Issue: May
COLUMNS
In his newest column, World Oil Editor-in-Chief Kurt Abraham examines OTC 2026’s continued attendance decline, concerns over the exhibition floor and why rising U.S. oil production is strengthening America’s geopolitical leverage.
In his latest Drilling Advances column, Ford Brett explores whether drilling automation can help solve North America’s looming natural gas supply challenge — and what today’s rig robots have in common with the legend of John Henry and the steam drill.
In this Executive Viewpoint, Aramco’s Khalid Y. Al Qahtani outlines how the company is deploying satellites, drones and advanced digital monitoring tools to detect methane emissions and strengthen leak detection efforts across its operations.
Produced water recycling in the Permian has evolved dramatically over the past decade, but according to contributing editor Mark Patton, many current treatment standards are driven more by equipment limitations than by what creates the most effective frac fluid.
FEATURES
Ruggedized servers and computers can maximize uptime and reliability anywhere that physical factors or unstable power might compromise operations. Edge-based computing devices can also produce and compile data instantaneously on-site without lag time or latency associated with cloud computing.
Remanufacturing transforms end-of-life components into high-performance assets, enabling oil and gas operators to lower costs, strengthen supply chain resilience and achieve sustainability objectives.
NOV’s first-principles design approach delivered pump fluid ends that meet the demands of today’s challenging drilling operations.
Biosurfactant chemistry is gaining favor among many operators for a number of good reasons, including their ability to reduce operational complexity and improve efficiency.
Polaris Seismic International, working with STRYDE, is applying ultra-lightweight nodal systems to improve survey efficiency, reduce crew size and lower environmental impact in remote exploration environments.
Following investigation of financial performance in Lower Tertiary subsea developments (Part 1), Part 2 examines why development architecture—rather than reservoir quality—has constrained recovery, and why a new approach is required.
SPECIAL FOCUS: COMPLETION TECHNOLOGY
Surface-based pressure signal analysis provides real-time insights during hydraulic fracturing, enabling operators to optimize treatment outcomes, reduce operational risks and strategically lower capital expenditures.
In deepwater and multizone developments, traditional hydraulic intelligent completions can limit economic optimization, due to control-line scale, installation time, and delayed interval-control valve response. Simplified intelligent completion architectures address these constraints by reducing infrastructure complexity, shortening critical‑path rig time, and allowing rapid, bidirectional zonal control without production shut‑in.
Upstream electrification continues to progress apace, as it helps to provide simplification of systems, reliability of operations and cost reductions in the field, says Baker Hughes executive Rodrigo Farias.
MANAGEMENT ISSUES
After a long period in the regulatory “wilderness,” East Canada’s Nova Scotia province looks to make up for lost time in developing its oil and gas potential.
Most U.S. operators in Fed District 11 indicated in the original first-quarter 2026 survey that they expected market conditions to improve modestly, influenced partially by the early part of the Iran war. Fed District 11 analysts conducted a special, extra first-quarter survey to re-check executives’ attitudes and found most of them expect prices to remain higher than before hostilities began.
