Issue: August 2012
With high oil prices as the incentive, deepwater operators are increasing worldwide activity and launching innovative floating structures for drilling and production. In the post-Macondo world, they must also meet the challenges of stringent safety and spill containment rules.
A six-well workover campaign at Hassi Messaoud field in Algeria used shallow-angle casing exit technology in conjunction with solid expandable liner systems to optimize a workover campaign and revitalize an aging field.
Intelligent well technology and interval control valves were used to improve steam injection and production conformance in a thermal-enhanced oil recovery system in a northern Alberta SAGD well pair. A combination of zonal isolation, selective steam injection and monitoring can add substantial value to field developments, increasing energy efficiency and oil recovery.
Around the world, shale assessments are underway in an attempt to emulate the success of shale gas and liquids production in North America. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued a report in April 2011 that discusses 48 shale gas basins in 32 countries (not including the U.S.), which contain about 70 shale gas formations. Initial estimates of technically recoverable shale gas resources in these countries examined is 5,760 Tcf.
Part 2. The first of this two-part article series described various types of wellbore isolation packers and discussed openhole packers in general. In Part 2, the authors discuss how the openhole packers can be applied in advanced horizontal completions to improve well production and control undesired fluid breakthrough.
The vast African continent is considered to have some of the last remaining hydrocarbon frontiers in the world. Excluding North African countries such as Egypt, Algeria and Libya, and the Sub-Saharan Africa countries of Nigeria, Angola and Gabon, where exploration has been ongoing for decades, exploration in the rest of the continent has been minimal. This article looks at frontier offshore exploration in three key regions: Gulf of Guinea, West Africa pre-salt and East Africa.
A new screen technology that compartmentalizes sand ingress is the product of a joint development project aimed at improving sand control reliability without interrupting production.
Political and pipelining concerns are clouding the picture for an E&P sector that has been riding oil activity to prosperity.
Concerned about lagging crude oil production, Mexico is increasing its capital expenditures over the next several years to stabilize output and then grow it. Last year, Pemex spent $19.1 billion on capital projects, of which more than 80% was spent on upstream work. This year, the firm will raise capital spending 21.5% to $23.2 billion, of which 85%, or $19.7 billion, will be dedicated to E&P projects.
Weakness in crude oil prices, coupled with uncertainty about the presidential election and future economic performance, has caused U.S. drilling to go sideways. A trend was already present at the beginning of this year, whereby operators were steering large amounts of capital spending away from dry gas drilling. This factor has now been exacerbated by such a shift toward oil and NGL-directed drilling, that it has boosted liquids production fast enough to depress liquids prices in the short term,
Take your regulator to dinner
Strategies for successful meetings
Unconventional gas is here to stay
A fine balance
Greg Stemm: Acoustics, ROVs and deep-sea shipwrecks
Asia’s tiger and lion on a global E&P hunt
Argentina’s president turns up the rhetoric
Petroleum geochemistry expanding
Colonel Drake and the whalers
Companies in the news
Industry at a glance
Meetings and Events
New products and services
People in industry
World of Oil and Gas
