JPT November 2021 Issue
On the Cover
Shell’s Vito floating production unit’s hull and topsides will be largely copied in the engineering and building of the Whale facility, both destined for the Gulf of Mexico. Source: Shell.
Monthly Features
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Over the past 30 years Caspian nations such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have built thriving economies on oil and gas wealth led by global energy companies and a handful of megaprojects. As times change, that model may need to be reassessed. -
Shell’s sibling solutions for its Vito and Whale deepwater US Gulf developments are proving the “design one, build two” model can work. -
Insights from an ongoing industry study on North American shale wells help explain what frac hits, or fracture-driven interactions, are doing between offset wells, and why. -
The Great Crew Change is all but over, Gen Xers are now managing Baby Boomers, and the oil and gas industry is morphing into the energy industry. Is this the end of an era or a new start for petroleum engineering education? -
Mixing dry polymer powder and water to make friction reducer as needed during fracturing can cut the cost of the additive and the testing of whether a drastically simplified recipe performs as well as more-complex mixes. -
The difficulty in selling a chemical to aid subsea pipeline flow has been delivering it to the wells.
Guest Editorial
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The newly formed SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technical Section is working on a project to identify a set of best practices for completions engineers. Once completed, they will be accessible to the entire SPE technical community.
Case Study
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HCl acid stimulation of carbonate production requires the retardation of the HCl-carbonate rock reaction to achieve the optimum balance between total fluid used and the enhancement of well production. The described investigation was done offshore Sarawak using Indiana Limestone cores.
Distinguished Members
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The SPE Distinguished Membership Award recognizes members who have attained eminence in the petroleum industry or academia, or who have made significant contributions to SPE.
President's Column
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There is a general feeling that we may finally be getting out of the pandemic situation, after 18 months of a complete transformation of the way we work, communicate, and move.
Comments
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Where does employment in the oil and gas industry stand today? It remains far from the peak seen in 2014, but it is incrementally recovering. Will it grow, and how?
E&P Notes
Data gathered from the well will be used to inform the next steps for Keskesi appraisal.
Operator will not participate in Sea Lion project in the Falkland Islands.
Project is part of BP’s plan to grow GOM production to 400,000 B/D by mid-decade.
Operator sites Covid-19 related issues for delayed work on massive land parcel.
Cabaça North will increase and sustain the plateau of the FPSO Armada Olombendo.
The Netherlands will end gas production from giant field discovered in 1959.
Field will deliver gas to Trinidad market from a resource discovered in 2017.
Exploration test could yield as much as 200+ million BOE.
FPSO Sepetiba will be deployed at Petrobras’ Mero field in the Santos basin offshore Brazil.
People
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This section recognizes SPE members accomplishments and positions within the oil and gas industry. -
Steve Sawaryn, who made world-leading contributions to directional drilling and surveying fields, died 29 August. He was 66.
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This section lists with regret SPE members who recently passed away.
Drilling and Completion Fluids
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Recent developments in drilling-systems automation provide a multitude of opportunities to have real-time monitoring of drilling-fluid properties and early diagnosis of drilling-fluid-related complications that might arise while drilling. Coupled with closed-loop control of surface and downhole drilling-fluid properties, automated monitoring of fluid properties would …
EOR Operations
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As the discovery rate of new hydrocarbon resources decreases, the need for more-efficient enhanced-oil-recovery processes increases. Unlike in the past, however, when the efficiency was defined in terms of maximizing the recovery factor (RF), the new interpretation of efficiency is based on optimizing the balance between RF and the reduction of carbon footprint.
Hydraulic Fracturing Model
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In the past decades, the success of unconventional hydrocarbon resource development can be attributed primarily to the improved understanding of fracture systems, including both hydraulically induced fractures and natural fracture networks. To tackle the fracture characterization problem, several recent papers have provided novel insight into fracture modeling techniq…
Flow Assurance
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Flow-assurance effects from slug-flow engineering, design, maintenance, and operations technical concerns still create and sustain challenging technical issues requiring safe, economical solutions for both onshore unconventional and offshore conventional production facilities.
SPE Members: Access the free technical papers synopsized above through 31 December.