2020 is going to be remembered in oil and gas history for its unexpected free fall in oil prices in less than 2 months. This year’s severe supply-and-demand imbalance is going to have tremendous implications for adopting new business models, developing new technologies, and attracting new talent into the industry. Collaboration and automation are going to continue being drivers for both operators and services providers in all their business segments. While the ongoing trends in data science and engineering analytics are going to show more benefits in lowering production costs and increasing efficiencies, the well-established reservoir and production engineering disciplines will continue to be critical for reservoir performance improvements.
In the past 12 months, 93 technical papers were presented at various conferences with a reservoir performance focus and were reviewed for this feature, showcasing further advances in reservoir performance monitoring and optimization. For comparison, 133, 157, and 160 technical papers were reviewed for the 2019, 2018 and 2017 features, respectively. Interestingly, this year, 34 papers had first authors from academia (37%), 49 had first authors from operating companies (53%), and 10 had first authors from oilfield services companies and consulting firms (11%). For comparison, the review for the 2019 feature included 39 papers with first authors from academia (29%), 63 with first authors from operating companies (47%), and 31 with first authors from oilfield services companies and consulting firms (23%). It will be interesting to see this data for the 2021 feature.
The three primary papers selected and three alternative papers recommended as additional reading are a representative sample of the 93 papers reviewed for this feature. They have been selected on the basis of their technical contributions and geographic diversity.
This Month's Technical Papers
AI-Based Decline-Curve Analysis Manages Reservoir Performance
Downhole System Enables Real-Time Reservoir-Fluid-Distribution Mapping
Recovering More Than 70% From the Johan Sverdrup Field
Recommended Additional Reading
SPE 196041 Estimating Fracture Network Area and SRV Permeability by Analyzing Offset Well Pressure Measurements During Fracturing by Puneet Seth, The University of Texas at Austin, et al.
SPE 196443 Reservoir Performance Benchmarking To Unlock Further Development of Malaysian Oil Fields by Rakesh Ranjan, Petronas, et al.
SPE 196122 A Hybrid Data and Physics Modeling Approach Toward Unconventional Well Performance Analysis by Diego Molinari, Anadarko, et al.
| Silviu Livescu, SPE, is the chief scientist in the global Coiled Tubing Research and Engineering Centre of Baker Hughes in Calgary, with fundamental- and applied-research, industrial-research-and-development, innovation, management, commercialization, and intellectual-property experience related to several petroleum engineering technical disciplines (production and operations, completions, and data science and engineering analytics). He holds BS and MS degrees from Politehnica University of Bucharest in Romania and a PhD degree from the University of Delaware, all in mechanical engineering. Livescu is the 2021–23 SPE Data Science and Engineering Analytics Technical Director, an SPE Distinguished Member, executive editor for the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, and an associate editor for SPE Journal and was an SPE Distinguished Lecturer for 2018–19. He serves on several SPE advisory, awards, and technical conference and workshop committees, including the JPT Editorial Committee. Livescu can be reached at https://ca.linkedin.com/in/silviu-livescu-14a96735. |
