E&P Notes (August 2015)
Authors: Betz Jack , Jacobs Trent , Rassenfoss Stephen 
Published: July 2016

E&P Notes

Student-Built Automated Drills Battle Granite for Glory

Jack Betz, JPT Staff Writer

The Texas A&M University team’s 8-ft maroon-colored drilling machine started lowering its bit to the surface of the test rock.

Guided by load, rotation, and vibration sensors, the drawworks inched the topdrive downward in a series of short thrusts before the bit touched the bottom. With the bit in place, a single button push was all it took for the device to begin drilling, after which it required no human guidance.

A&M was one of the four finalists in the SPE Drilling Systems Automation Technical Section’s (DSATS) first Drillbotics competition. The two-phase contest required teams of university students to submit plans for automated drills in the fall. Four finalist teams were selected to build machines and test them before judges on their respective campuses in the spring.

After an hour-and-a-half of drilling, the power tool buzzing that observers had grown used to hearing began to sound like a jackhammer. “What was that?” one of the competition organizers, Fred Florence, asked the A&M students over the loud rattling.

The team members reacted stoically by watching the output of their computer screen more closely, but never looking upset. They had stayed up all night in preparation and contest rules prevented them from making any manual corrections beyond the work already completed over the past year.

Major Oil and Gas Discoveries Offshore Mexico

Trent Jacobs, JPT Senior Technology Writer

In June, Mexico’s national oil company Pemex announced its largest discoveries of oil and gas in 5 years. Located in the shallow-water basin of the Gulf of Mexico offshore Tabasco and Campeche, the four new fields are estimated to hold 350 million bbl of oil.

Speaking at the Mexican Petroleum Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico in June, Pemex’s Chief Executive Officer Emilio Lozoya said the fields are expected to produce 200,000 B/D of oil and 170 MMcf/D of natural gas. “The certain prospect of 200,000 extra barrels of production is very good news for Pemex, for the industry, and for our country,” Lozoya was quoted as saying in press reports.

He also said first production could be achieved in 16 months. However, Jose Antonio Escalera, director of exploration at Pemex, said in a later interview that the fields would need about 3 years to achieve maximum output.

Three of the fields are located in an offshore area known as the Litoral de Tabasco and may add a combined 100,000 B/D of light crude along with 90 MMcf/D of gas. The larger single field in the Sonda de Campeche is expected to add 100,000 B/D of oil and 80 MMcf/D of gas. The last major discoveries on this scale for Pemex were the Tsimin-Xux and Ayatsil fields in 2010.

Universities Partner To Create Science Wells

Stephen Rassenfoss, JPT Emerging Technology Senior Editor

Learning by doing is taking on a new meaning at universities that are constructing “science wells” to study shale exploration and production from below, and above, the surface.

West Virginia University has begun drilling two gas wells with a vertical observation well in between them on a site not far from its campus in Morgantown, West Virginia.

The heavily instrumented vertical well is at the heart of the work by the Marcellus Shale Energy and Environmental Laboratory, a public/private partnership created to take an unusually detailed and public look at a gas well in the prolific formation.

“We thought of it as a tool for teaching, as a research lab, as well as a permanent part of the vision of what we want to do,” said Brian Anderson, director of West Virginia University’s Energy Institute, which coordinates projects including the Marcellus Shale laboratory. The university has partnered with Ohio State University, which is working on a companion effort called the Utica Shale Energy and Environment Laboratory. Both long-term studies plan to look for ways to improve how wells are designed, drilled, and produced, and research how the development of these formations will shape the area’s environment, economy, and public opinion.