The theme of this issue is research and development, or R&D, and I am delighted to share with you my 30-plus years of experience in this field. New technology and innovation will always be key elements for the successful development of oil and gas reserves, and continued R&D activities are essential to meet this objective.
My career in the oil and gas industry started upon my graduation in 1976 from Baghdad University, College of Engineering—Petroleum and Minerals when I joined Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. I worked as a junior petroleum engineer in various departments, gaining experience in drilling, production, and water injection among others.
A crucial point in my career came in 1978 when I was transferred to the Reservoir Engineering department as a reservoir engineer for Abu Dhabi Company of Onshore Oil Operations, or Adco. In my new job, I was in charge of coordinating all reservoir engineering activities to ensure proper implementation of the full-field-development plan designed to maximize the field’s ultimate recovery. The successes I achieved provided me with the platform to enter R&D in reservoir engineering. In 1980, when ADNOC decided to become a self-sufficient company in performing reservoir simulation and modeling, I was selected to be among the first group of engineers to join Exxon’s Production Research Center in Houston for a 2-year, on-the-job training assignment in reservoir simulation and modeling. With the support of Exxon senior simulation engineers, we built the first full-field, 3D model for one of Adco’s largest reservoirs. That model was used as a management tool to test the reservoir’s performance under a variety of producing scenarios.
Building a reservoir simulation model in those days was not an easy task. Computer commands had to be punched into cards, using punching machines, and the cards were then fed through card readers that submitted the set of commands to a huge computer for number crunching. Each run used to take a few days, and then a few weeks were spent reviewing and analyzing the results. All this work, however, paid off in the long run because extraction costs were minimized and every reservoir was fully used. Now, the same reservoir simulations are run using laptops that can be carried in your briefcase.
Since its beginning in the nineteenth century, the petroleum industry has been built on a foundation of large, relatively shallow and high-quality reservoirs that have provided the world with oil and natural gas. With nearly all of the “low-hanging fruit” or “easy oil” gone, however, R&D has become of paramount importance. Increasingly, oil and gas exploration is focused on finding resources in more geologically complex, deeper, and lower-quality reservoirs.
As both the quantity and quality of reservoir reserves diminishes, reservoir characterization has become vitally important for every aspect of exploration, development, and production of the world’s petroleum resources. New technology has become increasingly necessary to define the limits of the reservoir boundaries and assist in reducing the number of wells required to develop these remaining resources.
The general consensus in the industry is that the greatest technological progress of the past 30 years has come in the area of advanced seismic technologies, along with huge leaps in computing power and efficiency to handle the vast amounts of seismic data. In addition, R&D efforts have led to many innovative technological applications to enhance productivity and optimize reservoirs, such as extended-reach drilling, maximum reservoir contact, smart wells, intelligent fields, and real-time reservoir monitoring systems, to name a few.
Downhole-measurement tools and advanced structural and stratigraphic modeling of the reservoir, faults, and fracture systems (either natural or induced) serve as important methods to reduce overall costs and increase success rates for exploration wells, workovers, secondary-recovery efforts, and finding and developing bypassed production. Studies of rock-fluid interaction, enhanced-oil-recovery (EOR) imaging and control, and advanced wellbore-seismic technology also assist in better visualization and prediction of subsurface conditions necessary for the development of oil and gas resources. Ongoing studies of heavy oil are also expected to assist in the recovery of this important resource.
Technology is changing at an incredible pace and the power of R&D to impact this industry is immense.
As the demand for oil and gas continues to grow, improved-oil-recovery (IOR) and EOR technologies must be developed to meet that demand. The progress in IOR/EOR technologies includes the latest advances in thermal, gas, and chemical EOR methods; IOR/EOR selection criteria; surveillance techniques for locating remaining oil; and drivers and challenges in implementing IOR/EOR.
In directional drilling, measurement while drilling (MWD) has revolutionized drilling operations. The first system to transmit drill-bit location information by sending pressure pulses through drilling mud was developed in the 1970s. Today, as a direct result of extensive R&D activities, we are seeing the next revolution in telemetry, as the new generation of MWD, logging-while-drilling, and image-logging technologies opens new possibilities for data acquisition and evaluation of deep and high-pressure/high-temperature reservoirs.
While horizontal drilling technology was developed to economically recover hydrocarbons from tight, thin, and complex reservoirs, formation damage from conventional drilling methods prompted the industry to develop underbalanced drilling (UBD) technology. The same UBD technology that was developed primarily for field redevelopment of depleted or low-quality reservoirs is now being applied to new reservoirs where formation damage is a key issue.
In 2003, Weatherford coined the term Controlled Pressure Drilling (CPD), which is defined as an adaptive drilling process that enables a more precise control of wellbore pressures through the use of engineered equipment and processes. CPD includes the following variations:
1. Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) for Optimizing the Drilling Process
MPD is a step-change technique that increases recoverable assets. It represents an improvement in the overall drilling operation, reducing nonproductive time, enhancing safety conditions, and reducing the total drilling cost, compared with conventional drilling practices. A data-acquisition display is used for monitoring MPD parameters in real time, which helps in making real-time decisions.
2. UBD for Maximizing Reservoir Value.
UBD is defined as the intentional reduction of the drilling-fluid density, causing the hydrostatic pressure in a wellbore to be lower than the pore pressure within the formation and thereby permitting reservoir fluids to be produced while drilling.
It is important to note that properly designed and executed UBD is still the best way to significantly reduce formation damage, prevent lost circulation and differential sticking, allow reservoir evaluation while drilling, and improve productivity. However, poor screening and planning have led to an overenthusiastic misapplication of this technology, and possibly caused failures. Accordingly, Weatherford developed a novel process in partnership with industry experts in reservoir engineering, formation damage, and risk analysis to screen reservoirs for suitability of UBD. The process is designed to give engineers the ability to quantify the technical and economic value of applying UBD techniques and is performed in two phases: use of a reservoir-screening tool and analysis of reservoir damage. By means of this process, operators can select the drilling method most appropriate for the application at hand.
Technology is changing at an incredible pace and the power of R&D to impact this industry is immense. We are bombarded with new information every second. By harnessing technology, we can make even bigger leaps in reservoir engineering not only to enhance the current state of oil production, but to make this industry a challenging, innovative, and exciting environment for the next generation. I am proud to have done my part, and I wish all the best to those who elect to work in this vitally important field.