1) NANOTECHNOLOGY
THE SCIENCE
OF MINI BUT MIGHTY…
Though nanorobots may sound as futuristic as flying saucers or
teleportation, Oil & Gas industry is known for making the impossible
happen!!
In June 2010, Saudi Aramco
carried out the industry’s first field test of reservoir nano-agents,
successfully demonstrating their applicability. EXPEC ARC has analyzed
850 core plugs from the Arab-D reservoir in Ghawar and mapped the distribution
of the pore throat sizes.
Nano-robots or ‘Reservoir-robots’
(resbots) are the most capable devices to independently & smartly analyze
the reservoir properties, while also continuously transfer this information
in real-time to the surface computers & engineers. These nanobots can be inserted
into the mud system & be circulated via polar bonds between them & the
particles in mud; or can be constructed in such a manner so that they posses
sensors, on board driving mechanism & micro computers as well as an
interface mechanism. Thus they can be maneuvered by engineers at the surface
via “joysticks”, instructing them to propel or stop at will! On reaching the
reservoir, these nanorobots may help to delineate the extent of the reservoir,
map fractures and faults in the rock, recognize and define pathways of higher
permeability, identify the bypassed oil locations in the field, optimize well
placement, design & generate more realistic geological models of the asset.
They may also be used to target delivery of chemicals deep into the reservoir
to recover more oil and gas.
Nanorobots can also be designed
to store the information in an on-board massive memory & astoundingly… a single nano-structured data storage
device, measuring a volume of about the size of a single human liver cell, can
store an amount of information equivalent to a standard library!!
Transmission to surface can be
done by means of electro-magnetic waves & detected by means of probes on
the surface. They facilitate wireless communication & real time
surveillance. Thus in comparison to the conventional logging, they can save rig
hours & provide real time information which is more accurate & precise
as compared to the presently used techniques such as LWD & MWD.
Imagine ten years from now, you go for an interview to a petroleum
company and the first question the interviewer asks happens to be …”How good
are you at video games?!”
2) BUGS & BEETLES ARE FRIENDS!!
Next
time before swashing a bug, ponder over. You might be harming a worthy
Production Engineer!
With over 1.25 million known species & an estimated five hundred
thousand still to be classified, earth’s ‘Bugs’ outnumbered all the other
animals combined. They make up 95% percent of all the planet’s species & an
astounding 40% of the planet’s biomass!
But why are we eulogizing bugs in this blog!? For two worthy reasons:
REASON NO 1: There are lots
of bugs & scorpions near rigs. So you should get used to their ubiquity in
nature…
REASON NO 2: Maersk Oil
Company has discovered a way to use bugs to prevent pipelines from freezing in
the Danish North!!
Scandinavian beetles & cold water fishes
produce special kind of proteins to prevent themselves from freezing in the icy
cold environments they live in. Tremendous amount of research is being done to
investigate whether this mechanism can be replicated and used as a hydrate
inhibition tool to stop ice formation inside pipelines and wells. Although the
imagination does turn riot with the news of beetles potentially coming to aid
freezing pipelines, the concept is sound.Maersk Oil Company has entered into a collaborative 4 year project that aims to boost IOR and prolong North Sea operations by using bio technology to create new solutions & overcome the challenges of mature field production. The company has also announced a US $100 million investment over the next ten years in a new research facility at the Qatar Science & Technology Park in Doha.
Hence, next time when you watch
“The Bug’s Life”, I am sure you will feel more reverence.
3) BIONIC WELLS
MIMICKING MOTHER NATURE...
A tree root seeks the wet area in soil, extending a branch of roots to
that zone & cuts off the branch once that area dries up, growing another
branch to a different moist area. Bionic wells mimic trees, but follow oil
rather than water! Once the vertical segment of the well is drilled, the well
is left to drill laterals on its own. A smart lateral extends to a non drained
oil-bearing zone, cuts off that lateral once the zone gets ‘dried out’ &
extends another lateral to a different zone & so on…
Though this concept may seem too
futuristic, the industry has achieved much of that dream. What has happened to
date in Saudi Aramco’s Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Center - Advanced
Research Center (EXPEC ARC), gives us a clear preview of the future well
technology development & built-in high-level artificial intelligence. In
various pilot study experiments, starting with the vertical wells (like root of
a simple tree), horizontal wells were drilled (a more sophisticated root system),
and then multilaterals were drilled (similar to tree roots with several
branches). Thereafter, smart downhole-control valves were added that could
choke specific laterals & effectively cut off those branches (the way a
natural root system cuts off its branches); then downhole monitoring (ICVs)
& surface controls were added that enabled analyzing the reservoir-fluid
properties & predict the onset of water (similar to the root deciding when
a zone has dried up). All this is a reality now!
The remaining technology is
advancement in drilling that would allow the well to “drill for itself”.
Admittedly, this goal is not easy, but techniques such as coiled-tubing
drilling & drilling by fluid jetting exist, while others such as laser
drilling are being researched upon!
4) PASSIVE SEISMIC
MONITORING
LISTENING TO WHAT THE RESERVOIR IS SAYING…
Thousands of induced earthquakes occur frequently, during various
phases of drilling & production, that have very faint magnitudes of −1, −2
& lower and have no tangible effect. Their signals cannot be recorded by
normal means. Ideas are being developed to research on a new technology, which
is capable of sensing these natural signals, so as to get extremely accurate
real time information of even the deepest secrets of the reservoir.
Passive-seismic monitoring involves recording of this faint seismicity (sometimes called microseismicity)
at the reservoir level to infer the distribution of faults and fractures around
the wellbore & between the wells and thereby map the flow conduits away
from the well location. This monitoring is accomplished without active seismic
sources such as vibrators or dynamite. This approach enables monitoring the
reservoir in real time rather than time-lapsed (as with 4D seismic), and it has
the potential of introducing a new method of analyzing and monitoring fluid
migration through the reservoir, pushing the effectiveness of reservoir
management to a new plateau! Though this technology is still in its infancy, it
is growing at an explosive rate and it holds promise to revolutionize how
seismic data are gathered and exploited.
Several countries of the world have deployed research groups that are
zealously researching on it. Among these are USA, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, Peru, Indonesia and even India! A recent passive-monitoring symposium
was oversubscribed, and received attendees from more than 50 countries. This
covered PSM applications ranging from fault characterization & monitoring
stimulation jobs, to deducing the effect of production and injection.
Microseismic activity has been successfully detected and located in rocks
ranging from unconsolidated sands, to chalks and crystalline rocks.
5) ARCTIC DRILLING & ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION...
5) ARCTIC DRILLING & ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION...
Alaska's outer continental shelf
has a starkly beautiful ecosystem populated by polar bears, bowhead whales and
arctic seabirds...And it is also a bonanza for oil companies. According to
government estimates, up to 23% of the oil and 21% of the natural gas remaining
in the U.S. might be found here. This is attracting oil companies from around
the world to launch their adventurous projects in this region. However, these
ambitious entrepreneurs are not the only ones with interest in the Arctic land.
Several environmentalists & wild life protection agencies too have launched
various anti-drilling campaigns in the Arctic region, thus forcing oil companies
to take several measures to protect Arctic’s environment, in an attempt to
convince the “nature’s centuries”.
ICE ROADS AND DRILLING PADS
One such technique is to build ice structures! Instead of building a gravel pad
for exploration drilling & bitumen roads for transportation, companies are
now building temporary pads of ice, which disappear after the exploration well
has been drilled. Temporary ice roads have long been used to support winter
exploration drilling on the North Slope. These vanish in the summer season
without leaving a trace!
RESEARCH ON MICROBES THAT ‘EAT SPILLS’
Any oil spill will biodegrade more slowly
in the Arctic Ocean than it would in warmer seas. "For every 10 °C decline
in temperature, the rate of biodegradation decreases by a factor of two,"
says Ronald Atlas,
professor of biology at the University of Louisville. An oil spill will degrade perhaps
one-fourth as quickly in the Arctic, where sea temperatures hover between 5 to
10 °C, than in the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures can average 25 °C”
he says. 
Hence, Oil companies have launched
several research projects on environment protection, in case of a spill. Mr.
Kostka, a scholar of marine microbiology says, that while some cold- loving
microbes are unique to the Arctic, researchers have shown that many of the
microbial species there, are the same as in the Gulf of Mexico. These microbes,
such as ‘Alcanivorax’, oxidize petroleum hydrocarbons during respiration.
"They just do it more slowly up there because respiration is a temperature-dependent
enzymatic process," Kostka says.
Seawater containing natural microorganisms was collected off the coast of Barrow, Alaska, and experiments were conducted in a temperature-controlled laboratory. Water collected in fall and winter was tested under natural temperature conditions, which ranged from -1 to +2°C (30-36°F). Crude oil from the Alaska North Slope was added to bottles of seawater. The biodegradation of oil was measured over time in two different ways: by measuring the amount of oil remaining in containers of seawater and by measuring the amount of oxygen used by the microbes. Oil remaining in seawater was measured chemically using gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks team’s
next goal is to identify the arctic oil-eating microbes using cutting edge DNA
sequencing technology. The group is also assessing the toxicity of chemically
dispersed and non-chemically dispersed oil to Arctic juvenile and larval fish
(cod and sculpin) and marine invertebrates (copepods).
6) WONDERS OF DRILLING ENGINEERING...
6) WONDERS OF DRILLING ENGINEERING...
The most
important oil well ever drilled was in the middle of quiet farm country in
northwestern Pennsylvania in 1859. This was one of the first successful oil
wells that were drilled for the sole purpose of finding oil. Little did man
realize where his journey would carry him to…
SNAKE WELLS-
The Champion
West Field provided companies with an extremely difficult challenge. This field
was characterized by numerous elongated fault plugs, each containing about 100
reservoirs, isolated by shale layers! Conventional wells failed to produce the
fields economically in this complex geology. The answer was to a drill well
that literally ‘weaved’ these reservoirs together in a snaky pattern. This
well, that could pass through the multilayered highly dipping reservoirs, hence
creating multiple drainage voids in each sand zone, was thus called the Snake
Well!
This well proved to be so
successful & lucrative, that today Brunei Shell Petroleum (idea initiator)
is operating 14 Snake Wells!
THE FISH HOOK WELLS
These are “Up-Side Down” wells! These are drilled from bottom to the top & completed from toe to heel. This well was drilled in the Syrian North flank Field. The well was first drilled vertically & then a deviation of 120 degrees upwards was done. This was to produce efficiently in the complex geology of the region.
MAXIMIUM RESERVOIR CONTACT MULTI-LATERAL WELLS-
Multilateral-well technology is
revolutionizing the way the reservoirs are accessed by wells. The ability to
create wells with multiple branches that can target widely spaced reservoir
compartments, provides engineers unlimited options in optimizing economic
extraction of oil and gas. Along with this opportunity, however, also comes the
inherent complexity of these wells’ architectures.
Due to its various technical
& economical advantages, Haradh III field of Saudi Aramko, relied
exclusively on such wells to produce 300,000 B/D from 32 smart MRC wells!
DESIGNER WELLS
Another innovation is the designer well! These
wells are drilled with a high degree of precision to reach small oil targets or
to reach through or around faults to isolated traps. This is made possible by
the use of three-dimensional seismic, which allows reservoir engineers to plot
the locations of faults and small oil traps within 100 feet of accuracy.
Tight turns in drilling are now
possible, thanks to the advancement in technology. Drillers can now turn wells
55 degrees in 100 feet and 100 degrees, about a quarter circle, in 200 feet.
Tighter turns, as tight as 100 degrees in 100 feet, too have been made, but it
was in rocks that were solid enough to support "open hole" drilling,
without a liner. Tight turns with a liner are a first for the North Slope
drillers.
One designer well drilled earlier this
year turned 270 degrees, almost a full circle. Another turned 180 degrees to
tap four separate oil pockets, with a horizontal length of 5,800 feet.
A full-circle well, to be drilled 360
degrees, is planned for the near future in the Arctic.
7) SMART FLUIDS
OVER COMING TOUGH CHALLENGES
Conventional drilling, completion &
stimulation fluids used in drilling & production operations are extremely
complex. They also have to be added with additives to meet the changes in the
environments commonly associated with a suite of drilling hazards & in
these environments conventional fluids often perform poorly.
Meet Smart fluids—A major advancement that can
revolutionize our industry!
By sensing the environment & smartly tuning
their particles’ properties accordingly, smart fluids can virtually adjust to
any environment!
These fluids are capable of
changing their chemistry & physical properties to produce the best result.
As an example, such fluids can hydrate & swell in the presence of water,
plugging the pores & preventing water movement, while shedding the water
movement & dehydrating and contracting in the presence of oil; thus
achieving rig-less shut in & saving expenditures in multitude! Tremendous
amount of research is being done on the usage of smart fluids for smart
diversion stimulation fluid for better zonal coverage, segregation of oil and
water pathways, wettability alteration agents & so on. This technology is
progressing swiftly due to relative permeability modifiers & smart
emulsified gels
In the future, we shall
eventually be able to deploy smart fluids deeper into the reservoir to change
its properties on a much larger scale. These fluids will be custom-fit &
will impart the desired behavior in the reservoir automatically. In other
words, they could be bull-headed into the reservoir & left to their own means
to work automatically, without requiring any sophisticated techniques, such as
zonal isolation & coiled tubing.
8) ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS...
ExxonMobil is to use a technology developed in the Russian
Arctic to boost output from the giant Upper Zakum oilfield, off the coast of
Abu Dhabi- namely the Artificial Islands!
Artificial islands have
been designed to create ‘lands’ on seas so as to do onshore drilling at the
offshore! Building islands at the offshore, as compared to deploying extremely expensive
offshore rigs & equipments, reduces the cost tremendously. In the Gulf,
ExxonMobil's plan of using "extended reach" drilling from four
artificial islands purpose-built for use as drilling platforms, will cut reduce
the cost of expensive offshore drilling tremendously & increase the total
volume of crude recovered from Upper Zakum to reach an exceptionally high, 70
per cent of oil in place, while raising the production capacity to 750,000
barrels per day (bpd), from about 550,000 bpd. 
Andrew Swiger, the senior vice president of ExxonMobil, said: "We
didn't come up with the concept of an artificial island. This had been thought
about by other people”. The real
challenge lies in making it work when it's a really big oilfield and to minimize
the cost and the environmental footprint and ultimately drain the oil in the
reservoir”
The answer lay in the engineering work the
company had undertaken on Sakhalin Island, off the Pacific coast of Siberia, to
improve the precision and length of the horizontal well bores it could drill to
exploit hard oil reserves.
WRITTEN BY: BATOOL ARHAMNA HAIDER
Weatherford Oil Tool Ltd.
Middle East.
batool.haider@me.weatherford.com
Weatherford Oil Tool Ltd.
Middle East.
batool.haider@me.weatherford.com
Read More »
Tags:
ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS,
BIONIC WELLS,
NANOTECHNOLOGY,
oil and gas industry,
PASSIVE SEISMIC MONITORING,
SMART FLUIDS,
TOP 8 RESEARCHES & PROJECTS IN PETROLEUM INDUSTRY
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