Issue: April 2015
Special Focus
A new, powered, rotary steerable system has delivered superior perfor-mance in challenging, medium and hard formations. When applied to the proper drilling environment, TMT-powered RSS improves ROP and reduces nonproductive time.
Features
Now in its 47th, the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) will be held at NRG Park (formerly Reliant Park) in Houston, Texas, on May 4-7, 2015. Building on a record-breaking year in 2014, OTC 2015 will again bring together the world’s foremost technical experts and industry-specific exhibiting companies.
A number of drilling-the-well-on-paper (DWOP) exercises show increased tripping speeds, reduced fuel consumption by virtue of an integrated ship design, and the built-in efficiencies of the new DMPT, reducing ultra-deepwater well construction time and costs from 20% to 25% per well.
Conceived from chemistries in other industries, a non-toxic paraffin removal agent has shown that it can restore flow to severely plugged pipelines.
A new asphaltene stability analysis method, using an analytical centrifuge coupled with a destabilizing procedure, moves test conditions closer to field conditions and could help deepwater operators save millions of dollars.
Given the low-price environment, the days of depending on high-cost, tailor-made subsea solutions on the NCS may be coming to an end. Instead, companies are looking at ways to configure subsea systems that are cost-effective, meaning simpler yet smarter.
Future deepwater GOM projects are less vulnerable to low oil prices. Even as the price of oil teeters around $50, the Gulf of Mexico is poised on the brink of a production boom. Repercussions of the price collapse in this offshore market depend less on how low prices go, than how long they stay there.
Multi-zone play grabs lion’s share of deflated budgets
PART 2: In this second of two installments, the latest developments in reservoir monitoring, coring and laboratory analysis are assessed. Developments in borehole reservoir monitoring include borehole-to-surface electromagnetic surveys, and permanent and wireline fiber-optic sensing. Advances in coring and core evaluation include sidewall “pressure” coring. Developments in laboratory analysis include advances in digital rock physics, and the use of cuttings for petrophysical evaluation.
Successful 3D seismic work, clarifying the geology of the South Utsira High area of the Norwegian North Sea, and delineating the Johan Sverdrup reservoir, shows how new technology can generate finds in mature basins.
Exploration in western and southern Greece is moving offshore, and the Second Offshore Licensing Round was opened in second-half 2014. Seismic data will improve, as will understanding of this complex region.
Oil response technologies in the Arctic are the focus of a research program, led by nine major oil and gas companies. Their goal is to advance a range of oil spill response technologies and methodologies in support of exploration and development activity in the region.
Columns
Price vs. value of crude oil and designer handbags
Gulf of Mexico projections mixed
Exploration is who you are, not what you do
Austin Chalk trial by fire, redux
Shell Oil offshore—When 10 feet was “deep”
Deepwater Horizon, five years later
Norwegian dilemmas
Seismic sector is still a reliable E&P market indicator
John Quirein, PhD: From outer space to deep rock
Industry’s innovations belie low prices, public perceptions
News & Resources
World of oil and gas
Industry at a glance
People in the industry
New products and services
Companies in the news
Port Fourchon
A message from the executive director
While the free-fall in oil prices has tempered the unbridled bullishness that generally characterized the deepwater Gulf of Mexico over the past couple of years, oversized support vessels continue to sail from Louisiana’s Port Fourchon, and heavy-duty trucks are still rumbling over its ever-expanding arteries.
Louisiana established the Greater Lafourche Port Commission in 1960, but it was not until 1971 that the first publicly elected Board of Commissioners took office, eventually hiring its first director, Ted Falgout, seven years later.
Thanks to a $6.6-million industry match, construction should begin, by early 2016, on a critical cog in the long-running effort to complete the elevated replacement for the antiquated—and often-impassable—Louisiana Highway 1 (LA-1) corridor.
As the newly commissioned Shelia Bordelon ultra-light intervention vessel (ULIV) plies the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, she also will be carrying a message that hits close to home for her creator.
Since offshore rig tanks must be cleaned after every displacement to avoid any fluid cross-contamination, RCS Tank Cleaning Solutions has a birds-eye view of the level of drilling activity in the Gulf of Mexico. What it sees—especially in the near-term—is not all that encouraging.
The first U.S.-flagged, dual-fuel support vessel is now on the job in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.
With qualified welders among the most sought-after trade persons, officials of a Houma, La., training facility say they intend to keep the pipeline of talent flowing.
Precision machining firm and premium, threader K&B Industries of Houma, La., has settled completely in at its new headquarters and 200,000-ft2 manufacturing facility, on a 35-acre site in nearby Schriever, off LA 311 and U.S. Highway 90.
Technology at OTC
In subsea technology, the operative word is reliability. A common theme in this year’s OTC Spotlight on New Technology winners is dependable operation under harsh subsea conditions.
A newly discovered field, 50 km offshore, will be developed over the next five years, with production expected to come online in 2019.
A subsea control system’s point of distribution (POD) is the component by which blowout preventers and other parts of the subsea stack are operated, often at water depths of 12,000 ft.
At OTC 2015, FMC Technologies will showcase its latest light well intervention stack and both hardware and software systems to help operators monitor their field operations in real time and ensure the integrity of subsea production systems.
Some of the world’s most challenging environments for oil and gas production measurement today are in offshore gas and gas/condensate fields.
As operators began to set their sights on the huge reserves in the Gulf of Mexico’s Lower Tertiary and other ultra-deepwater plays, the disparity between today’s “conventional” deepwater completions technology and what is needed for tomorrow’s wells became increasingly pronounced.
OneSubsea has introduced the world’s first true subsea multiphase compressor, which can handle unprocessed wellstream fluids, without the need for pre-processing.
The first line of defense in replenishing drilling fluids and separating rock particles during drilling operations is the solids control system. Foremost among such systems are shale shakers, where, through G-force vibrations, solids are filtered out for overboard discharge or treatment.
One of the challenges for the offshore oil and gas industry is the removal of potentially damaging gas hydrates from the exteriors of subsea infrastructure.
Unmanned aerial drones and waterproof crawler robots are changing the way that rig, platform and vessel owners perform inspections.
Dragon Products, Ltd, has introduced a 10,600-gal liquified petroleum gas (LPG) transport trailer for use in shale plays.
