University of Oklahoma is in an ambitious, multi-year
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student enrollment of 650 undergraduate and 120 graduate students. The school maintains an excellent relationship with the
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demonstrated success in securing external research support and teaching experience or the potential to become a successful
teacher. Duties include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses, advising and mentoring students, conducting an active
research program and participating in both university and professional service activities.

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https://apply.interfolio.com/36358 https://apply.interfolio.com/36620 https://apply.interfolio.com/36623

100 East Boyd Street, SEC 1210
Norman, Oklahoma 73019
(405) 325-2921
mpge.ou.edu
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Carnegie-R1 comprehensive public research university known for excellence in teaching, research, and community
engagement, serving the educational, cultural, economic and health-care needs of the state, region, and nation from three campuses: Norman, Health
Sciences Center in Oklahoma City and the Schusterman Center in Tulsa. OU enrolls over 30,000 students and has more than 2700 full-time faculty
PHPEHUV LQ FROOHJHV ,Q 28 EHFDPH WKH UVW SXEOLF LQVWLWXWLRQ HYHU WR UDQN QDWLRQDOO\ LQ WKH UHFUXLWPHQW RI 1DWLRQDO 0HULW 6FKRODUV ZLWK
311 scholars. The 277-acre Research Campus in Norman was named the No.1 research campus in the nation by the Association of Research Parks in
2013. Norman is a culturally rich and vibrant town located just outside Oklahoma City. With outstanding schools, amenities and a low cost of living,
Norman is a perennial contender on the “Best Places to Live” rankings. Visit soonerway.ou.edu for more information.
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disabilities are encouraged to apply.

56 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 Unconventional Resources

after which it held several meetings with key technological col-

laborators to analyze current applications of LGTE technology
and possible avenues of new technology development. Using
that information, the research group held three focus group

45
meetings with residents of Matagorda County to gauge their

+
opinions on a new project in the area. The results of those meet-
ings led to the development of a mail survey questionnaire that
asked participants to respond to, among other things, a set of
four statements on six types of energy: oil and gas, nuclear, coal,
wind, solar, and geothermal.
The questionnaires were sent to 800 randomly selected
addresses, but because of a high proportion of bad addresses
and a low response rate, an additional 500 questionnaires had
to be mailed out. The research team received 274 usable com-
Terminal
pleted questionnaires out of the 1,300 total that it sent.
Higgins et al. wrote that the confidence level of the final sur- Locations
vey results was around 95%. However, Adams said the low
response rate with mailings illustrates the difficulties in con-
ducting adequate market research. Our vast terminal network is ready
“A lot of folks think, well, all we need to do is gin up 10 ques-
tions, maybe hand them out at Walmart, and give them a chance to meet your proppant demands quickly
to say yes, no, thank you, whatever, and then we’re done. I was and efficiently. Operating over 45
a field biologist, and I never ran into a more difficult field of terminal locations in all key basins,
research than sociological research as it related to various man- we ensure better proppant when you
agement issues,” Adams said.
The survey results showed that the community appreciated need it, where you need it.
receiving factual knowledge about events or developments that
would affect their lives, but only if it was available in an open
and unbiased manner. From this, Higgins et al. developed a five-
step guideline for companies to help deliver that information:
On any proposed project or development, identify sources of Partner with the Proven Proppant
local knowledge as soon as possible.
Convene small groups for listening sessions in which a com-
Resource at SPE ATCE Booth #1671.
pany describes its concept for a project that would benefit from FMSA.com/JPT
stakeholder input. It is important to be cognizant of any com-
munity issue that could be framed explicitly.
w Create a written document describing the project that
includes guidance from community input. This document
should be public, but the researchers recommended that it
not be an official pronouncement of a development.
w Create an “open door” information office in which factual
information about the development be made available.
w Give a project’s personnel the right to talk about their
knowledge of the project and have them provide the
names of other knowledgeable managers who are
experienced in dealing with the public.
Adams said companies looking to gain community support
should view the process of increasing public knowledge not as a
technological challenge, but as a social challenge.
“For all types of energy, there is a high degree of self-reported
knowledge as a significant predictor of energy acceptance. If
you know something about a topic, you’re probably going to
respond a bit differently. Gaining more knowledge and being
familiar with an energy source may lead to a higher degree of
acceptance of that energy,” Adams said. JPT
Proppant Solutions

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Reservoir Performance and Monitoring

Silviu Livescu, SPE, Chief Scientist, Baker Hughes, a GE Company

Since the last Reservoir Performance With the proper resources During the past 12 months, 160 tech-
and Monitoring feature in Septem- nical papers were presented at vari-
ber 2016, the industry trends of signifi- in�place, automated ous conferences and meetings with
cantly improving efficiency and reduc- reservoir-performance reservoir-performance-and-monitoring
ing operational costs have continued programs and were reviewed for this
to be implemented. For instance, at the
modeling and monitoring feature, displaying further advances
time of writing, in North America, the may no longer be in reservoir-performance monitoring,
US oil rig count has risen impressively a science-fiction analysis, and optimization. The papers
for 23 straight weeks and the big play- selected and recommended as addi-
ers have greatly reduced their exposure scenario. tional reading are representative sam-
to Canada’s oil sands. However, while ples of the reviewed papers. They are a
many efforts are focusing on the opti- geographically diverse mix of academic
mization of current technologies and formance, the nonrisk-averse innovation work, industrial research and develop-
the study of past reservoir performance culture from other industries could help ment, and field applications, describ-
to improve future developments, with us develop new disruptive technologies ing numerical simulation and laborato-
fewer capital resources and personnel and implement them in the field. For ry research, field-data-acquisition and
available, these efforts may yield only instance, with the proper resources in -interpretation studies, new-technology
incremental improvements. place, automated reservoir-performance development and field trials, and multi-
Technology and innovation are seen modeling and monitoring may no longer year reviews of current technologies and
industrywide as critical to long-term rad- be a science-fiction scenario. Once this work flows. JPT
ical efficiency and productivity. Once the downturn appears in the rear-view mir-
industry becomes less concerned about ror, our industry will need to change its
cost savings and more about investing in model disruptively to thrive sustainably Recommended additional reading
future technologies and long-term per- in the next growth cycle. at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 181550 Current State and Future
Trends in the Use of Downhole Fluid
Silviu Livescu, SPE, is chief scientist in the global Coiled Tubing Analysis for Improved Reservoir Evaluation
Research and Engineering Centre of Baker Hughes, a GE by H. Elshahawi, Shell, et al.
company, in Calgary, with fundamental- and applied-research,
SPE 184131 Production Optimization
industrial-research-and-development, innovation, commercial- Through Voidage Replacement Using
ization, and intellectual-property experience related to produc- Triggers for Production Rate by Cenk
tion engineering and reservoir engineering. He holds BS and MS Temizel, Aera Energy, et al.
degrees from Politehnica University of Bucharest in Romania and
SPE 183195 Development of Crosswell
a PhD degree from the University of Delaware, all in mechanical
Electromagnetic Monitoring System
engineering. Livescu is an executive editor for the Journal of Petroleum Science and Using the HTS-SQUID Magnetometer
Engineering and an associate editor for SPE Journal. He serves on the JPT Editorial by Makoto Harada, Japan Oil, Gas, and
Committee and can be reached at https://ca.linkedin.com/in/silviu-livescu-14a96735. Metals National Corporation, et al.

58 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Satellite Monitoring of Cyclic-Steam
Stimulation Without Corner Reflectors
A ccurate monitoring of the ground
deformation of a field under cyclic
steam stimulation (CSS) can be used
to calibrate predictive models, show
the effectiveness of steam injection,
and demonstrate the effect of the
recovery operation on the surface
elevation. Interferometric synthetic
aperture radar (InSAR) uses radar
returns from the ground to calculate
highly precise estimates of the ground
change. The authors discuss a new way
of extracting deformation information
from radar imagery, contributing to
improved accuracy of InSAR surface-
elevation monitoring.
Introduction
The challenge in the Canadian oil sands is
to achieve robust measurements with lim-
ited infrastructure. Essentially, the prob-
lem is to develop robust measurements
of the ground movement without reliance
on buildings, pipelines, or even installed
targets [such as corner reflectors (CRs)].
The case study described here shows ex-
ceptional results for monitoring of re-
gions without traditional point targets.
The operations and mechanism of ther-
mal recovery of steam-assisted gravity
drainage (SAGD) and CSS differ. SAGD is a
continuous process of balanced injection
and production, while CSS is a cyclic pro-
cess of injection, soaking, and depletion.
The methodology provided depends on
an understanding of the expected ground
movement but does not rely on fore-
knowledge of the motion itself. The rate
of change in ground deformation associ-
ated with a CSS operation is key to the ex-
traction of the signal (deformation) over
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of
paper SPE 184971, “Satellite Monitoring of Cyclic-Steam Stimulation Without Corner
Reflectors,” by Michael D. Henschel and Jonathan Dudley, MDA, and Peter Chung,
Canadian Natural Resources Limited, prepared for the 2017 SPE Canada Heavy Oil
Technical Conference, Calgary, 15–16 February. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
Z
Satellite
th
Pa
Sl
t
igh
an
LO
Fl
tR
S
an
ge
Ground R
ange
N q
Image Swath
W
a E
ck
d Tra
n
ou
Gr
h
ut
im
Az
S
Fig. 1—The geometry of ground movement as imaged from space. The change
in distance from the satellite to the ground can be calculated along the LOS of
the radar pulse with the phase difference observed between two observations.
the time required for this monitoring. The lationship between injection and produc-
relatively short time scales and the high tion volumes and the observed ground
magnitude of the changes experienced in heave and subsidence, respectively.
CSS are well-suited to the nontraditional
methods described here. Methodology
The methods are validated by mea- Satellite radar achieves ground imaging
surements of surface elevation by use by sending microwave energy from the
of real-time kinematic (RTK) global- satellite to be reradiated from the Earth’s
positioning-system (GPS) surveys ac- surface and captured as a wave by the
quired in the Primrose field coincident satellite. Because the energy travels at
to the InSAR observations. The net-over- the speed of light, the process of send-
injection (NOI) metric provided by Cana- ing a pulse from a satellite at 800 km
dian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL) takes only a few milliseconds. The speed
is also used to demonstrate the causal re- at which the satellite travels means that
large areas of ground may be imaged
almost instantaneously. The microwave
imagery provides amplitude and phase
information about the radiation returned
to the satellite. The amplitude variations
can be described as a measurement of
the texture of the Earth surface. Key to
59
the capture of ground movement is the
precise measurement of the time that
the radiation travels. This measurement
is accomplished by the displacement be-
tween two waves (the phase). Captur-
ing the phase from the satellite at differ-
ent times provides a measurement that
has submillimeter precision under opti-
mal measurement conditions. The pro-
cess of measuring the differential phase
is called interferometry.
Fig. 1 shows the geometry of the mea-
surement made by the satellite. The line
labeled LOS (line of sight) shows the typi-
cal path of the microwave radiation from
the sensor to the ground (and its return
path). The measurement of ground de-
formation is made along this path. In
the case of a single-LOS observation, the
ground movement can be known only
along this projection. Multiple-LOS mea-
surements can be used to independently
construct the movement of the ground in
both a lateral and a vertical sense.
Imaging. Data collection over the re-
gion has been ongoing since 2008 and
has been conducted primarily with the
RADARSAT-2 satellite. The primary
mode of observation has been with the
so-called MultiLook Fine beam of the sat-
ellite. This beam provides a ground reso-
lution of approximately 8 m and a swath
width of 50 km. In December of 2014, ad-
ditional imaging was initiated with mul-
tiple RADARSAT-2 Wide UltraFine beam
modes, providing a nominal ground res-
olution of 3 m and a similar swath width
of 50 km. Further details on the satellite
and its instrumentation are provided in
the complete paper.
Increased Accuracy in Spatial Estima-
tion of Deformation. Recent advances in
the effectiveness of InSAR analysis have
typically extended the characterization of
point sources and neighborhoods of sta-
tionary phase information. These meth-
ods are most effective when the region to
be examined includes objects that can be
expected to provide a consistent phase
return over time. CRs play an important
role in accurately deriving the movement
over an SAGD operation. The installation
of CRs is required to measure small de-
formation signals quickly and accurately.
CRs, however, have some significant
drawbacks. The installation of CRs re-
quires hardware expense, tree cutting,
and dispensations. The drawbacks of CRs
are avoided in a CSS operation with a very
different surface-movement pattern. The
problem for a CSS operation is the speed
at which the ground is moving. However,
this same factor can also serve as a benefit.
If CRs are used to categorize the move-
ment over an area of interest, then one
must consider both the temporal and the
spatial unwrapping of the interferometric
signal. Unwrapping is required because
the phase difference is known only with-
in a circle. The total separation between
two waves needs to be unwrapped with
reference to the wavelength. In essence,
the slope (in either time or space) be-
tween two CR observations must be small
enough to be unambiguously observed at
the pair of CRs. The two CRs must be close
enough to experience no more than the
maximum deformation. When 25 cm of
ground movement over a 1-km¥500-m
region can be expected in less than 1
month, the required density of observa-
tions quickly becomes impossible.
The speed of the deformation, however,
is also of benefit, as previously mentioned.
That the amount of deformation is on the

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order of centimeters per observation means that the significant
noise factor (atmospheric noise) is much smaller than the expect-
ed measurement. The requirement then is to understand the ef- HOST

fects of the ground conditions on the signal/noise ratio available

from the interferometric pair and extrapolate the motion that
can be found in the observation. Figs. 2 and 3 of the complete
paper provide information about the methodology of extrapolat-
ing ground deformation and coherence.
Supported By Knowledge Partner

Validation
CNRL provided measurements of the ground deformation from
six locations on Pad 43 in the Primrose Field. Measurements
of surface elevation by RTK GPS surveys have been taken since One global industry. One city. One meeting place.
22 October 2014 and have a reported accuracy of 2 cm. FORGING TIES, DRIVING GROWTH
The RTK GPS observations were made on wellhead flanges
of two observation wells and the pile caps of four light poles on
Pad 43; the coincident InSAR observations are available contig- REGISTER TO HEAR FROM GLOBAL
uously throughout multiple drainage areas. The graphic in Fig. 4
of the complete paper was constructed by taking an average of OIL & GAS BUSINESS LEADERS
the RTK GPS measurements at the six locations. The InSAR mea-
surements are averaged over a 100¥100-m area centered on
Pad 43. The excellent agreement between the two instruments AT ONE OF THE WORLD’S
is confirmation that they are both measuring the same signal.
There are two periods of missing observations from the LARGEST OIL & GAS
InSAR measurements (notably March to April 2015) and a pe- CONFERENCES
riod of missing observations from the RTK GPS (July to October
2015). The first period of missing observations for the InSAR
1 OPENING CEREMONY
was caused by snow and ice cover from 13 November 2014 to
7 December 2014. The second period of missing observations
for the InSAR was caused by spring thaw from 2 March 2015 to 4
KEYNOTE & FEATURED SPEAKERS

MINISTERIAL
SESSIONS
119
TECHNICAL SESSIONS
19 April 2015. InSAR results were obtained by processing SAR
• E&P GEOSCIENCE
images captured from 2 September 2014 to 28 October 2015.
No RTK GPS surveys were taken between 30 June 2015 and 27
4 GLOBAL BUSINESS LEADER
SESSIONS • OFFSHORE & MARINE
NEW • DRILLING AND COMPLETION
September 2015.
In the periods during which both systems were in operation, 3 GLOBAL DOWNSTREAM
BUSINESS LEADER SESSIONS TECHNOLOGY

• PRODUCTION FACILITIES
the agreement is clear. The nature of the InSAR measurement NEW
as a difference between one observation and the next makes pe- 10 C-SUITE DIALOGUES
SESSIONS
TECHNOLOGY

• HSE
riods of missing observations problematic. In this case, the sig-
nal from the InSAR has been rebalanced to the RTK GPS signal
by estimating the GPS deformation at the restart of the InSAR
8 TECHNICAL INDUSTRY PANEL
SESSIONS
• UNCONVENTIONAL OIL

• UNCONVENTIONAL GAS
time series.
Further evidence of the accuracy of the InSAR method de- 14 SECURITY IN ENERGY
SESSIONS
• PROJECTS ENGINEERING AND
MANAGEMENT

scribed here for CSS operations comes from the comparison of • PEOPLE & TALENTS
the NOI and the cumulative deformation. Volume above fill-up 8 MIDDLE EAST PETROLEUM CLUB
VIP PROGRAMME BRIEFINGS • GAS TECHNOLOGY
(VAF) is defined as the cumulative volume of steam injected in • UNCONVENTIONAL RESOURCES
a steam cycle after the reservoir pressure has reached the ver-
tical in-situ stress. NOI is defined as injected steam VAF minus
8 WOMEN IN ENERGY
SESSIONS • FIELD DEVELOPMENT

• OPERATIONAL EXCELLENCE
the cumulative volume of liquid produced. Increasing NOI oc-
curs during steam injection, and a decreasing NOI occurs dur-
8 OFFSHORE & MARINE
SESSIONS • IOR/EOR

ing production. • PETROLEUM ADVANCED

The relationship between the NOI and the actual surface de- 1 YOUNG ADIPEC
ANNUAL YOUTH FORUM
ANALYTICS

formation as direct and spatial is clearly validated. The differ-

ences between the NOI and ground deformation for a particular
well may be related to arching deformation of the overburden
and variations in the stratigraphy, overburden thickness, and
FOR CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
www.adipec.com/confreg +971 2 697 0500
steam injection or production distribution along the length of
adipec.delegate@dmgeventsme.com +971 2 444 4383
horizontal wells. Nevertheless, the surface deformation occurs
where predicted by the NOI information. JPT Host City Official Media Technical Conference ADIPEC
Partner Organiser Organised By

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 Gas Tracers:
A Decade of Learning and Experience

I n interwell tracer studies, reservoir

complexities often make tracer-
breakthrough time difficult to assess.
Although reservoir-simulation studies
serve as an effective tool in predicting
a breakthrough, the tracer behavior
in the real porous media sometimes
presents intriguing surprises. This paper
discusses a crestal gas-injection project
that was carried out in a supergiant
heterogeneous-carbonate oil field.

Introduction
A tracer-survey study can provide a va-
riety of information about the hetero- Fig. 1—Reservoir map with sector distribution.
geneity of a formation. While transient
tests can provide information about res- tracer recovery. The mass-balance tech- could lead to full-field reservoir charac-
ervoir continuity, thief zones are diffi- nique can be used to calculate the amount terization that could be fed directly into a
cult, if not impossible, to detect. This is of tracer recovered to distinguish be- simulation model, sample collection and
because pressure-transient tests provide tween the existence of a fault, a flow bar- analysis must continue for a considerable
an arithmetic average for reservoir total rier, or a low-permeability zone. period of time after tracer is first detect-
transmissibility over the tested formation ed in order to establish a more-defined
thickness, while a tracer survey provides Tracer-Project Design elution curve.
a direct evaluation of the flow field be- Interwell tracer testing consists of inject-
tween the injection and production wells. ing chemical tracers into injection wells Gas-Tracer Application
Apart from heterogeneity, tracer stud- at the beginning of a flood project or after Field Background. The subject field is
ies also serve as an informative tool to the reservoir has reached its fill-up con- an offshore oil field located in the Ara-
yield fluid-flow paths inside the reservoir, dition, depending on the objective of the bian Gulf that has been on production
popularly known as reservoir stream- project, and subsequent sampling of pro- since the 1960s. After the initial natural-
lines. A tracer survey not only can pre- duction wells for a prescribed period of depletion phase, during the 1970s,
cisely identify these preferential paths time, which also depends on the objec- crestal dump-flood water injection was
that are detrimental to the sweep of the tive of the project. Samples are analyzed carried out to maintain the reservoir
reservoir in the enhanced-oil-recovery for tracer content, which will delineate pressure. During the 1980s, peripheral
stage but also can provide information communication between the injection water injection was introduced to serve
about the time that fluid takes to move and production wells. The time during as the principal source of energy to ar-
from one point (injection well) to another which samples are collected and ana- rest reservoir-pressure decline. In 2006,
point in the reservoir. This time is termed lyzed depends greatly on the objective a crestal gas-injection project was initiat-
the mean residence time. In addition, any of the project. If the objective is to iden- ed to support production from the wells
flow barrier or directional thief zones tify thief zones, deduce mean residence lying away from the periphery.
such as faults can be identified by delayed time, and determine other factors that Geologically, the field belongs to the
Lower Cretaceous and is divided into six
distinct anticline layers; for purposes of
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
monitoring reservoir performance, each
of paper SPE 183413, “A to Z for Gas Tracers: A Decade of Learning and Experience,” layer is further divided into six sectors,
by M.N. Khan, H. Iwama, A. Al-Neaimi, and O. Al-Shehhi, Abu Dhabi Marine as shown in Fig. 1. The division of sectors
Operating Company, and M. Chatterjee, Tracerco, prepared for the 2016 Abu Dhabi arose out of operational convenience and
International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, 7–10 November. The was not defined by any special character-
paper has not been peer reviewed. istics of the layers in the reservoir.

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

62 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Project Objective. As part of the crest-
al gas-injection project, six gas injectors
were drilled in the crest of the reservoirs;
hence, each layer was completed with
one dedicated gas injector. As part of the
reservoir-management conformance re-
porting, for the sake of simplicity, sector
voidage-replacement-ratio calculations
assumed equal gas-injection split among
all six sectors corresponding to each res-
ervoir layer. However, the imprecision
of this assumption was well-understood.
Accordingly, a tracer study was initiated
to track the injected-gas movement and
hence to find out the effective distribu-
tion pattern of the injected gas in differ-
ent sectors within each reservoir layer.
Tracer-Job Design. A qualified gas trac-
er is one that approximately follows the
fluid front with minimal slip velocity and
whose chemical composition is compat-
ible with the formation salts. Building on
the project objectives, six different trac-
ers were selected for injection through
the crestal gas injectors. The target area
of investigation was estimated at a couple
of hundred square kilometers on the basis
of the shallowest oil-producer locations
and the fluid-movement predictions.
To calculate the required tracer quan-
tities, simulation sensitivity results were
integrated to analyze the fluid-front
movement. On the basis of the outcome,
volumetric calculation was carried out
while considering an appropriate tracer-
dilution factor.
Sampling Program and Candidate Se-
lection. A simulation study on gas satu-
ration was conducted to track the gas
movement over the period of time in
which hydrogen sulfide was introduced
into the compositional model as a trac-
ing marker to monitor the gas movement
in each reservoir. Time-lapse analysis
showed that gas moved along the pref-
erential path in the southwest direction
(i.e., toward the pressure-sink area).
Overall, 54 sampling candidates were
selected in six reservoir layers to cover
the entire area of investigation. With the
review of the simulation results together
with field-production history and well
spacing, it was anticipated to have tracer
breakthrough into the targeted produc-
ers after 3 years; accordingly, the sam-
pling campaign started in 2010.
Project Execution and Data Collection.
To extract the maximum value of the trac-
er data, each sample was analyzed for all
six tracers; the additional analyses were
intended to ensure injection-well integri-
ty and to negate the possibility of any in-
terlayer communication.
During the course of the project, re-
vised reservoir-management guidelines
were introduced in which the oil produc-
ers having gas breakthrough had to be
shut in for the purposes of conserving en-
ergy and transmitting the pressure sup-
port to the needy areas of the field. With
the implementation of this revised strate-
gy, several wells with crestal-gas-injection
breakthrough were forced to be shut in
even before the probable gas-tracer arriv-
al, which probably affected the potential
deliverables of the tracer study.
Until 2015, several samples were col-
lected and analyzed per the set plan; out
of 54 wells, tracer breakthrough was ob-
served only in three. Interestingly, all
(Continued on page 66)
 Three-Phase Flow in Fractured Porous Media:
Investigation of Matrix/Fracture Interactions

T he authors present the results of a

detailed experimental study in which
underlying pore-level-displacement
physics of two- and three-phase flow in a
fractured rock sample is investigated with
high-resolution X-ray microtomography
techniques. A unique, three-phase
coreflooding setup integrated with a
microcomputed-tomography (micro-
CT) scanner is used to conduct flow
experiments on a miniature, partially
fractured sandstone sample to shed light
on subtle displacement mechanisms
governing matrix/fracture interactions
in the presence or absence of spreading
oil layers.
Experimental Methodology
Rock and Fluid Properties. A water-wet
Berea sandstone core plug, 38 mm in diam-
eter and 100 mm in length, was subjected
to continuous, nonuniform stress to create
a fracture parallel to the stress axis. The
artificial fracture was induced such that it
ran through only half of the core plug. This
configuration was used to study pore-fluid
occupancies and displacement physics at
different locations of the medium includ-
ing matrix-only sites, the fracture, and the
matrix adjacent to the fracture. After in-
ducing the fracture, a miniature sample,
10 mm in diameter and 40 mm in length,
was cut from the core plug.
The coreflooding tests were carried
out with two different fluid systems rep-
resenting the spreading and nonspread-
ing conditions. X-ray dopants were added
to liquid phases to establish sufficient
contrasts among all phases (i.e., brine,
oil, and gas) during the image-processing
steps. All fluids were recirculated through
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
of paper SPE 181891, “Three-Phase Flow in Fractured Porous Media: Experimental
Investigation of Matrix/Fracture Interactions,” by M. Sabti, A.H. Alizadeh, and M.
Piri, University of Wyoming, prepared for the 2016 SPE Annual Technical Conference
and Exhibition, Dubai, 26–28 September. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
the coreflooding setup before starting the
experiment, bypassing the core sample at
the experimental conditions for a period
of time (i.e., 48 hours) sufficient to equili-
brate all the phases and minimize mass
transfer between the fluids in the core
sample during the experiments.
Experimental Procedure. The experi-
mental apparatus included three major
modules: (1) a three-phase closed-loop
miniature coreflooding setup, (2) a
high-resolution micro-CT scanner, and
(3) a data-acquisition system. The flow
tests were carried out at pore pressure
of 3.45 MPa and ambient temperature
(20°C). Each fluid was retracted from a
specific section of the separator on the
basis of the density of the fluid and then
injected into the core sample. The authors
used the unsteady-state approach, in
which only one fluid is injected at a time.
After mounting the core holder inside
the scanner chamber, the core was flushed
with carbon dioxide gas and vacuumed
for 1 day. Subsequently, a dry scan image
of the entire length of the core sample
was obtained. Then, the core sample was
vacuum saturated with brine to establish
100% water saturation. Doped brine was
replaced by low-salinity brine to generate
an accurate pore-space map. Then, a wet
reference scan was obtained at a resolu-
tion of 2.5 µm while the flow of brine was
kept at a low flow rate. Afterward, the low-
salinity brine was replaced again by the
doped brine. At this point, the core sam-
ple was subjected to an oilflood with an
initial flow rate of 0.01 mL/min to estab-
lish a water saturation of approximately
31%. During drainage, the pressure drop
across the core sample was recorded and
water and oil saturations were monitored.
This process was continued until the sys-
tem reached steady state. At this point,
the authors had established the desired
two-phase condition. Subsequently, gas
was injected into the core at various flow
rates to reach different oil saturations.
Data Analysis. Before starting the experi-
ments, the dimensions of the fracture and
its distance from the inlet of the core were
measured to prepare the scan recipes and
determine the locations of interest. It was
intended to study the pore-scale displace-
ment physics in three different locations of
the sample. The authors selected the sites
to allow the study of pore-fluid occupan-
cies at topologically different areas of the
sample while using different fluid systems.
An image-processing software visu-
alized the reconstructed 3D images ob-
tained from the micro-CT scanner. The
tomograms had to be processed before
final visualization. This data-processing
procedure produced sharp boundaries of
the pore structure and the phase interfac-
es in each stage of the flow experiments.
Results and Discussion
After establishing 100% water saturation,
oil was introduced to the core at an initial
flow rate of 0.01 mL/min followed by in-
cremental increases up to 0.45 mL/min.
Oil, as the nonwetting phase, first invad-
ed the fracture because it was the path of
least resistance. Once the capillary pres-
sure increased to that required to invade
matrix pores, oil displaced water from
the larger water-filled pore elements in
the surrounding matrix. However, water
maintained its connectivity by forming
thin wetting layers on the roughness of
the fracture walls and the crevices of in-
terconnected pore elements of the matrix.
In a pore with an angular cross section,
water resides in the corners while oil oc-
cupies the center. During secondary gas

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

64 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 the center of the pore element. These
spreading layers were present not only
in the pores of the matrix but also in the
fracture, between the wetting layers of
brine on the walls and the gas in the cen-
(a) (c)
ter of the fracture. The spreading layers
have nonnegligible hydraulic conductiv-
ity. This means that the oil phase in the
matrix had established a hydraulic con-
nectivity through these connected lay-
ers with the oil in the fracture. It was
observed that these layers were stable
(b) (d)
during the gas injection and allowed the
oil saturation in the matrix to reduce.
Fig. 1—2D cross-sectional views of three-phase segmented images showing the
fluid-occupancy map obtained during gas injection under different conditions Nonspreading Fluid System. During the
with a resolution of 2.5 m. Blue, red, yellow, and gray colors represent invasion of gas into pores filled with non-
brine, oil, gas, and solid, respectively. (a) Low-flow-rate gas injection under
spreading oil, the authors observed thin-
spreading condition, (b) low-flow-rate gas injection under nonspreading
condition, (c) high-flow-rate gas injection under spreading condition, and ner oil layers at lower gas-flow rates in
(d) high-flow-rate gas injection under nonspreading condition. some of the pore elements invaded by
gas and even in the fracture roughness.
injection, gas rapidly fills the fracture and fluid systems used plays an important role However, as the capillary pressure was in-
displaces the oil phase through the cen- in the displacement mechanisms at differ- creased by increasing the gas-flow rate,
ter of the fracture. Subsequently, it starts ent oil saturations of the medium. these thin oil layers collapsed. This im-
to extract more oil from the pores of the plies that the hydraulic conductivity of
neighboring matrix with a higher capillary Spreading Fluid System. During the gas the oil was not well-maintained, which
pressure. However, displacing water re- invasion into pores filled with spread- hinders the oil movement from the neigh-
quired a higher threshold pressure of the ing oil, oil left a thin layer sandwiched boring matrix to the fracture, leading to
gas phase. The spreading coefficient of the between brine in the corners and gas in lower oil recovery compared with that of

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 the spreading fluid system. This means
that those layers contributed to the flow
of oil for only a limited span of capillary
pressure. It is worth mentioning that any
layer that was smaller than the spatial
resolution used could not be observed.
However, by comparing the oil-saturation
profiles of the spreading and nonspread-
ing systems at different flow rates, it was
evident that the thinner layers in the non-
spreading system had little or no effect on
the medium’s saturation.
The authors compared the pore fluid
occupancies and the displacement mech-
anisms in two randomly selected pore el-
ements during gas injection at different
oil saturations: (1) a pore element that
is directly connected to the fracture and
(2) a pore that is far away from the frac-
ture section.
Higher Oil Saturations. The authors in-
vestigated three-phase pore fluid occu-
pancy generated at lower gas-flow rates
with the spreading fluid system in a pore
element that is directly connected to the
fracture. The oil phase is sandwiched be-
tween the brine in the corner and the gas
Gas Tracers: A Decade of Learning and Experience
three wells belonged to the deepest res-
ervoir (i.e., Layer 6).
Tracer-Data Analysis and Results. Trac-
er detection in a given sample is an indica-
tion of direct communication between the
injection well and the corresponding mon-
itoring wells. However, the extent of com-
munication depends on the breakthrough
times and tracer-concentration values.
Data Integration. While the crestal-drive
gas injection commenced in 2004, gas
tracers were introduced in the six crestal
gas injectors across six different layers in
August 2006 after a steady front was es-
tablished. Until 2016, only three wells in
the deepest layer had experienced break-
throughs lying on the northern part of
the field. The simulation study did pre-
dict the gas movement toward the pres-
sure sink. However, no other shallower
layers had experienced breakthroughs.
Gas tracers tend to partition between
different hydrocarbon phases. While Lay-
ers 3 and 6 had no gas caps, the move-
ment of the tracers was expected to be
66
in the middle. The oil maintained its con-
nectivity to the fracture through stable
and thick spreading oil layers. However,
with the nonspreading system, gas invad-
ed the same pore element by pushing the
oil to the crevices without forming any
oil layers. It was observed that some of
the pores had very thin oil layers that be-
came thinner or collapsed as the capillary
pressure was increased. Figs. 1a and 1b
show a pore that is far away from the frac-
ture and not invaded by gas at lower flow
rates under both the spreading and the
nonspreading conditions. The only dif-
ference observed is a thicker brine layer
under spreading conditions in that par-
ticular pore.
The main mechanism of fluid dis-
placement at higher oil saturations is the
movement of the connected bulk oil in
the form of a piston-like displacement.
The oil saturations under both spreading
and nonspreading conditions are almost
the same at low gas-flow rates, but there
was a relatively significant change in the
oil saturations at higher gas-flow rates.
In addition, it was observed that the aver-
age gas-saturation profile in the direction
(Continued from page 63)
fastest in these layers because no possible
partitioning caused by the presence of the
dual phase was anticipated. This was in-
deed observed in the case of Layer 6.
Reservoir complexity could be anoth-
er reason for the delayed breakthrough.
From the logs, it could be seen clearly
that top Layers 1, 2, and 3 have a higher
degree of homogeneity when compared
with the bottom three layers. According-
ly, Layers 4, 5, and 6 were expected to see
a faster breakthrough when compared
with the top layers. While this is evident
in the case of Layer 6 (the only layer that
saw a breakthrough), Layers 4 and 5 did
not see any breakthrough at all.
It was found that the closure of the high-
gas/oil-ratio wells in Layers 4 and 5 result-
ing from revised reservoir-management
guidelines led to an apparent disruption
of the pressure streamlines within the
reservoir. The pressure-differential paths
that the tracers were initially following
were modified on account of the closure
of a few wells; this led the chemical en-
tities to reroute their path toward a new
pressure sink within the closed system.
perpendicular to the gas-flow direction
was not uniform in both spreading and
nonspreading cases. The oil in the larger
pores surrounding the fracture was ex-
tracted earlier than that located far away
from the fracture.
Lower Oil Saturations. At higher flow
rates of gas, the spreading layers played
a substantial role in displacement. The
drainage of oil through the spreading lay-
ers is the main governing mechanism of
flow at lower oil saturations. Fig. 1c and
1d show the gas invasion into the previ-
ously oil-filled pores under the spread-
ing and nonspreading conditions. Fig. 1c,
which was generated under the spread-
ing condition, shows that the oil spreads
and forms a layer around the gas in the
center, while Fig. 1d, which was obtained
under the nonspreading condition, shows
two oil lenses in two different corners of
the same pore element. The oil saturation
was measured at different gas-flow rates.
The measurements indicate a relatively
higher oil recovery for the spreading sys-
tem when compared with that of the non-
spreading system. JPT
Conclusions
w The tracer studies for this reservoir
in the subject case study had to
be terminated (owing to long
incubation time of tracers) before
substantial amounts of tracer could
be seen. If the tracer elution could
be completed with a finite amount of
data, considerable information about
the reservoir, both qualitatively and
quantitatively, could be generated.
w It is well-understood that tracer
studies take a considerable amount
of time, and a constant production
behavior is almost impossible to
achieve for most practical purposes.
Strategic planning of wells serves as
a key solution in such cases.
w Simulation serves as a key to the
modeling of a tracer study. However,
as is the case here, the concept of
“dynamic simulation” should be used
in monitoring a tracer project. Any
change that is taking place in the field
should be updated periodically in
the model to gauge the actual tracer
movement in the reservoir. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Completions
Doug Lehr, SPE, Senior Manager for Design for Reliability, Baker Hughes, a GE Company

I am very excited to begin my term as The good news ter will advance effectiveness in both land
editorial reviewer for Completions. JPT and offshore completions. Process inno-
has always been the source of cutting- is that innovation vation is also occurring and is evident in
edge information on industry technology has continued the drive to create advanced numerical
developments, and I pledge to continue models for optimization of stimulation
that tradition through expert review and
during the downturn. and hardware choices in multizone shale
selection of articles. well completions. Finally, increased focus
Our industry is showing signs of on reliability in design, installation, and
emerging from the recent downturn, and One of the more powerful tools avail- operation has emerged, as both opera-
commodity prices are slowly improving. able to help achieve sustained profitabil- tors and suppliers recognize the contri-
There is intense focus across the indus- ity is innovation, and it has consistently bution of risk management to comple-
try on profitability in the current low- generated cutting-edge technologies that tion technology and systems.
oil-price environment, and profitability have advanced the oil and gas industry. The articles in this month’s Comple-
must be achieved while meeting regula- The good news is that innovation has tions section are great examples of how
tory requirements, delivering value to continued during the downturn. For innovation is driving profitability, and I
stakeholders, and attracting and retain- example, advancements in dissolvable- hope that they help you drive profitabil-
ing the best talent available. Yet, today’s materials technology and downhole data ity in your completions. JPT
profitability is not the only challenge. acquisition have continued. While the
Laying the groundwork for future profit- former primarily advances efficiency in
ability must also occur. multizone shale well completions, the lat- Recommended additional reading
at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
Doug Lehr, SPE, is senior manager for design for reliability at IADC/SPE 180542 Appropriate
Baker Hughes, a GE company. His current focus is driving reliabil- Completion To Prevent Potential Damage
ity improvement through leading-edge processes across all prod- of Annular Pressure Buildup in Deepwater
uct lines. Previously, Lehr was global director of technology, Wells by Bo Zhang, China University of
wellbore intervention. He has 37 years of experience in the devel- Petroleum, et al.
opment of downhole tools for completion and intervention appli- SPE 185499 Fracturing-to-Production
cations. Lehr’s research interests include high-pressure/high- Integrated Completion Sensitivities for
temperature applications, industry codes and standards, and Horizontal-Well Design in the Vaca Muerta
accelerating innovation. He has authored or coauthored eight technical papers and Shale by S. Pichon, Schlumberger, et al.
holds 25 patents. Lehr holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering from The SPE 185051 The Impact of Completion
University of Texas at Austin and an MBA degree in finance and marketing from the Technique on Well Performance by D.M.
University of Houston. He was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 2012–13 and is a mem- Anderson, Anderson Thompson Reservoir
ber of the JPT Editorial Committee. Lehr can be reached at douglas.lehr@bhge.com. Strategies, et al.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 67

 Deep High-Pressure Completions:
A Case History Offshore Gulf of Mexico

A Gulf of Mexico case history

is presented describing the
successful delivery of two deep high-
Initial
Gunflint
1. Vacuum-Insulated Tubing
Final
Gunflint

2. Tieback
pressure high-rate-designed oil wells in
an ultradeepwater environment. Well 3. SCSSV
conditions, coupled with challenging 4A. SMART
production requirements (depletion of 4B. Upper-to-Lower Interface
10,000 psi), posed an arduous design 5. Production Accessories
challenge. More than two dozen firsts 6. Production Packer
for the operator, and indeed for the 7. GP Packer
industry, were required to deliver the 8. Fluid-Loss Device
final completion designs. 9. GP Accessories

Introduction 1. Vacuum-Insulated Tubing

The Gunflint field is located in five Mis- 2. Tieback
sissippi Canyon blocks in approximate- 3. SCSSV
ly 6,100 ft of water. The discovery well 4A. SMART
(MC948 2) was drilled in 2008. The field 4B. Upper-to-Lower Interface
contains stacked Middle Miocene age 5. Production Accessories
reservoirs between depths of 23,800 and 6. Production Packer
27,000 ft true vertical depth subsea. A 7. GP Packer
mixture of black oil, rich gas condensate, 8. Fluid-Loss Device
and dry gas has been penetrated in seven 9. GP Accessories
reservoirs. Only three oil reservoirs,
Green B, Green C, and Blue E, are con-
sidered commercially viable for develop- Fig. 1—Completion technical assessment and design challenges (initial
and final). SCSSV=surface-controlled subsurface safety valve.
ment. Reservoir pressures and tempera-
tures range from 17,000 to 19,000 psi
and from 210 to 240°F, respectively. Pet- completion. The second well (G2, the 30,000 and 35,000 BOPD, and each well
rophysical analysis determined that the “Green” well) is a sidetrack of the origi- will have a dedicated 6-in. pipeline for
primary reservoir sands are high-quality nal discovery well targeting the Green B flowback to the host facility. However,
sandstones with good permeability. and C reservoirs in a dual commingled the expected total field plateau rate is
The development plan consists of two smart completion. 25,000 BOPD owing to capacity limits
subsea wells tied back to the Gulf Star I Initial well productivity was designed at the remote host. Specifically, the proj-
platform. The first well (G4, the “Blue” for 15,000 BOPD for the Blue well and ect’s statement of requirements stipu-
well) is a twin to the original discov- 20,000 BOPD from the commingled lated that G4 was to deliver a production
ery well in the top of the structure and Green well. Instantaneous initial total capacity of 15,000 BOPD at a skin (pro-
targets the Blue E horizon as a single oil potential is expected to be between duction efficiency) of less than 3, while
G2 was to deliver a production capacity of
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights 20,000 BOPD (combined) at a skin (pro-
duction efficiency) of less than 3.
of paper SPE 181557, “Pushing the Completion Design Envelope in Ultradeepwater:
Design, Installation, and Performance of Deep High-Pressure Completions—A Case
Completion-Delivery Process
History of the Gunflint Development, Offshore Gulf of Mexico,” by Jack Sanford, This project used a field-proven
SPE, John Healy, SPE, Tim Hopper, SPE, Josh Fink, SPE, Ladd Grammer, SPE, completion-delivery process comprising
James Koy, SPE, Jocelyn Perroux, SPE, Ian Magin, SPE, Kevin Williams, and Tom four sequential phases: right design, de-
Seeley, Noble Energy, prepared for the 2016 SPE Annual Technical Conference and tailed engineering, equipment integrity,
Exhibition, Dubai, 26–28 September. The paper has not been peer reviewed. and flawless execution.

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

68 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Right Design. A project-level diagram for Well G4. An effective mitigation break-backs were realized, and the pump
(Fig. 1) summarized technology challeng- for high surface pressures is to use a rate was increased for diversion. The
es. Red indicates a design that is not avail- weighted fracturing fluid. By selecting an final rate at the end of the acid job was
able but is less than 2 years away. Orange 11.5-lbm/gal sodium bromide base fluid 15 bbl/min at 6,500 psi. It was later de-
indicates a design that is available but has vs. the conventional 8.7-lbm/gal sodium termined that fluid was being distribut-
no run history, and yellow indicates a de- chloride fluid, the surface pressures were ed over the entire interval on the basis of
sign that is available but has a history of reduced by approximately 4,000 psi. Ex- the interpretation of the downhole wash-
no more than three runs. The engineer- tensive testing was performed to con- pipe gauge data. The fracturing gradient
ing objective was to eliminate the red and firm formation and fluid compatibilities, was determined to be 0.770 psi/ft (less
orange by in-depth analysis and qualifica- to avoid damage. than expected). Therefore, a convention-
tion of the equipment design. The results of the G4 acid job were al base fluid was used on the next two in-
very encouraging. Several pressure tervals in Well G2.
Detailed Engineering and Equipment
Integrity: The Detailed Design Review
(DDR). The DDR is a bridge between the
second and third steps. It is captured
under equipment integrity but often re-
quires a significant presence in the de-
tailed engineering phase. For the proj-
ect presented in the complete paper,
the DDR is considered to be the single
most important contributor to the suc-
cess of the project. A DDR can take many
forms, but, in general, it is a compre-
hensive and in-depth process of evalu-
ating equipment on a component-by-
component basis to ensure that each
part is fit for purpose.
A DDR was performed on every part
of the permanent downhole equipment.
Approximately 14 DDRs were performed
and a total of 59 changes were made.
Every piece of equipment had at least one
change when compared with the origi-
nally proposed setup. The only downhole
equipment failures and the two high-
est nonproductive-time (NPT) events oc- SCALE
curred, in fact, on service (rental) tools
upon which DDRs were not performed. WORKOVERS FOR
Lower Completion. Perforating. The NEARLY 2 YEARS
perforating-tendering process revealed
that most vendors did not offer equip-
ment rated to Gunflint’s high-pressure A single application of SCALEGUARD proppant-delivered
requirements. After significant techni- scale-inhibiting technology has maintained production
cal analysis, the perforator with the larg- rates and eliminated costly workovers for nearly two years in
est area open to flow was selected. With previously scale-prone wells in Manitoba, Canada. Similarly
low skin as a significant driver, consid- impressive results have been achieved in over 200 wells
erable technical analysis was conduct- across North America.
ed to determine methods to mitigate
The numbers speak for themselves
formation damage and debris plugging
For more production enhancing technologies that improve
of the perforations. Ultimately, under-
balanced perforating (1,000 psi) on an your initial production, EUR and ROI numbers, talk to CARBO.
open choke and flow (surge=25 bbl)
was recommended.
Frac Pack. On the basis of a review of Read the full story
fields analogous to Gunflint, it was de-
carboceramics.com/manitoba
termined that the expected surface treat-
ing pressure would exceed 11,000 psi

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 69


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Interface. The extreme completion
depth and pressure posed numerous en-
gineering challenges. One example was
the risk of failure of the gravel-pack (GP)
packer as the Blue sand depleted. The
purpose of the GP packer is to ensure
that the annular pack stays in place dur-
ing production. The GP packer for this
application had a maximum differential
rating of 10,000 psi. To ensure well in-
tegrity, a bona-fide production packer
was positioned above the GP packer. The
authors’ engineering analysis indicated
that this would trap a hydrostatic pres-
sure of approximately 19,000 psi above
the GP packer, thus creating a significant
differential load across the GP packer as
the reservoir depleted. This could lead to
a mechanical failure and loss of reserves.
Selection of the Burst Disk. This op-
tion was risk-assessed, and the team de-
cided it was worth the cost of testing to
determine if the rupture disk and drain
sub were fit for purpose. The testing con-
firmed that the disks did not burst during
the forward pressure cycle. The testing
further confirmed that the disks ruptured
during the reserve pressure cycle at an
average pressure of 6,122 psi (well below
the packer rating) and within a tolerance
of only 1.32%. Because of the positive re-
sults, the disks were incorporated into
the completion design. The cost savings
were estimated at USD 2.1 million as a re-
sult of the use of a USD 172 rupture disk.
Upper Completion. Control-Line-
Routing Drawing. The objective of a
control-line-routing drawing is to align
all the control lines to ensure correct
clamp designs and to ensure that the
tubing-hanger (TH) makeup is as sim-
ple as possible. Even though this process
is simple, it is often not performed or
is performed incorrectly. Common mis-
takes include looking at bottom-up vs.
top-down orientations of control-line
clamps as compared with the TH design.
All of the detailed engineering performed
ahead of time ensured that the running of
the upper completion was a smooth and
efficient process.
Control-Line Bypass Slots. A DDR was
performed on the control-line slots,
which align the control lines with the
lower intelligent control valves of the
packer. An outcome of the DDR was a
change of the slot orientation. The conse-
quence of this orientation change was not
revealed until shop assembly makeup, at
which point it was found that a control
line passed directly over a flow port. Four
options were considered for correcting
the issue; ultimately, a “dog-ear” clip was
selected to reposition the line to the far
side of the slot, thereby rerouting the
control line away from the flow port. The
modification was made to all equipment
before deployment. This finding high-
lights the fact that DDRs must be holistic.
Flawless Execution. Well G4 was com-
pleted in 52.6 days. The overall efficien-
cy of the operation was 52% productive
time, with 25.4 days (48.3%) of NPT.
However, the bulk of the NPT was the re-
sult of waiting on loop currents. Evalu-
ating the well without weather and loop
currents, the overall efficiency was, in
fact, 97% productive time, with only
0.8 days (2.8%) of NPT. The Rushmore
Review database was used for bench-
marking the execution of the Gunflint
completions. The wells selected for
benchmarking met the following criteria:
◗ Completion type (single GP or single
selective GP)
◗ Post-Macondo [normalizing for the
additional blowout-preventer (BOP)
-maintenance times]
◗ Well depths of greater than
22,000-ft measured depth (MD)
For the purposes of benchmarking and
performance analysis, the selected data
considered only the completion phases.
Rig mobilization and demobilization and
the running and pulling of the BOP stack
were not included. On the basis of the
Rushmore Review database, Well G4 is
the fastest single-GP completion with the
lowest NPT for all wells.
Well G2 was completed in 38.9 days.
The overall efficiency of the operation
was 79% productive time, with 8.3 days
(21.4%) of NPT. When evaluated with-
out weather-related or rig-equipment is-
sues, the overall efficiency was 85% pro-
ductive time, with only 5.2 days (14.5%)
of NPT. On the basis of the Rushmore
Review database, Well G2 is the fastest
single-selective-GP completion with re-
spect to well depth. On the basis of com-
parisons in Fig. 18 of the complete paper,
Well G2 was the second-fastest comple-
tion; normalizing for depth makes G2 the
fastest completion of those shown, on the
basis of days per 1000 ft MD. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 When facing the challenges of longer or more complex wells, combining the
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 Integrated Cemented
Inflow-Control-Device System Design

O ff-bottom-cementing (OBC)
operations are unique to
Saudi Arabia and represent a very
challenging approach to drilling and
workover operations when deployed Liner-Hanger System
in combination with inflow-control
devices (ICDs) across horizontal
sections. The multitasking-valve (MTV)
feature in upgraded ICDs offers safe,
Cemented Curve Section
simple, and cost-effective deployment
operations. This paper discusses the Cementing Valve
first deployment of an ICD system Depleted formation
Nonshear Ball Seat
combined with an OBC system for Wellbore
Inflatable Packers
a workover operation in a mature ICD Completion Isolation Valve
producer well in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia.

Introduction Production Zone

In wells where an OBC liner is required
to cover nontargeted formations above Fig. 1—Integrated OBC ICD completion.
the production zone, two methods of
deployment can be used: the one-trip ICD completion used an inner string, a sure. All hydraulically set equipment
system and the two-trip system. These circulating system, and an openhole- can also be set at this point.
refer, respectively, to whether the OBC packer-setting tool. This allowed 100% Ultimately, in the case outlined in the
components are deployed in a single circulation from the shoe during de- complete paper, it was decided to com-
trip along with the ICD or in a second ployment of the lower ICD completion, bine once again the separated deploy-
trip with string in the previously de- although circulation rate is limited be- ment into a single system by use of the
ployed ICD completion. The one-trip cause of pumping through the small in- MTV feature, which provides important
OBC ICD completion does not allow an ternal diameter (ID). functions for the one-trip OBC ICD com-
inner-string application. Therefore, cir- The upgraded ICD with an MTV al- pletion—the ability to perform 100%
culation while running in hole was inef- lows the lower completion to be de- circulation from the shoe and to set all
fective in this producer, which caused ployed without an inner string while hydraulic downhole tools with one set-
deployment problems. achieving 100% circulation at the shoe, ting ball.
The two-trip OBC ICD completion was which smooths operations and saves up
then considered. The idea was to split to 24 hours of rig time. The MTV tem- Completion Design
the completion into a lower ICD com- porarily blocks the communication be- As shown in Fig. 1, the integrated sys-
pletion, which is dropped off inside the tween string and annulus while running tem eliminates the seal assembly and
openhole horizontal section with a set- in hole. Once reaching the setting depth, setting sleeve. The float collar is also re-
ting sleeve. The earlier two-trip OBC MTVs are actuated by hydraulic pres- moved to give passage for the setting ball
to land on the wellbore-isolation valve
(WIV) located near the end of the com-
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
pletion string, above the float shoe. The
of paper SPE 183383, “Integrated Off-Bottom Cemented Inflow-Control-Device
nonshear-ball-seat position is moved
System Design Toward Well-Delivery Optimization,” by Mohammed A. Al Madan below the cementing valve, providing a
and Mazen Bu Khamseen, Saudi Aramco, and Hedy Suherdiana and Ahmad Al cement barrier from inside after drop-
Abdulmohsen, Baker Hughes, a GE company, prepared for the 2016 Abu Dhabi ping a second ball. The nonshear-ball-
International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, 7–10 November. seat ID was enlarged to accommodate
The paper has not been peer reviewed. the 1.25-in. setting ball passing through

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

72 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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 while still being able to hold the 1.5-in.
ball for a cement barrier.
Field-Trial Summary and Result
The well chosen for deploying the first
integrated one-trip OBC ICD comple-
tion is a somewhat historic one in Saudi
Arabia. The discovery well of the world’s
largest field was drilled in July 1948
as an exploration well with a 7-in. cas-
ing. After a successful perforation job,
the well was converted to an oil pro-
ducer and completed with 2⅞-in. tub-
ing. A 7-in. downhole packer with 3½-
and 4½-in. tubing was set during the
first workover that took place in July
1973 to replace the corroded 2⅞-in.
tubing. The well was kept in produc-
tion until mid-2012, when high tubing/
casing-annulus (TCA) pressure was ob-
served along with a water-cut increase.
A workover operation was proposed
to contend with the high TCA pres-
sure and sidetrack the well to restore
its productivity.
Re-entering a well drilled approxi-
mately 65 years ago was a challenge, and
deploying the integrated system for the
first time worldwide made it an impor-
tant job. In the last quarter of 2013, the
workover operation was commenced by
killing the well. The well was decom-
pleted and the main bore was plugged
back to the whipstock-setting depth. A
window was opened, and a 6⅛-in. hole
was drilled to target depth, with approx-
imately 3,000 ft drilled horizontally. Be-
fore running the integrated downhole
completion, a stiff reaming assembly
was run to clean out any tight spots and
a wiper trip was performed to confirm
that the directional hole was in good
condition. A lubricant pill was spot-
ted, and the stiff reaming assembly was
pulled out of the hole.
The proposed completion, which con-
sisted of a WIV, nine ICDs with MTV,
four mechanical openhole packers, and
five small swell packers plus the OBC
line system kit, was picked up, drift-
ed, and labeled. Getting this completion
to the target depth across more than
5,000 ft of open hole in an area known
for differential sticking was a major con-
cern because any delay could lead to a
stuck completion. Reducing the con-
nection time between stands, filling the
string using a hose during running in
hole, and using special centralizers that
have a lower friction factor were the
main steps in getting the completion to
target depth.
Completion equipment reached target
depth after 18 hours. The hole was circu-
lated clean at 3 bbl/min at 450 psi, and
was displaced to brine. A biochemical
mud treatment was pumped to be spot-
ted across the ICD completion. A 1.25-in.
setting ball was dropped and chased
with a high-viscosity pill and brine.
The ball landed at the WIV, and pump
pressure was increased to 1,600 psi to
set the liner hanger. The hanger was set
and confirmed with 20,000-lbf slackoff.
Pressure was increased to 2,000  psi to
set the inflatable packers. Pressure was
then brought up to 2,800 psi to set the
mechanical openhole packer, actuate the
MTV, and release the hydraulic liner-
hanger-setting tool. The liner-hanger-
setting-tool release was confirmed by
pickup. Running string was slacked
off 20,000 lbf, and pressure was in-
creased to 3,100 psi, opening the ce-

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74 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 menting valve. Circulation was regained
through the cementing valve. A second
ball (1.5-in. outer diameter) was dropped
and chased the high-viscosity pill as a
marker. The hole was displaced back to
mud, and the marker pill showed at the
surface, confirming that circulation was
coming through the cementing valve.
Before the cementing job, a surface
cementing line was tested to 4,000 psi,
while 60 bbl of cement was mixed. The
cementing job began by pumping a spac-
er followed by cement slurry. A dart plug
was dropped and displaced with a spac-
er, followed by mud, then by the spacer,
and finally by mud. Once the plug landed
on the cementing valve, pressure was in-
creased to 1,000 psi above the 700-psi
flowing drillpipe pressure. There was no
backflow, which confirmed that the ce-
menting valve was closed. The liner-top
packer was set, the running tool was
strung out of the liner-top packer, and
reverse circulation was performed to
clean out the spacer and contaminated
cement. The running tool was pulled out
of hole, and the job was completed. After
the cementing plug and nonshear ball
seat were drilled out, 320 ft of contami-
nated cement was found below the non-
shear ball seat. The first ICD was located
400 ft below the nonshear ball seat.
Comparison and Gained Value
Three wells were drilled and completed
by the same rig. As detailed in Figs. 6
and 7 of the complete paper, the OBC
single trip with MTV eliminated all the
operating time required with regard to
the inner string and the setting of the
openhole packers with an inflation tool,
and the run-in-hole time for the second-
trip OBC. For the mud treatment, pump-
ing time was reduced significantly.
Future Development
To have the ability to seal the ICD com-
pletion from cement in the string,
a dual-cementing valve is being de-
veloped. The lower port of the dual-
cementing valve will be opened by pres-
sure against the WIV. After regaining
circulation through the port, the first
plug will be dropped. This plug will close
the lower port while providing positive
isolation for the ICD completion against
cement intrusion from inside the com-
pletion string. The dual-cementing-valve
upper port will be opened by pressure
against the first plug, which will provide
the path for cementing. Once cement is
pumped, a second plug will be dropped
and the upper port will be closed.
Conclusions
w The integrated OBC ICD completion
successfully optimized well delivery
by eliminating almost 40 hours of
rig operating time.
w The MTV on the ICD plays a major
role, allowing all hydraulic actuation
and setting at once.
w The current system has the
limitation of not having a positive
indication for the second ball to
land on the nonshear ball seat
as a second barrier, which could
result in cement invading the lower
completion.
w Future development of the dual-
cementing valve will provide
positive isolation for the ICD
completion from the cement inside
the completion string. JPT

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 Integrated Completion Sensitivities for
Horizontal-Well Design in the Vaca Muerta

T he boom in organic shale plays has

revealed the critical need to size
hydraulic-facture treatments correctly
well is hydraulically fractured. Enhanc-
ing the contact area between the for-
mation and the wellbore with hydraulic
study. The work flow has been imple-
mented successfully in the Vaca Muerta
and various other shale plays.
to achieve commercial success. The fractures compensates for the extreme-
right balance must be found between ly low permeability of these formations. Reservoir Characterization. The inputs
the cost of fracturing and the additional Multiple factors, including geomechan- for the work flow constitute a detailed
production achieved by increasing the ics and stress direction, drive the geom- characterization of the static properties
formation-to-wellbore contact area. etry of the hydraulic fractures. However, of the reservoir, including petrophysics,
The complete paper examines a range it must be noted that most organic shale geomechanics, and a description of the
of completion scenarios to evaluate reservoirs are overpressured. This factor natural fractures. All the static proper-
the relationship between hydraulic- tends to drive the stresses up and reduce ties are explicitly described vertically
fracture design, production, and their horizontal anisotropy. across the entire thickness of the section
well profitability by use of numerical Besides the hydraulic-fracture geom- of interest and are propagated horizon-
simulations to guide completion of etry, production is also the result of the tally over the entire volume of the model.
horizontal wells in Argentina’s Vaca hydrocarbon volume in place and the in- Data specific to the Vaca Muerta Shale
Muerta Shale. teraction of the flow capacities between are taken from the literature and sum-
the reservoir and the created network of marized in Table 1 of the complete paper.
Introduction conductive fractures. Therefore, the size Average values are used to populate the
The Vaca Muerta Shale is the source rock of this surface of exchange created by the static model and ensure a generic but
of most of the producing formations in hydraulic fractures has a critical effect consistent representation of the areas
the Neuquén Basin, with high potential as on the level and dynamics of the produc- currently under development.
a standalone reservoir. The first well aim- tion profile.
ing at testing production from the play Finally, economics is the balance be- Hydraulic-Fracture Modeling. An ac-
was drilled and completed in 2010, and, tween total well cost and production. The curate modeling of hydraulic fracturing
at the end of 2016, the production from completion design affects both produc- is a key element in this study to evaluate
the formation involved more than 600 tion and total well cost, making it a criti- the resulting geometry against various
wells. Well-construction practices have cal parameter. possible completion designs. The un-
moved from creating vertical wells to cre- conventional fracturing model (UFM) is
ating horizontal wells. Fracturing-to-Production chosen as the hydraulic-fracture model.
In any organic shale play, completion Integrated Work Flow The main features of the UFM model in-
has a significant weight in the total well Work-Flow Requirements. With the clude the following:
cost and must be sized adequately. Com- primary objective being the combined w It is a physics-based model that
pletion design is composed of the volume evaluation of completion design, honors elastic deformation and
and number of hydraulic fractures to be hydraulic-fracture geometry, production, material balance.
created along the lateral, and it must be and economics, the methodology must w It dynamically evaluates the
engineered according to the specific fea- allow an explicit description, at either distribution of fluid and proppant
tures of each formation. the input or output level, of each one between different perforation
One of the principal features of an of the aforementioned parameters. The clusters of a single stage.
organic shale reservoir is the absence fracturing-to-production work flow fits w It models the transport of proppant
of commercial production unless the this purpose and is proposed for this along the fractures.
w It includes the interaction of natural
fractures, to create nonplanar
This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights
hydraulic-fracture geometries.
of paper SPE 185499, “Fracturing-to-Production Integrated Completion Sensitivities w It includes the effect of stress
for Horizontal-Well Design in the Vaca Muerta Shale,” by S. Pichon, F. Cafardi, shadows generated within and
G.D. Cavazzoli, A. Diaz, and M.R. Lederhos, Schlumberger, prepared for the 2017 between fracturing stages.
SPE Latin America and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference, Buenos Aires, It is important to note that, because of
17–19 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. all the mechanisms taken into account in

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

76 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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 Cumulative Density Function

Cumulative Density Function

Area-Based Proppant Concentration Tip-to-Tip Hydraulic Length (m) Average Height (m)
Proppant_Areal_Distribution (lbm ft3) axis 1.00 1.00
1.00
0.90 Hydraulic
0.80 0.75 0.75
0.70
0.60
0.50
0.40 0.50 0.50 Propped
0.30
0.20
0.10
0.00 0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00
0 250 500 750 1,000 0 10 20 30 40 50

Cumulative Density Function

Cumulative Density Function

Fluid Distribution/Cluster (%) Surface/Stage (million ft2)
1.00 1.00
Hydraulic
0.75 0.75
Propped
0.50 0.50

0.25 0.25

0.00 0.00
–50% –25% 0% 25% 50% 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0

Fig. 1—Hydraulic-fracture simulation (UFM).

the UFM model, the actual geometry of
each hydraulic fracture along the lateral
varies according to its surroundings and
the sequence of the operation, as shown
in Fig. 1. Therefore, a statistical descrip-
tion of the hydraulic-fracture dimensions
is preferred and allows assessment of a
range of possible variations along the lat- properties of the reservoir to create the
eral for a given completion design. grid to be used in a reservoir simulation.
The grid is unstructured and allows ex-
Reservoir Simulation. Once the plicit characterization of the conduc-
hydraulic-fracture simulations of all tivity distribution along each hydrau-
stages are performed, the resulting ge- lic fracture. An additional advantage of
ometry is merged with the background being able to describe the hydraulic frac-

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The Waterway Marriott and Convention Center
The Woodlands, Texas, USA
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78 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

tures completely is the characterization of the propped and
unpropped areas. The model is split into three different re-
gions covering the formation matrix, the propped fractures,
and the unpropped hydraulic fractures over which specific
conductivity-degradation laws can be applied independently
to represent the dynamics of each element of the system better.
Reservoir fluid is defined by a black-oil model applicable
to both light oil and dry gas, and the simulation is controlled
by an imposed bottomhole-flowing-pressure profile. Data de-
scribing the dynamic properties of the Vaca Muerta are gath-
ered and summarized in Table 2 of the complete paper. Average
values are used to populate the model. The production pro-
file is combined with well cost and operational expenditure to
evaluate economics.

Completion Sensitivity Study Shaped charges built for maximum

A total of 60 completion scenarios were run to create a database penetration in concrete targets make
covering more than 550 fracturing stages and more than 1,600 plugged perforations in wells.
individual hydraulic fractures. To compare different cases, the
following indicators are considered in the sensitivity study:
◗ Long-term recovery (10-year cumulative hydrocarbon)
◗ Short-term recovery (first-year cumulative hydrocarbon)
steel casing
◗ Net present value (NPV)
cement
Discussion
wellbore damage
Hydraulic-Fracture Geometry and Production. The cur-
rent methodology, by defining every hydraulic fracture ex- crushed zone
perforation plug
plicitly, enables accessing different levels of detail. Hydraulic-
fracture properties can be characterized at the cluster level,
stage level, or well level. The level of detail must be adjusted perforation
to fit the purpose of each study. With the objective of compar-
ing completion and production, values averaged at the well
level are preferred in this work. Still, the dispersion of the
obtained simulated geometries remains of interest in deter- Deep, open perforations are
mining the effect of completion design over the hydraulic- critical to reaching past near
fracture geometry. wellbore damage in natural
The resulting production of each completion scenario is completions.
compiled and compared. Overall production can vary up to
40% from its baseline. The major changes occur in roughly
the first year of production, both positively and negatively.
The most significant effect is that seen in the production rate,
in which worst cases tend to reduce the initial rate and delay
production whereas best cases speed up hydrocarbon recov-
That’s the HOLE TRUTH.
ery and sustain a higher rate for longer. Use perforating technology engineered
for real-world downhole applications.
Proppant Volume. Total proppant per lateral length shows a Call or go to perf.com/media.html
good correlation with all the proposed indicators (early and to see how it’s done.
long-term production and NPV). A larger volume of proppant
pumped correlates with a larger propped surface. A larger Your well performance is at stake.
propped surface then translates to a higher initial production
and sustains the production rate longer.

Proppant Concentration. A high proppant concentration

might provide an excess of conductivity of the proppant pack
or reduce the overall fracture surface by reducing the fluid vol-
ume for the same amount of proppant. However, higher prop-
pant concentration has an effect on the amount of surface that
remains propped out of the total surface created. Increasing
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JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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the propped fraction of the total surface
helps in increasing the propped height.
A similar observation can be made along
the length of the fracture.
In practice, a given proppant con-
centration implies an adjustment in
fracturing-fluid viscosity to ensure suc-
cessful placement. Therefore, the effect
of proppant concentration cannot be iso-
lated from the type of carrier fluid and its
transport ability.
Cluster Spacing. Cluster spacing shows
a correlation with the initial production,
but no relation with either the long-term
recovery or the NPV. Reducing the spac-
ing of the perforation clusters allows in-
creasing the total number of hydraulic
fractures per lateral length and increas-
ing the total created fracture surface.
However, a tighter spacing increases the
fracture-propagation pressure because
of a stronger stress shadow, which pos-
sibly affects the final fracture geome-
try negatively by increasing the require-
ments for limited entry to divert fluid
efficiently between all the perforation
clusters of a given stage.
A tighter cluster spacing is usually ob-
tained by increasing the number of per-
foration clusters treated within the same
fracturing stage. A larger number of per-
foration clusters reduces the probability
of an even distribution of fluid (and prop-
pant) among the clusters of a given stage.
Fluid Volume and Type. As expected,
a good correlation can be observed be-
tween the total amount of fluid pumped
and the total hydraulic surface created.
However, no clear correlation appears
when comparing total fluid volume and
the total propped surface. Large fractur-
ing treatments usually include mostly
low-viscosity fracturing fluids such as
slickwater to maintain the completion
cost. This practice has been taken into
account in the considered completion
scenarios by increasing the fraction of
low-viscosity fluid as the volume of fluid
increases. No clear correlation seems
to appear between the volume of fluid
pumped and the early production or
NPV. Eventually, a larger volume of fluid
pumped creates a larger hydraulic sur-
face but without conductivity sufficient
to sustain long-term production. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Drilling Systems Automation

and Management
John Macpherson, SPE, Senior Technical Adviser for Drilling Services, Baker Hughes, a GE Company

The drilling industry is changing. Equip- Systems automation paper deals with combined modeling and
ment providers, service companies, real-time surveillance and the required
and drilling contractors are redefining requires a digital backbone awareness by rig crews when operating
the boundaries of their business inter- and offers significant rig-control systems. The third selection
ests, and these boundaries are evidently deals with the propagation of uncertainty
quite porous.
performance, cost, in drilling and the development of a strat-
Over the past year, workshops and and safety benefits. egy to optimize performance against risk.
symposia have made it clear that consid- These papers, and the alternative
eration of data and digitalization plays papers, illustrate the integration and col-
an important role in transforming com- laboration that are necessary for drilling
panies in the drilling industry. Systems segments of the well-drilling and systems automation and management,
automation requires a digital backbone -completion industry. which is transforming the tradition-
and offers significant performance, The selected papers on drilling sys- al roles of equipment providers, service
cost, and safety benefits. It is not sur- tems automation and management pick companies, and drilling contractors.
prising, therefore, that companies are out various themes in this transforma- One story that is somewhat obscured
exploring data-analytics techniques tion. One paper deals with close collabo- in the selected papers is that human-
and drilling systems automation and ration between operator, drilling contrac- factors engineering will play an increas-
that this exploration will define the new tor, and service company in automating ingly important role in our industry as we
boundaries (if any remain) between aspects of a drilling operation. Another take care in specifying the role played in
automated systems by crews both on the
rig and remote to the rig. JPT
John Macpherson, SPE, is senior technical adviser for drilling
services for Baker Hughes, a GE company. He has been in the
oil and gas industry for more than 40 years, much of that time
Recommended additional reading
with Baker Hughes in the upstream oil and gas industry.
Macpherson spent the first 7 years of his career in operations in at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
South America before transitioning to applications research. SPE 183022 Detection of Failures and
His technical interests include measurement-while-drilling Interpretation of Causes During Drilling
(MWD) systems, drilling measurements (especially drilling Operations by Pål Skalle, IPT, NTNU, et al.
dynamics), signal processing, MWD telemetry systems, enhanced-geothermal- SPE 184168 Using Bayesian Network
system technologies, and drilling systems automation. Macpherson has held various To Develop Drilling Expert Systems by
research-and-development management posts, has published extensively, holds Abdullah S. Al-Yami, Saudi Aramco, et al.
several patents, and has been a committee member for SPE conferences. He is a past SPE/IADC 184611 Improving Torque-
chairman of the SPE Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section and was an SPE and-Drag Prediction Using the Advanced-
Distinguished Lecturer. Macpherson holds a BS degree in geology from the University Spline-Curves Borehole Trajectory by
of Glasgow. He is a member of the JPT Editorial Committee and can be reached at Mahmoud F. Abughaban, Colorado School
john.macpherson@bhge.com. of Mines, et al.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 81

 Collaborative Approach to Implementation
Helps Realize Benefits of Drilling Automation

T he application of automated
technologies to the process of
well construction is emerging as key w
of performance across multiple rigs
and wells.
Automation can supplement
w Complete three closed-loop
field trials of the DSP’s drilling
automation systems, and evaluate
to improving the overall efficiency of the competency and capacity of the opportunities and areas for
drilling performance. Though not yet drillers. improvement.
mainstream, several recent applications
have demonstrated that technology Automation Project Goals Technology Description
maturity is no longer the limiting factor In early 2014, the company agreed on a Three main components of the technol-
in accelerating implementation and plan to bring this technology to the field ogy were required to enable the automa-
realizing the benefits of automation. in collaboration with the project’s major tion of drilling-parameter controls:
This paper describes a collaborative drilling contractor and drilling service w A method to analyze the data in real
effort between an operator, a drilling provider (DSP), the supplier of the drill- time and determine the appropriate
contractor, and a service company ing automation technology. settings for weight on bit and
to introduce specific aspects of Additionally, because the drilling rig revolutions per minute, referred to
automated technology to a major was recognized as a major component as the ROP-optimization system
drilling operation. of the technology delivery, the company w A platform to house the
engaged in focused discussions to build optimization system and manage
Project Context and alignment with the main drilling con- the data feed into and out of it, as
Technology Business Drivers tractor to ensure that the right resources well as support communication
In 2012, the company began developing a were available throughout the project. with the rig’s drilling control
giant gas greenfield that required nearly Finally, the DSP and the drilling con- system, referred to as the drilling
300 wells to be drilled. Among the many tractor implemented a bilateral agree- automation system (DAS)
challenges on a project of this magnitude ment that covered the scope of work and w A control gateway to the rig’s
was the need to drive well-construction protected each party’s contribution to drilling control system that
costs down. An important aspect of well- the project. provides secure, bidirectional data
construction cost is the time spent drill- With all this in place, the project deliv- communication enabling a third
ing, which is largely influenced by the erables were defined as follows: party to control and operate major
slow rate of penetration (ROP) preva- w Complete three open-loop rig equipment within a managed set
lent in the field because of the high rock field trials of the DSP’s ROP- of rules
strength. In order to deliver the perfor- optimization software, and evaluate The first two were provided by the DSP,
mance enhancements required, the com- the opportunities and areas for while the latter was provided by the drill-
pany set up an integrated hard-rock drill- improvement. ing contractor in conjunction with the
ing team. w Design, build, and test an interface control-system manufacturer.
In addition to the objective of increas- between the DSP’s automation
ing ROP, several other aspects of the system and the drilling contractor’s DAS. The DAS is an intelligent deci-
technology made it attractive. These in- drilling control system. sion-management system that is de-
clude that w Install the DSP’s drilling automation signed to deal with constantly changing
w Automation presents a systematic systems and interface with drilling conditions. In specific scenar-
approach to improve consistency operator-designated drilling rigs. ios, by integrating surface and down-
hole data, it is able to diagnose the
situation and execute a series of prepro-
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights
grammed, consistent, and standardized
of paper SPE 184695, “Development to Delivery—A Collaborative Approach to
well-construction operations.
Implementing Drilling Automation,” by Riaz Israel, SPE, Julian Farthing, SPE, and The DAS is designed with two key
Hamish Walker, BP; Rodrigo Gallo Covarrubias and Jason Bryant, Schlumberger; objectives:
and Christian Vahle, KCA Deutag Drilling, prepared for the 2017 SPE/IADC Drilling w To support through its automation
Conference and Exhibition, The Hague, 14–16 March. The paper has not been capability the consistent application
peer reviewed. of operational procedures and to

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

82 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 consolidate the improvements,
gains, and lessons learned
w To improve through its optimization
modules the overall drilling
performance by improving key
aspects of the well-construction
process
ROP-Optimization System. Several up-
grades of the system were incorporated
into the software version used during the
closed-loop trials. These include the abil-
ity to autonomously detect and deter-
mine the severity level of stick/slip and
automatically implement a customized
mitigation strategy.
Control Gateway. The rig contractor
and the control-system manufacturer
collaborated to provide a two-way data
connection on the rig, which permits a
third party to receive data and send com-
mands to the rig equipment. The system
requires the installation of a dedicated
programmable-logic controller, a human/
machine-interface display, automated
speed throttles, and indicator lights.
Open-Loop Field Trials
In open-loop mode, computed set points
are presented to the operator as recom-
mendations. The operator can choose to
implement or ignore these recommenda-
tions, depending on his judgment of op-
erational circumstances. A series of open-
loop trials was initiated in early 2014.
Open-Loop Trial 1. This trial highlight-
ed several key lessons, the most im-
portant of which was to have a set of
well-defined and widely-agreed-upon
drilling-parameter limits. The trial was
conducted without having these in place,
and, while the optimization algorithm
demonstrated the ability to deliver in-
creased ROP over several formations,
results indicate that the bit became
damaged midway through the run, thus
compromising ROP during the latter half
of the interval. The run fell 224 m short
of its target, and overall ROP perfor-
mance was categorized as average when
compared with that of offset wells.
Open-Loop Trial 2. On the basis of the
lessons learned from the previous trial,
a second trial was conducted. Much-
improved performance was observed,
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
with the bit exceeding its target interval Open-Loop Key Lessons. Several key
length by 197 m, delivering the second- lessons were captured from the series
longest run in the field at the time. of open-loop trials, and these were then
fed into the design and planning of the
Open-Loop Trial 3. A final open-loop closed-loop trials. Some of the key les-
trial saw some technical limitations. The sons were
issue of two sources of data (rig sensor w The ROP-optimization algorithm
and mud logging) and the inherent dis- requires engineered parameter
crepancies between them could not be limits. Despite the observation
solved as planned, and the trial contin- on the first trial that, in some
ued with the same data setup as the pre- instances, unconstrained
vious two trials. parameters can produce
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significantly higher ROP, in order
to meet the goal of a single bit run
for the 12.25-in. interval, operating-
parameter limits by formation must
be defined before drilling.
◗ A single source of data is
required for model and control.
Discrepancies between mud-logging
and rig-sensor data presented
significant challenges during open-
◗
loop testing.
The driller is not always able
to execute recommendations
because of multitasking. While the
feedback from the driller was that
the algorithm generally provided
credible recommendations, it was
often a challenge for the driller to
keep up with the recommendations
because of other tasks he was
conducting in parallel.
◗ Generally, better ROPs were
observed with higher compliance
to the optimization algorithm’s
recommendations.
◗ The algorithm did not have any
functionality to recommend changes
to operating parameters as a result
of encountering hard stringers.
◗ The driller should have a systematic
method for assessing the severity
of stick/slip and hard stringers.
On the third trial, the bottomhole
assembly did not contain any shock
and vibration sensors, so the driller
was left to determine the onset
of stick/slip on the basis of visual
observation of the fluctuation of the
needle on the torque gauge.
Closed-Loop Field Trials
In closed-loop mode, computed set points
are executed through a system that allows
these recommendations to be passed
continuously to a control system with-
out human interaction. The driller’s role
is to supervise the process and cede con-
trol to the system or revoke it, depending
on predetermined guidelines and driller
judgment of operational  circumstances.
Closed-loop trials began in mid-2016
and marked a major milestone for the
company, the DSP, and the drilling con-
tractor. The testing included a series of
“cold” tests (no drillpipe in the hole)
to establish connectivity and data flow;
conduct system behavioral checks, in-
cluding authority allocation (handover
of control); and check all the fail safes.
A series of “hot” tests (with drillpipe)
was then conducted while drilling out ce-
ment. These included starting in advise
mode (open loop) and switching to con-
trol mode (closed loop) for incrementally
longer periods.
Closed-Loop Key Lessons. At the
time of writing, the closed-loop trials
were still in progress. Some early learn-
ings include
◗ An improved strategy for managing
stick/slip is required. To date,
the DAS has demonstrated the
capability to detect and implement
a defined mitigation sequence.
However, some examples in the
data show that, once the event is
mitigated, the application goes back
into optimization mode and very
quickly re-establishes the stick/slip
condition.
◗ Improved fault indication for the
driller is required. Currently, a few
very generic messages that are
associated with a fault in the system
appear on the driller’s main console.
Work is ongoing to refine these so
that they are more helpful.
Conclusions
From a tactical standpoint, the focus of
these initial closed-loop trials has been,
in large part, about debugging the tech-
nology, clearly understanding where
the performance and technical gaps in
the system are, and getting the drill-
ers and wellsite leaders comfortable with
the system.
From a strategic perspective, it has
been interesting to see how the posi-
tioning of automation has changed as
the project has evolved. When initial-
ly conceived, automation was seen as
an opportunity to deliver improved
ROP. Three years later, the drilling per-
formance has improved significantly as
the drilling teams have moved along the
learning curve.
This change in perspective of
what automation brings is not limit-
ed to the ROP challenge but is a key
element relevant to multiple well-
construction tasks. This approach is a
major element to support the adoption of
a manufacturing-style approach to well
construction, which is gaining momen-
tum in the industry. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
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 Integrated Work Flow
Mitigates Drilling Vibrations

A work flow that combines

optimization of the drillstring and
bottomhole-assembly (BHA) design
largest pipe that satisfies the ECD crite-
ria being desired, provided that torque-
and-drag modeling do not indicate rig
for several years lateral-vibration mod-
eling of the BHA to compare different
design configurations.
during well planning and then applies limitations or buckling concerns. Tor- Typically, the design that has the low-
advanced surveillance tools to a well- sional string modeling provides the ca- est calculated vibration index is selected
trained drilling crew yields reduced pability for real-time stick/slip detection to drill the hole section, provided that all
vibrations and higher drilling rates. This on the basis of monitoring the surface applicable constraints are observed.
methodology is based on the premise torque variation. The lateral-vibration-model results are
that an efficient drilling operation A drilling advisory system (DAS) is, first primarily governed by the position of the
requires optimized tool designs, and foremost, a real-time dysfunction- borehole contact points, or nodal points,
advanced diagnostics using real-time recognition and response tool. The DAS determined by the placement of the sta-
drilling parameters, and on-site training provides the driller with diagnostic bilizer blades. The collar outer and inner
of efficient drilling practices and the data and charts illustrating the drilling- diameters are also important. Just as the
proper use of rig-control systems. performance map in a stoplight format to position of the fingers on a stringed in-
select the best operating parameters. strument governs the frequency of the
Introduction Rig-control systems, in particular note that will be played, the locations
In recent years, as part of a limiter- the autodriller, may generate a certain of these nodal points determine the fre-
redesign process and rate-of-penetration amount of dysfunction as a result of the quency response of a BHA.
(ROP) optimization effort, the operator way they are implemented and operated. The lateral-vibration model calcu-
has sought to develop and validate in the Significant changes in drilling line feed lates an in-plane dynamic bending mode
field a suite of tools specifically direct- rate result from on/off control systems, called flex that is excited by a side force
ed toward drilling-operations support. high control-system gains, and unstable applied at the bit and a rotary centrifu-
Vibration-mitigation efforts are a subset feedback mechanisms in certain situa- gal mode called twirl excited by mass ec-
of the entirety of this broader program. tions. These line-feed-rate perturbations centricity. A significant experience base
BHA redesign involves planning to may exacerbate other vibration modes, has been developed comparing drilling
change the downhole tools. Once a BHA such as stick/slip, resulting in dysfunc- performance with model results, and this
has been selected and its rotary-speed tion and reduced drilling performance. has shown that the flex mode is the most
sweet spot is known, there is a real-time Efforts to mitigate these effects con- significant vibration mode to mitigate.
component as the driller determines how tribute to the reduction of nonproductive Ideally, both flex and twirl indices would
good the sweet-spot prediction might be time. Taken together, they have yield- decline for a preferred BHA design, but
or if an alternative operating condition ed improved drilling results, increasing field experience has shown that a signifi-
is preferred. the number of single-bit runs to section cant reduction in flex results will yield
Drillstring modifications on the basis depth in fewer days. improved drilling performance even if
of torsional string modeling typical- twirl results increase to some extent.
ly involve drillpipe-outer-diameter se- BHA Modeling
lection and understanding or optimiz- for Lateral-Vibration Mitigation Drillstring Modeling for
ing the equivalent-circulating-density The vibration-mitigation work flow de- Torsional-Vibration Mitigation
(ECD) profile, typically resulting in the veloped by the operator has included Drillstring-torsional-vibration modeling
has improved the ability to select the op-
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights timal drillstring in challenging applica-
tions. Current practice in the industry is
of paper SPE 183550, “An Integrated Work Flow To Mitigate Drilling Vibrations and
to model extended-reach wells for torque
Increase Daily Footage,” by J.R. Bailey, SPE, and P.E. Pastusek, SPE, ExxonMobil
and drag, buckling, and ECD. In narrow-
Development Company; H. Al Junaibi and M. Al Awadhi, National Drilling Company; margin drilling applications, ECD, of
Y. Al Katheeri, SPE, M.R. Niznik, and K.S. Akyabi, Zakum Development Company; course, is a real concern. When the ECD
and C.G. Page, Exxon Neftegas, prepared for the 2016 Abu Dhabi International approaches the fracture gradient, loss
Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, 7–10 November. The paper has not of drilling fluid can occur, often costing
been peer reviewed. significant amounts in terms of replace-

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

86 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

ment fluids and remediation. Buckling
and torque/drag predictions can be high-
ly dependent on detailed well profile and
parameters. However, industry models
are reasonably good at predicting torque,
drag, buckling, and ECD.
A relatively simple model of torsional
vibrations can be applied to help evaluate
the stick/slip tendency of different drill-
string options, complementing the exist-
ing modeling tools without the overhead
of complicated finite-element-analysis
codes. Torsional-vibration-model results
add value in the decision-making process
regarding operational tradeoffs between
competing string-design objectives.
A simple torsional-vibration model
that estimates the resistance of a string
to stick/slip is a helpful tool to shed light
on the implications of these choices for
the stick/slip vibration problem. Note
that this analysis of ECD and torsional-
modeling trends is independent of the
well profile and, therefore, is more
broadly applicable. A more-complete
analysis will look also at individual well
profiles as well as torque, drag, and buck-
ling considerations, which vary consider-
ably. In each individual case, the pros and
cons of each element of the drilling plan
(e.g., drillstring design, hole-size selec-
tion, fluid selection, pump rate) have to
be evaluated to determine the best and
most-economical solution.
Application of a DAS
To Mitigate Vibrations
The operator’s DAS is in the late
development/precommercialization
stage, and it has shown promise as a
driller’s guide to help identify drilling
dysfunctions. In a perfect drilling envi-
ronment, there are no limits to applying
maximum weight on bit (WOB) and turn-
ing with the fastest possible rotary speed,
which, in the absence of dysfunction, will
yield the highest drilling rate. However,
in a great many wells, drilling dysfunc-
tions cause this scenario to be elusive.
Primary causes of dysfunction include
lateral vibrations (whirl) and stick/slip
torsional vibrations. Coupled modes also
exist in which both of these may be pres-
ent. Axial vibrations are less frequent
today but are still a potential problem
when using roller-cone bits.
As indicated in Fig. 1, as WOB increas-
es, the bit is typically stabilized against
Stick/Slip
WOB
Stable?
Lateral/whirl
rev/min
Fig. 1—Notional drilling-dysfunction
domains.
lateral vibrations, yet the potential for
stick/slip increases. On the other hand,
higher rotary speeds often help to re-
solve stick/slip, with the possibility of
generating higher lateral vibrations. In
some instances, the driller is able to find
a sweet spot between these two vibra-
tional dysfunctions. In those difficult cir-
cumstances where there is no middle
ground between stick/slip and whirl, and
when the driller is unable to go to the
maximum-WOB and maximum-rotary-
speed conditions that would provide
the highest ROP, it is helpful to have an
(Continued on page 90)
 Embedding Automatic Risk-Level Estimation
and Performance Analysis in Drilling Plans

I t is not unusual that the difficulties

encountered during a drilling
operation can be tracked to choices
tasks, such as choosing a mud weight as
a function of an uncertain geopressure
window. The more risks that are simul-
mated (R3-Fracturing Pressure). Finally,
hydrostatic pressure being larger than the
minimum horizontal stress of the exposed
made during planning. However, taneously evaluated within the expected formation rocks leads to the evaluation of
generating a robust drilling-operation uncertainty of the coming operation, the the risk of experiencing permanent mud
plan is not easy because substantial greater the chances are that the proposed losses in the case of a lost-circulation in-
uncertainties are often associated with drilling-operation plan will be robust. cident (R4-Minimum Horizontal Stress).
the actual geological context. To address Another group of risks is associated
this problem, this paper presents a Drilling-Operation Risks with cuttings transport. High concentra-
method that quantitatively evaluates the Numerous sources of risk exist in a drill- tion of cuttings in suspension anywhere
risk levels of a drilling-operation plan as ing operation, and the quality of the along the annulus may be the origin for a
a function of the underlying uncertainty evaluation made by the proposed risk- packoff incident (R5-High Cuttings Con-
associated with its description. evaluation method is directly related to centration). In deviated wells, large accu-
treating as many threat sources as pos- mulations of cuttings in beds may cause
Introduction sible. However, it is an overwhelming task packoffs, overpulls, or set-down weights
A drilling operation is always subject to to manage all of the conceivable potential (R6-High Cuttings Bed).
operational risks (e.g., formation-fluid sources of drilling problems at once. For Risks are also associated with poten-
influx, lost circulation, borehole instabil- this reason, the authors decided that, as a tial drillstring failures, such as buckling
ity, packoff, stuck pipe, or drillstring fail- first step, only a subset of possible causes (R7-Buckling).
ure). The chance of occurrence of some of drilling incidents will be considered. A last group of sources of potential
of those threats may be small in a par- The causes from this initial list are asso- problems is connected to the limitations
ticular well design. But, in other con- ciated with typical problems encountered of the drilling equipment. For instance,
figurations, it may be known already at in drilling operations in the North Sea. the pump pressure shall not exceed the
the planning stage that potential drilling A first group of drilling problems is rating of the rig hydraulic system (R8-
problems are likely, because of tight op- related to geopressure margins. This in- Maximum Pump Pressure). The torque at
erational margins for instance. cludes the risk of the downhole pressure the topdrive shall be lower than a maxi-
The drilling challenges also may be ag- being lower than the pore pressure any- mum value, which may depend on the
gravated by uncertainties in the geologi- where along the openhole section during selected gear for topdrives with multiple
cal context. the evaluation of the drilling operation gear ratios and topdrive speeds vs. torque
Making a robust drilling-operation and, therefore, risking formation-fluid in- performance curves (R9-Maximum Top-
plan is a challenge, and there are many flux. This risk is denoted as R1-Pore Pres- drive Torque).
reasons for this. One of them is connect- sure. Similarly, the downhole pressure is In a drilling context, while using a con-
ed to the difficulty in evaluating quanti- compared to the collapse pressure of the ventional drilling method, three parame-
tatively, at the planning stage, the effect openhole formation rocks to estimate the ters can be controlled—the weight on bit
of uncertain information on the effec- risk for borehole instabilities (R2-Collapse (WOB), the drillstring rotational speed,
tive risk levels that may prevail during Pressure). The risk of formation fractur- and the flow rate.
well construction. Quantitative risk as- ing caused by downhole pressure exceed-
sessment with management of uncer- ing the fracturing pressure at any depth Uncertainty Management
tainty has been described for specific along the openhole section is also esti- and Propagation
When evaluating the potential risks em-
bedded in a drilling program, accounting
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights
for the possible sources of uncertainties
of paper SPE 181018, “Automatic Performance Analysis and Estimation of Risk Level
that may affect the estimations is impor-
Embedded in Drilling-Operation Plans,” by Eric Cayeux, SPE, and Benoît Daireaux, tant. Indeed, a combination of drilling
SPE, IRIS; Mohsen Karimi Balov, Statoil; Stein Haavardstein, ConocoPhillips; Leif parameters is assessed to have the po-
Magne Stokland, Wintershall; and Arild Saasen, SPE, Det Norske, prepared for tential of generating a drilling incident
the 2016 SPE Intelligent Energy International Conference and Exhibition, Aberdeen, if an estimated parameter goes beyond a
6–8 September. The paper has not been peer reviewed. given limit. The limit, however, may not

For a limited time, the complete paper is free to SPE members at www.spe.org/jpt.

88 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

 mechanism influences the margins used
to estimate risks.

Results and Analysis

The analysis process covers the configu-
ration space, the parameter space, the
drilling time, and depth space, and the
risk space. Several high-dimensionality
parameters need to be represented. The
authors chose three different represen-
tations of the analysis results. All of the
Fig. 1—Three-dimensional representation of the admissible drilling-parameter representations share the same configu-
set. For a given drill depth and confidence parameter, the safe combinations ration capabilities. They all depend on
of flowrate, drillstring rotational speed, and WOB are represented by the red the chosen confidence value. This param-
volume. Although quantified information is difficult to obtain from such a
eter, which controls the size of the admis-
representation, it is clear from the comparison of the two volumes that the
configuration on the left provides more safety with respect to the analyzed sible drilling-parameter space, can be set
risks than the one on the right. by the user using a slider. The represen-
tations also depend on the chosen set of
be known precisely, and the estimation position affects the depths at which for- drilling criteria. The nine criteria consid-
of the parameter may also be uncertain. mation tops will be encountered. The ered in the analyses can be turned on and
Each element of the drilling program borehole-position uncertainty must be off using check boxes. This allows assess-
has an associated uncertainty that de- combined with the depth tolerances of ment of individual risks or of any combi-
scribes how precisely that information the stratigraphy prognosis. In turn, the nation of risks.
is known but also how much variation is resulting depth variations of the occur- The first visualization provides a glob-
acceptable from the planning stage to the rence of the intersection of the wellbore al overview of the allowable drilling-
well construction. trajectory with a formation top have an parameter set. For a given drill depth,
Unfortunately, these sources of un- effect on the associated geopressure gra- a 3D display of this set is provided that
certainties are not independent. For in- dients, which also have their own uncer- allows a quick estimation of the drill-
stance, the uncertainty on the wellbore tainty. Thus, the uncertainty-propagation ability of the well at that particular loca-

Program Chair — Petroleum Engineering, Texas A&M University at Qatar

Texas A&M University at Qatar
Texas A&M’s branch campus in Qatar, part of the 2,500 acre multi-institutional campus known as Education City, formally opened on 7 Sept. 2003, offering undergraduate
degree programs in chemical, electrical, mechanical and petroleum engineering and one master program in chemical engineering. Each of these four undergraduate programs
is accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, www.abet.org. The Texas A&M University engineering program is widely considered among the best in the
United States, and the curricula offered at the Qatar campus are materially identical to those offered at the main campus in College Station, Texas. Texas A&M University at Qatar,
fully funded by Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, provides a unique opportunity for the University to expand its international presence and to
provide educational and research opportunities for faculty and students.
More than 700 Texas A&M engineering degrees have been awarded in Doha since December 2007. At the start of the 2016–2017 academic year, the Qatar campus had a student
body of more than 500 undergraduate and graduate students who study and conduct research in the Texas A&M Engineering Building, which was completed in May 2007. This
55,000-square-meter facility was constructed at a cost of more than $150 million with vast wired and wireless connectivity. It features high-tech classrooms, computer laboratories,
well-equipped teaching laboratories, and a major research annex.
Program Overview
Texas A&M Qatar attracts some of the best high school graduates in the region. The Petroleum Engineering Program (https://pete.qatar.tamu.edu) has 10 full-time faculty and
three part-time faculty members, with supporting administrative and research staff. Faculty members have a strong commitment to teaching, research, and service. The program
benefits from state-of-the-art facilities and instrumentation in support of its key educational and research missions. The faculty have established strong educational and research
programs on a foundation of core engineering disciplines. The program continues to be refreshed in terms of its curriculum and research to meet local and global needs. There is
significant support in Qatar for research through funds from Qatar National Research Fund and Industry.
Job Summary
Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) (http://www.qatar.tamu.edu/) invites applications for the position of chair of the Petroleum Engineering Program at the rank of
full professor. The program chair is a senior leadership role in the Qatar campus. Duties include providing overall leadership and setting direction to the program, involving defining
and setting standards and expectations for curriculum, research and service. The job demands budget management, faculty and staff recruitment, development and evaluation
including outreach activities. A key part of the role involves collaboration and liaison with Texas A&M University, College Station for research, teaching, industry contacts and others.
The chair is expected to promote the development of the program and work with faculty across the campus, local industry, and the regional community, to identify and pursue
innovations in education, research, and service. Successful candidates are also expected to have a strong commitment to teaching excellence at under-graduate and graduate
levels, and a demonstrated research capability that will enable the candidate to develop an externally funded, independent research program and publish in leading scholarly
journals. Tangible evidence of industry experience will be an advantage. This position is a renewable appointment at the TAMUQ campus located in the Education City in Doha,
Qatar and the successful candidate must relocate to Qatar.
Salary and Benefits
TAMUQ offers a competitive salary package commensurate with rank and experience. The package includes overseas salary premium, accommodations, annual home leave
allowances, dependent education, local transportation allowance, medical insurance, plus appropriate relocation and repatriation expenses.
Required Education and Experience
Applicants must have an earned doctorate in petroleum engineering or a closely related field. Evidence of successful leadership experience is essential together with strong
organizational, written and verbal communication skills, as well as effective interpersonal skills.
Other Requirements
Candidates should submit applications electronically by applying for this position at: https://www.tamengineeringjobs.com/.
Texas A&M University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action/Veterans/Disability employers committed to diversity. It is the policy of these members to recruit, hire, train and promote without regard to race, color, sex, religion, national
origin, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation or gender identity.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 89

 tion (Fig. 1). Even though quantified in-
formation is difficult to gain from such
a visualization, a qualitative assessment
can already be performed using this rep-
resentation. The displayed volume will
change when modifying the chosen con-
fidence parameter; it will shrink or ex-
pand as the parameter is increased or de-
creased. The shape will also be modified
by the chosen set of risks.
Then, 2D projections of this volume
give more qualitative information. The
user can fix any of the three drilling pa-
rameters and inspect the projection of
the volume on the two remaining dimen-
sions. For each of the selected criteria,
the boundaries of the allowable param-
eters are plotted. The forbidden regions
(i.e., the combinations of parameters that
create drilling incidents with a probabil-
ity larger than the chosen confidence
value) are marked by a red area, while a
color coding of some parameters of inter-
est (rate of penetration, downhole equiv-
alent circulating density) is visible in the
allowed region.
Integrated Work Flow Mitigates Drilling Vibrations
advisory system that monitors drilling
performance continuously in real time
and provides parameter recommenda-
tions. This system can balance compet-
ing objectives to find an optimal set of
drilling parameters.
The DAS objective function seeks to
find the best balance between compet-
ing goals. Field testing has shown several
examples where the DAS display in front
of the driller has provided an increase in
drilling performance. The driller is re-
lieved of complex drilling-performance
calculations and can rely on a quick
glance at the DAS screen to see the cur-
rent drilling performance.
Identification and Mitigation
of Rig-Control-System
Dysfunctions
The response of the autodriller has
been found to have a significant effect
on drillstring vibrations, in particu-
lar on stick/slip. It has been found that
it is much easier to find a vibrational-
ly quiet set of operating parameters
when the control system is stable, and
it is sometimes impossible when it is
not stable. This suggests that control-
90
Finally, projections for a single drilling
parameter along depth are displayed. For
those projections, the two other drilling
parameters are fixed (the values can be
modified by the user), and one has ac-
cess to the allowable range, as a func-
tion of depth, for the considered param-
eter. Here also, the forbidden values are
marked in red, while parameters of inter-
est are displayed in the background.
Conclusions
w A new methodology to evaluate the
embedded risk levels in a drilling
operation has been presented.
w Risks are defined as the probability
of a parameter (e.g., downhole
pressure) to exceed a tolerable limit
(e.g., fracturing pressure).
w The tolerable limits are associated
with a level of uncertainty that
arises from the combination of
several sources of uncertainty
such as possible wellbore-
position variations or variance in
stratigraphic depths.
(Continued from page 87)
system stability needs to be evaluated
and corrected if required as part of the
drilling-optimization process.
Many autodrillers can be selected to
control in one of four modes: ROP, WOB,
torque, and differential pressure. Only
one mode is in control at a time.
There are several different types of
control systems and several variations
on the basic types. However, all autodrill-
ers ultimately control the drum rotation
speed and, thus, ROP.
Conclusions
The operator has taken a comprehensive
approach to address drilling vibrations.
It is commonly known that reducing vi-
brations yields benefits that include fast-
er ROP, more time spent drilling on bot-
tom, fewer trips and thus reduced pipe
handling, less damage to equipment, and
reduced nonproductive time. The com-
plete paper has sought to document con-
crete examples of four paths toward miti-
gating drilling vibrations.
w BHA redesign—Comparing two
BHA designs in similar intervals,
it was shown that the simpler
BHA with a low vibration index
w The calculation of the comparison
parameters depends on the
certainty of input information and
the possible evolution of drilling
parameters during the drilling
process.
w The modeling of possible drilling
scenarios is a function of achievable
rates of penetration.
w The possible rates of penetration
can be evaluated as a function of the
formation-strength prognosis.
w Various drilling advancement
scenarios influence the possible
variation of temperature and
production of cuttings during the
drilling operation.
w The estimation of the possible
temperature evolution is a function
of the thermophysical properties
of the formation rocks and drilling
fluids, which are often known with a
large level of uncertainty.
w In addition to risk levels, obtaining
pertinent assessments of
performance is also possible. JPT
demonstrated lower vibrations than
another design with measurement-
while-drilling tools that had higher
vibration indices.
w Torsional modeling—An evaluation
of six different drillstring designs
included both torsional-vibration
modeling and ECD calculations,
showing that tapered drillstrings
tend to be inefficient relative to
single-diameter strings. More
torque swing capacity may be
achieved with the same ECD using
a single-diameter drillstring.
w Application of a DAS—A real-
time system monitoring drilling
parameters can strike a balance
between drilling dysfunctions
adaptively, targeting mitigation of
the dysfunction that has the greatest
effect on performance.
w Rig-control systems—At present,
autodriller control systems may be
tuned improperly and cause stick/
slip and other dysfunctions during
system oscillations. However,
significant improvements can be
made with support from system
designers and driller training. JPT
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
TECHNOLOGY FOCUS

Oilfield Chemistry
Jonathan Wylde, SPE, Head of Global Innovation, Clariant Oil Services

A true structure performance under-
standing of asphaltenes and the chemical
methods used to control them has elud-
ed the industry for many years. Despite
many hundreds of published works (and
no doubt many more unpublished stud-
ies), there is still no singular technique
that can definitively characterize a crude
oil for asphaltene risk and control that is
scalable to the field.
The answer to why this is lies in the
sheer complexity of the asphaltene mol-
ecule itself and, just as important, the
variances in asphaltene type and con-
tent from crude to crude. As produc-
tion chemists, we have relied upon
generalizations born from seminal aca-
demic and industry studies over the last
3 decades. For instance, asphaltenes
are polar, asphaltene precipitation very
much depends upon pressure and the
change of that throughout a system, and
asphaltene-control chemicals are disper-
The sheer complexity
of the�asphaltene molecule
is�now within our grasp
as the digital age
creeps up
on�our industry.
sant in action. But how does the exact
mechanism of adsorption onto a sur-
face take place, and how can we prevent
it? These idiosyncrasies still cause much
debate among academics and industrial-
ists alike.
Much work remains to be done to get
the final answers. The sheer complex-
ity of the asphaltene molecule is now
within our grasp as the digital age creeps
up on our industry. Having the analyt-
ics to decipher and measure asphaltene
structures and then use high-throughput
techniques to determine structure per-
formance relationships gives us a chance
to accelerate our understanding.
The featured papers summarize some
of the state-of-the-art techniques in
use—techniques to determine the onset
of asphaltene precipitation, adsorption,
and inhibition. Readers are encouraged
to research the recommended additional
reading and take some time to delve into
the references contained in these papers.
These papers contain an extensive review
of the history of, and current state of the
art in, asphaltene science for the oilfield
chemist and engineer. JPT
Recommended additional reading
at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 178956 Asphaltene-Prevention
Work Flow Enhances Oil Production in
High-Temperature Fractured Carbonate
Reservoirs by R. Ortiz, Pemex, et al.

Jonathan Wylde, SPE, is the head of global innovation at
Clariant Oil Services based in Houston. He holds a BS degree in
geology and a PhD degree in physical chemistry from the
University of Bristol, UK. Wylde is the author of more than 120
papers and holds several patents. He serves on the JPT Editorial
Committee and on committees for the SPE International
Conference and Exhibition on Oilfield Scale, the SPE International
Symposium on Oilfield Chemistry, and the SPE Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition. Wylde is also a technical editor for SPE Production &
Operations and SPE Journal. He can be reached at jonathan.wylde@clariant.com.
SPE 183940 Experimental Investigation
of Effects of Asphaltene Stability on
Interfacial Behavior of Live-Reservoir-Fluid
Systems by Ram R. Ratnakar, Shell, et al.
SPE 186008 Re-Evaluation of
Asphaltene-Precipitation Risk Depending
on Field-Operational-Condition Change/
Variation: Case Study Comparing Risks in
Past (2008) and Present (2016) for Future
Prediction by Katsumo Takabayashi, Inpex,
et al.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 91

 Monitoring and Mitigating Asphaltene Issues
in a Deepwater Production System

Acquisition of Downhole
A n asphaltene threat was identified
in production wells located in a
Gulf of Mexico deepwater field. During
Fluid Samples
High-quality pressurized bottomhole
w RTA ratio<1.5—Asphaltenes
expected to be unstable during
expansion of oil
reservoir-fluids characterization, samples were collected for asphaltene- w RTA Ratio>2.5—Asphaltenes
asphaltenes were identified as a key risk onset-pressure (AOP) and wax- expected to be stable during
factor for successful field development. appearance-temperature (WAT) measure- expansion of oil
This paper presents an integrated ments in pressure-compensated cham- w RTA Ratio 1.5–2.5—Transition
approach to evaluate the key elements of bers. Because the samples tend to cool region
asphaltene risk for deepwater projects, to below reservoir temperatures as they While gathering fluid data, the bound-
the strategy to manage the issues during are retrieved from the well, the sam- ary of the stable region was increased to
production implementation, and aspects ples were maintained at pressures above 3.5 to be conservative in the field. The ex-
to be considered in the mitigation of reservoir condition at all times to re- perimental data demonstrated that this
asphaltene in the field-development plan. duce the possibility of irreversible as- method was not effective in the field.
phaltene precipitation resulting in non-
Introduction representative samples. Experimental Techniques
Asphaltene precipitation and deposition To Determine AOP and WAT
can occur at different stages during pe- Asphaltene Prescreening During pressure depletion at constant
troleum production, causing reservoir The de Boer Plot. The de Boer plot is temperature, asphaltene aggregate for-
formation damage and plugging of pipe- a method to screen crude oils for their mation is observed within a range above
lines and production equipment. tendency to precipitate asphaltenes. It and below the bubblepoint. As pressure
Remediation of asphaltene deposits re- essentially evaluates the loss of asphal- drops from the reservoir pressure during
quires solvent-soaking operations, fol- tene solubility as a reservoir-fluid sample production, asphaltene precipitation can
lowed by removal through exposure to is depressurized. This pressure/volume/ appear because of changes in density that
turbulent flow. These intensive operations temperature screen is a crossplot of in- produce changes in the solubility of as-
require high amounts of chemical solvents situ density and the degree of undersatu- phaltene in crude oil. The maximum as-
with potential effects on health, safety, and ration with respect to gas (the difference phaltene precipitation occurs at or near
environment, along with production de- between reservoir pressure and satura- the bubblepoint pressure.
ferrals because of operations downtime. tion pressure). Because this screening The AOP test is performed in a high-
The focus of this study is to understand assumes that the fluid is saturated with pressure visual cell. The depressur-
the effects of asphaltene precipitation in respect to asphaltene at reservoir condi- ization experiment is performed with
a Gulf of Mexico deepwater field. The ap- tions, it is extremely conservative. the simultaneous measurement of
proach is based on reservoir-fluid char- light-transmittance power. The solid-
acterization and monitoring tools. Being The Resin-to-Asphaltene (RTA) Ratio deposition-system (SDS) technique in-
able to predict the presence and type of Plot. The RTA ratio indicates asphal- cludes a fixed-wavelength laser-light
trouble zones along the production sys- tene stability because of the presence source and a detector. While directing a
tem from downhole to production facili- of resins. The statistics-based rules for light source through the reservoir fluid,
ties is becoming progressively more im- the RTA ratio required to keep the as- changes in the absorbance of the beam
portant as water depths increase. phaltenes stable are are monitored. The transmitted power
of the near-infrared light-scattering sig-
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights nal is recorded during the depressur-
ization process. Before the onset, the
of paper OTC 27123, “Strategies To Monitor and Mitigate Asphaltene Issues in the
transmitted light signal is inversely pro-
Production System of a Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Subsea Development,” by Doris
portional to the fluid density. During de-
Gonzalez, Fabio Gonzalez, Marney Pietrobon, Mehdi Haghshenas, Megan pressurization, the signal power increas-
Shurn, Amber Mees, Carlos Stewart, SPE, and Chinenye Ogugbue, SPE, BP, es. If particles appear, then the signal
prepared for the 2016 Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 2–5 May. The power decreases.
paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2016 Offshore Technology Conference. The high-pressure microscope (HPM)
Reproduced by permission. is a microscope connected to a com-

The complete paper is available for purchase at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

92 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017


Jumper
Asphaltene
issues
Pressure (psia)
expected
in the
flowline,
riser, and
facilities
Well
Oil Layer
Fig. 1—Fluid D phase behavior.
mercially available camera; it is used
in conjunction with a lens to observe
the sample visually. The camera is con-
nected to a computer to obtain photo-
graphs and monitor real-time chang-
es in the fluid. The HPM can detect
asphaltene particles larger than 1  µm,
Together,
We Can.
KŶĞƐŝnjĞĚŽĞƐŶŽƚĂůǁĂLJƐĮƚĂůů/
your challenges are unique and
LJŽƵƌƐŽůƵƟŽŶƐŚŽƵůĚďĞƚŽŽ5
h5^5tĂƚĞƌ6ƐŶĞƌŐLJ^ĞƌǀŝĐĞƐƚĞĂŵŝƐ
dedicated to focusing on ŝŶŶŽǀĂƟǀĞ(
ĞŶŐŝŶĞĞƌĞĚƐŽůƵƟŽŶƐfor the oil and
gas industry that get to the root cause
ŽĨƉƌŽďůĞŵƐʹĮŶĚŝŶŐ?ĂŶĚĞůŝŵŝŶĂƟŶŐ
ƚŚĞŵĂƚƚŚĞŝƌƐŽƵƌĐĞ5tĞŽīĞƌŵŽƌĞ
ŽƉƟŽŶƐƵƟůŝnjŝŶŐŽƵƌŝŶƚĞŐƌĂƚĞĚĂƉƉƌŽĂĐŚ
ƚŽƉƌŽǀŝĚĞĞŶŚĂŶĐĞĚƉƌŽĚƵĐƚƌĞĐŽǀĞƌLJ(
ƌĞĚƵĐĞĚŽƉĞƌĂƟŶŐĐŽƐƚƐ(ĂƐƐĞƚ
ŝŶƚĞŐƌŝƚLJ(andƐĂĨĞΘƐƵĐĐĞƐƐĨƵůƐLJƐƚĞŵ
ŵĂŶĂŐĞŵĞŶƚ8
www.uswaterservices.com
light. A polarizer is placed below the
sample plate; therefore, the light is po-
larized as it passes through the sample.
Riser Above the sample, before the visual de-
Flowline
tector, there is another polarizer orient-
ed at a 90° offset. This will block out all
18,000
Fluid D Reservoir the polarized light passing through the
Condition
16,000
fluid sample; therefore, the visual im-
ages will be black and the light power
14,000 Live WAT meter will have a low reading. As the wax
12,000 crystals start to precipitate, they will de-
10,000
polarize the light, allowing some light
to pass by the top polarizer. In turn, the
8,000
wax particles will appear to be glowing
Asphaltene Phase
6,000
Envelope against the dark black background. At
4,000 this point, the WAT is determined.
WAT for live fluids is determined in
2,000
a high-pressure/high-temperature cell
Atmospheric WAT
0 by slowly reducing the fluid’s tempera-
50 100 150 200 250 300
ture while holding the live fluid at con-
Temperature (°F)
stant pressure in the SDS cell. This tech-
nique allows studying the ability of the
and it can measure asphaltene-particle dissolved-gas content to hold the wax
growth quantitatively. in the liquid phase. While directing a
Cross-polar-microscope (CPM) tech- light source through the reservoir fluid,
nology is used to determine the appear- changes in the absorbance of the beam
ance and disappearance temperatures of are monitored. WAT, therefore, can be
the wax solids visually. The CPM works obtained by plotting the transmitted
on the principle of the polarization of power while cooling.
 Fluid-Phase Behavior
Fluid A is located in the shallow layer
of the field. The reservoir pressure is
approximately 12,000 psia at tempera-
tures between 175 and 190°F. Asphaltene
issues while producing Fluid A are ex-
pected to occur in the reservoir and the
near-wellbore region. The fluid proper-
ties indicate a high tendency to precip-
itate asphaltene from the early stages
of production.
Asphaltene issues while producing
Fluid B are expected to occur in the tub-
ing above the wellbore region. Issues are
also expected along the downhole equip-
ment and below the wellhead. These
fluids have low asphaltene content (ap-
proximately 1 wt%), and no significant
amount of deposition has been observed.
Similarly, asphaltene issues while pro-
ducing Fluid C are expected to occur in
the tubing above the wellbore region.
However, the asphaltene content in
Fluid C is much higher (2–3 wt%). A sig-
nificant amount of returns has been col-
lected from these fluids after pigging.
Fig. 1 shows the phase behavior of the
heaviest fluids in the field located in the
deepest layers.
The asphaltene content in Fluid D is
relatively high (up to 4 wt%); however,
because of their low gas/oil ratio (ap-
proximately 500 scf/bbl), these fluids
are considered more stable from an as-
phaltene point of view. Asphaltene issues
while producing Fluid D are expected to
occur in the pipeline, riser, and facilities.
The wax-appearance measurements
for Fluids A through D indicate that the
precipitation and deposition of waxes
will not be an issue during normal pro-
duction of these fluids.
Asphaltene-Inhibitor (AI)
Effect on AOP
The SDS technique was used to eval-
uate the performance of AI. The test
measures the ability of the chemical to
reduce the AOP and, therefore, miti-
gate the asphaltene-deposition tenden-
cy. AIs are commonly dispersants that
reduce the asphaltene aggregate parti-
cle size, potentially reducing the onset
of asphaltene precipitation. The effec-
tiveness of the chemical to mitigate as-
phaltene deposition is evaluated by
its capability to disperse precipitated
asphaltene particles.
The SDS test is performed at reser-
voir conditions using live reservoir fluid.
The asphaltene-deposition mechanism,
however, is not completely understood,
and some schools of thought argue that
stronger deposits are formed whenever
smaller particles are precipitating.
In the laboratory, the AOP of some of
the reservoir fluids was measured after
injecting 700 ppm of two AIs. The chemi-
cals were injected directly into the pres-
surized cell at reservoir pressure. No ob-
vious benefit on the AOP of Fluid C was
observed. The chemicals change the AOP
between 200 and 400 psi, which is with-
in the experimental error.
In the field, multiple rates of AI chemi-
cal have been introduced, which have had
varying effect on the deposition rate seen
in the flowline. The different rates and
chemicals have also led to variances in
deposition volumes collected during pig-
ging operations. The results of this test
suggested that AI chemical can affect the
deposition rate adversely by increasing it
above the baseline rate (no AI chemical
present), thus showing that an overtreat-
ment mechanism can be seen as well as
an undertreatment mechanism. JPT

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94 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

Laboratory Testing and Prediction
of Asphaltene Deposition in Production Wells

D uring primary oil production,

when the thermodynamic
conditions within the well tubing
crease in light absorption or attenu-
ation in the NIR region of the elec-
tromagnetic spectrum at the onset of
high-temperature viscosity/density test.
To perform this test, the fluid is brought
to a thermodynamic condition below its
lie inside the asphaltene-deposition asphaltene flocculation. upper ADE, typically just above bubble-
envelope (ADE) of the produced Transmittance of light through a sam- point. The fluid is allowed then to equil-
fluid, flocculated asphaltene particles ple of asphaltenic oil has also been used ibrate at those conditions and, after a
could start being deposited on the to detect the onset of asphaltene floccu- day, is displaced through the viscosity
tubing wall, causing a restriction lation. There is a sharp decrease in the and density instrument. As the fluid is
in the tubing inner diameter that transmittance of NIR light through a displaced from the cylinder containing
results in loss of production. This sample of asphaltenic oil at the onset of the oil toward the end of the displace-
paper presents a methodology that asphaltene flocculation. ment (i.e., approaching the bottom of
begins by determining the ADE in the Along with the spectrophotometer, the NIR cell or cylinder), a sediment-
laboratory. Moreover, asphaltene- an NIR imaging system is also used in ed heavy phase is encountered. This
deposition rates for the tubing the attempt to decipher the asphaltene is signified by the sudden increase
conditions can be measured using high- behavior of a fluid. in viscosity.
pressure/high-temperature coaxial- One can change the thermodynam- Similar to that process is the sedi-
cylinder technology. ic conditions in the vessel containing mentation test. In this test, a known
the sample and obtain the oil’s ADE. amount of reservoir fluid is charged
In-Situ Asphaltene Testing State-of-the-art high-pressure/high- in a high-pressure vessel. The sys-
At some thermodynamic states, as- temperature imaging technology is rou- tem is brought to a thermodynamic-
phaltenes exhibit a behavior called floc- tinely used in the laboratory to detect equilibrium condition below the oil’s
culation—that is, asphaltene particles asphaltene particles very clearly upon upper ADE (i.e., just above bubblepoint).
or micelles aggregate or flocculate into isothermal pressure depletion. The as- After flocculation, the asphaltene parti-
larger particles or flocs. The locus of phaltic heavy-phase-formation phe- cles grow in size enough that they begin
all thermodynamic points in a phase nomenon is indicated in the images to to settle under the influence of grav-
diagram at which flocculation occurs be a consequence of many asphaltene ity, depending on the flow dynamics of
is called the ADE. Accurate measure- particles forming, aggregating, and set- the container. Asphaltene particles will
ment of asphaltene solubility at in-situ tling in the NIR cell under the prevail- form a layer at the bottom of the cell that
conditions inside the ADE is extreme- ing thermodynamic conditions. This looks like a separate, distinct thermody-
ly difficult. Many asphaltenic reservoir indicates that the asphaltene-phase namic phase. The relative amount of this
fluids exhibit irreversible asphaltene behavior responsible for asphaltene- phase is a function of the asphaltene-
flocculation. This means that, once the induced formation damage and particle-size distribution and the na-
upper ADE boundary is crossed, some asphaltene-deposition problems takes ture of the suspended phase (asphal-
of the asphaltenes will not defloccu- two forms—asphaltene flocculation tene phase) and suspension medium
late and go back into stable suspen- into larger particles or heavy-asphaltic- (liquid phase) at the prevailing thermo-
sion by simply reversing the thermo- phase separation. dynamic conditions. This phase would
dynamic path. If a heavy liquid phase has been in- have very low mobility if formed inside
The spectrophotometric near- dentified as a source of asphaltene pre- the formation, pipelines, or production
infrared (NIR) onset method uses the cipitation for a given sample, an impor- equipment, but it is especially devas-
observation that there is a sharp in- tant test to perform is a high-pressure/ tating at the bottom of wells and inside
storage tanks.
The sample is then left to sediment
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains
for 7–10 days. The contents are then
highlights of paper OTC 27884, “Laboratory Testing and Prediction of Asphaltene displaced while they are scanned with
Deposition in Production Wells,” by Kosta J. Leontaritis, SPE, and Efstratios NIR light. A small sample of the top
Geroulis, SPE, Asphwax, prepared for the 2017 Offshore Technology Conference, layer is collected while displacing for
Houston, 1–4 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2017 Offshore a gravimetric analysis. Once the inter-
Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission. face of the asphaltene layer is reached,

The complete paper is available for purchase at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 95

 Floating Piston
Sedimented Phase
Floating Piston
Fig. 1—Pictures of sample before chemical treatment. Fig. 2—Pictures of sample after chemical treatment.
its volume is recorded. Using these Another crucial step is to quantify the
volumetric measurements, along with amount of solid depositing on the pipe
the gravimetric analysis of the sam- wall at certain thermodynamic condi-
ple from the supernate, the extra layer tions. For this, a special high-pressure
is quantified. sheared-concentric-cylinder asphaltene-
deposition apparatus is used. A vessel ca-
pable of 30,000 psia and 350°F holds hot
live oil at specified (tubing) conditions,
and it shears it against a cooler surface
that emulates the tubing wall. This test is
Check out carried out for an hour, and the deposit is
then quantified.
the new JPT website
and sign up for the Asphaltene-Deposition
eNewsletter. Modeling
The most dominant factors of asphal-
tene deposition in primary production
• Expanded Coverage
are flocculation of asphaltene micelles
• Daily Updates into larger particles near the wall be-
• Mobile Friendly cause of a loss of pressure and tempera-
• Improved Navigation ture and adhesion of flocculated asphal-
tene particles at the wall that results in
a compositional gradient between the
bulk of the fluid and the wall. These re-
All of this and more at sult in diffusion of more asphaltene mi-
www.spe.org/jpt celles, flocculation into larger particles,
and adhesion at the wall. The stream-
ing potential between wall and fluid is
thought to be partly responsible for the
force of adhesion.
As the fluid is being cooled or its pres-
sure is depleted, its temperature and
® pressure arrive at the onset of asphal-
tene flocculation at some point in the
pipe and asphaltene particles begin to
96
Floating Piston
Floating Piston
form. At this point, the temperature dif-
ference between the fluid and the wall is
at its highest. As a result, the attraction
of the asphaltene crystals toward the
wall is at its highest. As the asphaltene-
micelle concentration of the fluid near
the wall is depleted, more asphaltene
micelles diffuse through the boundary
layer to replenish the boundary-layer
asphaltene-micelle concentration. The
concentration of asphaltene micelles in
the bulk fluid becomes uniform primar-
ily through convective mass transfer.
However, within the boundary, where
the flow is laminar, an asphaltene-
micelle-concentration gradient is set
up, which causes mass transfer to take
place by means of diffusion. Any dis-
ruptions of the diffusion process can
result in diminishing of the asphaltene-
deposition rate.
It is evident that the diffusion of as-
phaltene micelles through the laminar
boundary layer is largely responsible
for asphaltene deposition in liquid-full
conduits. Hence, quantifying the diffu-
sion mechanism is the key to predict-
ing asphaltene deposition in liquid-full
systems. This work uses the rotating-
concentric-cylinder approach to deter-
mine experimentally the asphaltene-
deposition rate through the diffusion
mechanism without shear and with
shear. The overall approach consists
of measuring the amount of asphal-
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
tene deposited on a cooler concentric the sedimentation test is conducted. A Once the chemical treatment of the
cylinder and using it along with other sample is loaded in the high-pressure/ oil in the vessel is complete, the sample
oil-related and pipe data to estimate high-temperature vessel and brought is mixed in situ and then left for a few
the initial asphaltene-deposition rate within its upper ADE. It is then treated days to sediment just like in the sedi-
on the system carrying the oil. It is with a known amount of preselected mentation test. If the chemical is suc-
called “initial” because it refers to the chemical asphaltene inhibitor. At this cessful at inhibiting the asphaltenes, no
asphaltene-deposition rate that is ex- stage, typically, the goal is to determine asphaltic layer should be observed on
pected to occur in the pipe during the feasibility of chemical treatment. The the bottom of the vessel when displacing
first 24 hours. exact amount of chemical treatment re- the fluid, as happens with the untreat-
quired can be determined by perform- ed sample. This process is illustrated in
Asphaltene-Deposition ing this test several times. Figs. 1 and 2. JPT
Simulations
The following approach is used to simu-
late the asphaltene-deposition rate in a
given facility producing oil at a specified
flow rate:
w Use the asphaltene-deposition-
apparatus data and a Levenspiel POLYMER CHEMISTRY FOR
plot to convert batch data to THE OIL & GAS INDUSTRY
plug flow to estimate the initial
asphaltene-deposition rate on
the pipe.
w Tune the constants of the
asphaltene-deposition simulator
to enable it to predict accurately
the 24-hour asphaltene-deposition
rate.
w Use the tuned asphaltene-
deposition simulator to calculate
the asphaltene-deposition rate in
the system.
After the simulator is tuned to cal-
culate accurately the initial 24-hour
asphaltene-deposition rate, the model
was run to predict the asphaltene depo-
sition in the system. It is recommend-
ed that all remedial operations, such as
well intervention, pigging, and chemical Oil Sands
treatment, be geared toward maintain-
ing the asphaltene-deposit thickness
in the pipe to an absolute maximum Hydraulic Fracturing
of 1% of the pipe inner diameter. The
1%-of-pipe-radius deposit-thickness
level of 0.051 in., typically signaling Drilling and Cementing
the need for intervention, was pre-
dicted to be reached in a little more
than 12 days. Chemical injection should
Enhanced Oil Recovery
lower the frequency of interven-
tion requirements by diminishing the
asphaltene-deposition rate.

Live-Oil Chemical Testing

Having determined that the oil has an
ADE and that, within the field-expected
thermodynamic conditions, there will
be asphaltene deposition, it is critical to marketing@snfhc.com | www.snf.us
explore the feasibility of possible chemi-
cal treatment. For that, a test similar to

JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 97

 New Methods Analyze Asphaltene
Deposition and Fouling in Reservoirs

A sphaltene precipitation and

deposition in production
tubing and surface facilities are well-
role and which mechanisms can be ne-
glected in modeling asphaltene deposi-
tion inside porous reservoir rocks re-
In this work, a new method of SARA
analysis is proposed to overcome some
of the limitations of previous techniques.
documented issues, and different mains unclear. After removing the asphaltene fraction
methods are available to manage them. In this work, a series of tools has been of the oil sample by the conventional
However, the problems that asphaltenes developed and used to deepen the under- method, the remaining mixture (mal-
may cause in the reservoir, especially standing of the mechanisms by which as- tene) is analyzed using the proposed
in the near-wellbore region, are much phaltenes can precipitate and deposit in method, which is called the automat-
less understood. This project aimed to the reservoir. A new technique based on ed chromatographic-columns system for
develop experimental procedures and an automated chromatographic method maltenes analysis.
modeling methods to establish whether was implemented to separate and quan- The new maltene-analysis method uses
impairment caused by asphaltene tify the content of saturates, aromatics, two chromatographic columns, one filled
deposition in reservoirs is a real problem resins, and asphaltenes (SARA) in two with clay and the other with silica gel.
and to develop an understanding of crude-oil samples. Microfluidic devices Columns are connected in series, and
the mechanisms by which asphaltene were used to visualize the formation of the effluent is recirculated using a high-
precipitates, alters wettability, and asphaltene deposits in the porous media performance liquid-chromatography
obstructs flow by potentially depositing under various experimental conditions. pump. On the basis of polarity and po-
in the formation. Also, a quick and inexpensive novel tech- larizability, the resins are selectively ad-
nique to cast core holders using a special sorbed onto the clay in the first column,
Introduction epoxy resin was developed to accelerate while the aromatics are adsorbed onto the
Asphaltenes are a polydisperse mixture the execution of coreflood experiments. silica gel in the second column. The efflu-
of the heaviest and most polarizable frac- Finally, a simulation tool based on the lat- ents of the two columns contain the satu-
tions of crude oil. Understanding the tice Boltzmann method (LBM) was devel- rate fraction. The efficiency of the process
asphaltene-deposition problem and the oped for modeling asphaltene deposition is verified by ultraviolet spectroscopy. The
factors affecting it is of great importance in porous media. next step after the adsorption process
to the oil industry because of the costs is desorption. Desorption of resins and
associated with production loss and re- Crude-Oil Characterization aromatics is performed simultaneously
mediation activities, such as solvent wash Because of the complex nature of crude in two separate processes. The columns
and removal of deposited asphaltenes. oils, performing a detailed composition- are washed separately with a relatively
Several modeling approaches in the al analysis for every substance in the polar solvent (e.g., dichloromethane or a
literature are used to model asphal- oil is not readily achievable. Instead, a mixture of dichloromethane and hexane).
tene deposition in porous media. Dif- hydrocarbon-group analysis is preferred. After that, the solvents are recovered in a
ferent mechanisms, such as adsorption, SARA separation is one of the approach- distillation column and the residues are
surface deposition, entrainment of de- es for the hydrocarbon-group analysis. collected. After removing the excess sol-
posits, pore-throat plugging, and pore- It separates the crude-oil components, vent, resins and aromatics fractions are
throat opening, have been considered on the basis of their solubility and polar- independently dried and weighed.
in these approaches. However, which ity, into four parts: saturates, aromatics,
mechanisms play the most significant resins, and asphaltenes. Coreflooding Experiments
In this work, a new technology has been
This article, written by Special Publications Editor Adam Wilson, contains highlights developed for preparing the core holder.
The decision to develop this technology
of  paper OTC 27933, “Asphaltene Deposition and Fouling in Reservoirs,” by
was made because of several limitations
Mohammad Tavakkoli, Peng He, Pei-Hsuan Lin, Sara Rezaee, Maura Puerto,
of conventional metallic core holders.
Rocio Doherty, Jefferson Creek, SPE, Walter Chapman, Sibani Lisa Biswal, and First, metallic core holders are costly
Francisco M. Vargas, Rice University; Jianxin Wang, SPE, and Greg Kusinski, SPE, to make, especially those with internal
Chevron; and Joseph Gomes, Deepstar, prepared for the 2017 Offshore Technology pressure taps, which could cost more
Conference, Houston, 1–4 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed. Copyright 2017 than USD 20,000. Having the internal
Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced by permission. pressure taps is necessary to study the

The complete paper is available for purchase at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.

98 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

flow behavior in porous media, and it is
even more important in the case of study-
ing asphaltene deposition. Making a core
holder with internal pressure taps using
the new technology developed in this
work, however, is easy, quick, and inex-
pensive. Each core holder costs less than
USD 200; therefore, several core holders
can be prepared and several experiments
can be performed at the same time.
The main idea of this new technology
is to mix the proper resin epoxy with its
hardener and pour the mixture around
the core plug except at the two faces on
the sides, which will be used as the inlet
and outlet ports for the injection fluid.
The epoxy will form a powerful bond with
the core plug and will withstand high
pressures and high temperatures.
Coreflooding-Test Results
Two crude-oil samples, A and C; two
rocks of different permeability; two
different flow rates; and two asphal-
tene precipitants were chosen for the
coreflood tests in this work. Two as-
phaltene precipitants, n-pentane and
n-heptane, were used for the coreflood
experiments to understand the tenden-
PRODUCTION CHEMISTRY
Houston +1.832.500.3456
www.assuredflowsolutionsllc.com
cy of different asphaltene fractions to
deposit in porous media and to cause
formation damage.
For all but two of the experiments, no
significant pressure drop was seen across
the core plug during the asphaltene-
deposition test.
The two experiments that showed sig-
nificant pressure drop were conducted
using Crude Oil A mixed with n-heptane
and injected into a low-permeability core
plug. The conclusion of this observation
is that the asphaltenes precipitated by
n-heptane (n-C7+ asphaltenes), which
are more rigid and solid-like compared
with the asphaltenes precipitated by
n-pentane (n-C5+ asphaltenes), are prob-
ably more prone to deposit and plug the
pore space in the porous media, particu-
larly for low-permeability cores. Once
n-C7+ asphaltenes deposit, they cannot
be removed easily by shear forces. Un-
like the n-C7+ asphaltenes, n-C5+ as-
phaltenes contain a large amount of
liquid-like asphaltenes and, therefore,
are lighter and less rigid compared with
the n-C7+ asphaltenes. As a result, n-C5+
asphaltenes are less prone to deposit in
the porous media and those that deposit
Chemical
Qualification
Your operations matter.
FLUID FLOW
Denver +1.303.228.9484
in the core plug might be removed easily
by the fluid flow.
Microfluidic Experiments
In this work, a solvent-resistance mi-
crofluidic device that mimics the flow
through porous media has been devel-
oped and tested successfully to study as-
phaltene deposition at dynamic condi-
tions. This microfluidic setup provides
a unique way to study the mechanism
of asphaltene deposition and the ef-
fects of different variables, such as pre-
cipitation driving force and shear rate,
on the deposition process. With the in-
house microfluidic setup, the process
of asphaltene deposition is readily vi-
sualized and analyzed at microscale.
This will contribute to the prediction
of risk factor and correct assessment
of rate of formation damage caused by
asphaltene deposition in porous media
in the near-wellbore region. Efficient
treatment methods and frequency of
treatments will then be suggested to
project development and execution
as needed.
Observations of asphaltene deposi-
tion in porous media under dynamic
Flow Assurance.
It’s what we do.
OPERATIONS SUPPORT
London +44.2083.348.000

(a) (b)
Fig. 1—(a) Deposition profile from micromodel experiment. (b) Deposition
profile from simulation.
conditions are reported from data ob-
tained in the microfluidic experiments.
The obtained results indicate that de-
position of asphaltene in porous media
varies mainly with respect to changes in
the aggregation process and in the af-
finity of asphaltenes to the surface and
to themselves. The strong self-affinity
between asphaltenes tends to make a
major contribution to the deposition.
The small and large asphaltene aggre-
Mass Fraction of Deposited Asphaltene
0.25
0.2
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
gates result in different mechanisms of
deposition and formation damage in
porous media.
Computational-Fluid-Dynamics
Simulation
In this work, the Navier-Stokes equa-
tions, a continuity equation, a mass-
transfer equation, and an ordinary-
differential equation for the amount of
deposited asphaltene were combined to
simulate the process of asphaltene de-
position. Two mechanisms of surface de-
position and particle entrainment were
considered in the asphaltene-deposition
model. The pore-throat-plugging mech-
anism was not included because it does
not seem to have a significant effect on
asphaltene deposition, according to the
results obtained from the microfluidic
and coreflood experiments.
The model proposed in this work
was validated against the experimen-
tal data obtained from the micro-
fluidic experiments.
Fig. 1a is a picture of the asphaltene
deposition in the micromodel. The fluid
flows from left to right. White circles
are the obstacles in the microchannel,
and the dark areas represent the de-
posited asphaltenes. Asphaltene deposi-
tion is in the form of conical shapes up-
stream of the different obstacles. The
LBM result for the shape of deposited as-
phaltenes is shown in Fig. 1b. The color
scale represents the fraction of deposited
asphaltene, which ranges from red for
the highest amount to blue where no de-
position occurs. JPT

Motivate
Inspire
Educate
Nominate
Do you have colleagues who are authorities in their fields and experienced public speakers?
If you do, consider nominating one or more of them for the Society of Petroleum Engineers
Distinguished Lecturer Program.
Learn more about the program at www.spe.org/go/NomDL.
Nominations are accepted until 15 March.

The SPE Distinguished Lecturer Program is funded by the SPE Foundation, Offshore Europe,
AIME, and companies that allow their professionals to serve as lecturers.

100 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

PEOPLE
SAEID RAHIMIAN, SPE, was appointed
CEO of Aereon, an emissions control equip-
ment and services provider. Rahimian has
several years of experience in industry
leadership roles and was most recently
president and CEO of Gardner Denver En-
In Memoriam
This section lists with regret SPE members who recently
passed away. If you would like to report the passing of a
family member who was an SPE member, please write to
service@spe.org.
Richard L. Hoskins, Inverurie, UK
George E. Macneill, Bangkok, Thailand
ORVILLE D. GAITHER, 1990 SPE Presi-
dent and an SPE Foundation trustee, died
29 June. Gaither’s presidency was marked
by the opening of several international
SPE sections and his extensive traveling
to visit members around the world. When
recollecting his presidency, Gaither often
used “Enroute” to sum up the year, in which he journeyed
25,000 miles in commercial airlines and the private jet that
Amoco assigned to him to get to sections not connected
through domestic airlines at that time. During his many sec-
tion visits, he opened the first Asia Pacific Conference in Aus-
tralia, attended the Appalachian Regional Conference, and
addressed the Cairo Egypt Section three times.
His presidency also marked several steps toward SPE’s
diversity initiatives. “I recognized that SPE needed to elect
an international engineer as president and also that women
were becoming more of a factor in engineering and Earth
science professions. I’m pleased to say that the groundwork
was laid to accomplish both objectives,” said Gaither in a
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
ergy Group, a division of KKR-sponsored Gardner Denver Inc.
Before that he was president for the Energy Services Group
and corporate senior vice president at Robbins & Myers.
Rahimian holds a BS in mechanical engineering from Evans-
ville University and an MS in mechanical engineering from
the Ohio State University.
2007 JPT article about his presidency. In 1993, Jacques Bosio
became SPE’s first non-US president and DeAnn Craig took
office as the first woman SPE president in 1998.
Gaither worked for Amoco Oil Corp. for more than 43
years. During his career at the company, he was involved in
several domestic and international operations and retired
as the president of Amoco International’s Africa and Middle
East region. After his retirement, he founded Gaither Petro-
leum Corp. with two of his sons.
An honorary member of SPE and the American Institute
of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Gaither
was recognized as a Distinguished Engineer in the fields of
mechanical and petroleum engineering by the University
of Houston Engineering Society, and with the Outstanding
Engineering Alumni Award by the George R. Brown School
of Engineering and the Rice Engineering Society.
A well-known philanthropist, Gaither was a founding
member of the Spindletop International Charities, which
aids social and educational causes such as child abuse pre-
vention and drug abuse rehabilitation. He was also involved
in the Boy Scouts of America all his life and was honored with
the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award in 2009, of which fewer
than 2,000 have been awarded to date.
Gaither was a registered professional engineer in Texas
and Louisiana. He held a bachelor’s degree in mechanical
engineering from Rice University, a master’s degree in petro-
leum engineering from the University of Houston, and was a
graduate of the Stanford Business School.
101
 SPE NEWS
Mid-Continent Section Celebrates Major
Milestone
On 26 October, members of the SPE
Mid-Continent Section will gather at
the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa to cel-
ebrate 100 years of technology and
innovation. The Mid-Continent Sec-
tion was formed 28 December 1917 in
Tulsa as the 15th local section of the
American Institute of Mining Engineers
(AIME) and was until 1935 the only
section with a predominantly petro-
leum membership.
At that time, Tulsa was “The Oil Capi-
tal of the World” primarily due to the
discovery of the Glenpool field but there
were also numerous discoveries in the
Red Fork and Bartlesville formations in
the surrounding area. Tulsa has always
been a leader in innovation and SPE has
been a constant force fostering collab-
oration within petroleum technology.
From 1951 to 1999, Tulsa was home to
the Amoco Research Center where pio-
neers such as R. Floyd Farris, J.B. Clark,
C. Robert Fast, and George C. Howard
worked to develop and understand
the techniques of hydraulic fracturing.
The research and development of the
“Amerada Bomb” for the measurement
of downhole pressure occurred in Tulsa
at the Geophysical Research Corporation
under the direction of Charles V. Milik-
en and his team. Other notable mem-
bers of the section included Michael B.
Smith, Kenneth G. Nolte, Ram G. Agar-
wal, and Robert D. Carter, all known for
their work on hydraulic fracturing and
pressure transient analysis.
Amended Articles of Incorporation Proposed
The Articles of Incorporation of the
Society of Petroleum Engineers Inc.
(SPEI) have not been amended since
1994. On 9 July, 2017, the SPE Board of
Directors passed a resolution approv-
ing a Restated Certificate of Formation
102
Mid-Continent members gather at a recent section event.
The Mid-Continent Section could not
have thrived as it has without the benefit
of great leadership. Notable past chair-
man of the section include Charles Henry
Keplinger, Ralph Veatch Jr., and Forrest
(F.F.) Craig Jr. Keplinger was a petro-
leum engineer and reserves consultant.
Keplinger Hall at the University of Tulsa
now houses the departments of chemis-
try, biochemistry, geosciences, mathe-
matics, physics, and the Russell School of
Chemical Engineering. Veatch is a former
supervisor of the Hydraulic Fracturing
and Well Completion group at the Amoco
Research Center in Tulsa. He is also the
author or coauthor of 21 technical papers
and six books of petroleum technolo-
gy. Craig is the author of the SPE Mono-
graph The Reservoir Engineering Aspects
of Waterflooding.
Likely the most recognized contribu-
tion of the Mid-Continent Section is the
hosting of the SPE Improved Oil Recov-
ery Conference. The conference start-
ed in 1969 as the Enhanced Oil Recov-
(RCOF) for SPEI and recommending that
it be sent to the members for approval.
The RCOF will be presented to mem-
bers for approval at the annual meet-
ing of members on 11 October 2017.
The amendments are intended to update
ery Symposium, and in 1994 it became
known as the Improved Oil Recovery
Symposium. From 1980 through 2010,
the meeting was jointly sponsored with
the US Department of Energy. Visit
www.speior.org for more details on the
upcoming conference.
The 26th of October will truly be a time
of celebration to remember 100 years of
technology and innovation. However, the
true goal of the event is to honor the 82
Legion of Honor section members and
the legacy they have built in the Mid-
Continent. We invite all SPE members to
join us for this celebration, especially any
former Mid-Continent section members.
For more information, visit our section
website at www.spemc.org.
Sponsors of the event are WPX Energy,
Cimarex Energy, PetroSkills, Hallibur-
ton Energy Services, Rockwater Energy
Solutions, Cudd Energy Services, Kaiser-
Francis Oil Company, Universal Pressure
Pumping, Anchor Drilling Fluids, Sooner
Pipe, and Baker Hughes,a GE Company.
the Articles of Incorporation consistent
with changes in the law as well as mak-
ing other clarifications. More informa-
tion and a summary of the changes can
be found online at www.spe.org/en/jpt/
spe-news.
JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017
 SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS
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WORKSHOPS
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Different and How Do We Optimize It?
Find complete listings of upcoming SPE workshops, conferences,
symposiums, and forums at www.spe.org/events.
23–24 October w Kuala Lumpur—SPE
Decommissioning—Innovative Approaches
to Shallow Water Platforms and Wells
24–25 October w St. John’s, Newfoundland
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6–8 November w Dallas—SEG/SPE
Injection Induced Seismicity
7–8 November w Calgary—SPE Unlocking
the Montney, Success Through Change
7–8 November w The Hague—SPE North
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CONFERENCES
13–14 September w Midland—SPE Liquids-
Rich Basins Conference–North America
9–11 October w San Antonio—SPE Annual
Technical Conference & Exhibition
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SYMPOSIUMS
4–6 October w Lexington—SPE Eastern
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Production Enhancement and Cost
Optimisation
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5–9 November w San Antonio—SPE
Waterless Fracturing—Reducing Fresh
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SPE International Oilfield Scale
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SPE International Oilfield Corrosion
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106 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017 107


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108 JPT • SEPTEMBER 2017

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