offshore

West Africa has seen a significant shift in drilling activity, mainly in deep water. Many of the major international operators are carrying out important ­exploration-and-development activities there.

The SPE Delta Section will cohost its annual Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Technical Symposium in New Orleans in August. A variety of topics on deepwater exploration and production (E&P) will be presented.

This paper reviews two newly developed novel completion systems that significantly reduce time spent performing multistage stimulation in environments where cost and consequence of failure are high.

This paper describes the design, testing, and execution of a unique deepwater completion system that adapts a known multistage ball-drop system used in onshore unconventional reservoirs.

To the casual observer of completions and hydraulic fracturing, it might appear that multifractured horizontal wells are a relatively recent concept that materialized just as we required them for unconventionals.

There are more than 100 accumulations in the southern North Sea that are flagged as stranded fields. One of these stranded tight gas fields, the Kew field, has been developed successfully with the use of a subsea well, horizontal drilling, and hydraulic fracturing.

To help the industry understand offshore-facility weight predictability, IPA recently conducted a comprehensive study that sheds new light on facility weight performance and identifies the root causes of weight growth, providing guidelines for improving predictability.

Innovation is the life-blood of any high-tech industry, and the operators are the primary beneficiaries of its application.

Well plugging and abandoning on a limited budget is a lofty goal that forces the industry to consider new ways and new materials. Cost-effectively dealing with this global problem will require developing tools to carry out the decommissioning without bringing in a drilling rig.

This paper gives an overview of ongoing research activities on the subject of offshore use of composite flowlines, risers, and topside piping.