bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Authors: Meehan Nathan 
Published: February 2016

SPE President's Column
The English punk rock band, The Clash, posed this question musically in 1982. It is unlikely they intended it as a starting point for a discussion on careers in petroleum engineering. Yet, this was the topic of a SPE young professionals (YPs) meeting at the Asia Pacific Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition I attended where, like everywhere else, YPs were concerned about the downturn in oil and gas prices and the resulting impact on their career choices.
Interestingly, the title of the session was “Ridin the Storm Out,” another 1980s hit by REO Speedwagon. This title implies a temporary drop in the industry, perhaps like the 2008 Asian financial crisis. In that “storm,” oil prices dropped from more than USD 140/bbl to less than USD 40/bbl; North American rig count dropped from more than 2,000 to fewer than 900.
Mapping rig activity over industry downturns since 1998 shows that the three prior storms were all relatively brief. In each of these downturns, rig activity in the US reached 80% of its prior peak activity within 2 years of the fall. Until late August last year, the current downturn had more or less tracked the previous decline in 2008. Will we recover in 2–3 years as in prior downturns, or will this be like the 1980s? What does that portend for young engineers in our industry? I do not have a magic ball, but I can share some statistics and thoughts.
During the 1980s, rig count dropped from a peak of 4,469 active rigs in November 1981 to 686 rigs in June 1986. The US rig count stayed below 1,300 from 1 March 1986 to 1 February 2005, reaching a low point of 502 rigs in February 1999. This marked the lowest rig count since Baker Hughes began reporting rig counts in the 1940s. This was not a storm. It was an ice age.
Here are a few questions you are probably pondering. Will there be jobs available? What will it be like to work in an environment of constant focus on costs and efficiency? Is this the industry in which I want to spend my career? Wherever I go, students and professionals share this concern.
Conquering Change: Lessons From the Past
Authors: Stafford Mike 
Published: February 2016

Academia
If there was one thing that I could tell you, just one thing, it would be this - you have got to stay plugged in somehow. I have seen three busts in my career so far. None of those was expected, anticipated, or planned for. I wish I could say that it was all a carefully thought-out plan and I made it happen but that is not true. It was all a result of the changes that happened in the industry and how I chose to react to them.
I started out as a reservoir engineer at City Service Oil & Gas Company (1980) when the boom was on. I liked my role, although it was the drilling engineers who were the most sought after since drilling activity was at its peak. Then one day, one of the vice presidents just walked in my office and said, “We have to get you some drilling experience; we need drilling engineers. Are you interested?” I said yes. And that is the rule in the industry: If you get an offer, a promotion, or a transfer, you need to take it whether you want to or not. Because if you do not, you will never get another job offer.
However, when the downturn hit in the mid-1980s, a lot of drilling engineers got laid off. I had to switch my specialization, again, and move into production. I rose through the ranks but then the company got bought by another firm. It was not a move that I particularly liked but that is what happens in difficult times: mergers, acquisitions, takeovers. People do whatever it takes to survive and stick around for the times to improve again. Like a surfboard on a wave, you just keep riding. Do not get in a rut; learn everything you can. The more you can learn, the more you can do and the more opportunities open up to you.
Planning Your Career Path: Is There a Magic Formula to Career Success in Oil and Gas?
Authors: Faraguna John 
Published: February 2016

Economist’s Corner
Given my experience in the recruitment and oil and gas industries, people often ask me about career progression. Often, the assumption is that jumping from company to company is the most rewarding and lucrative path. My response has been that this is not usually the case: There are certainly times where a change will progress you further and faster, but too much movement can become a liability on your résumé that will take years to correct.
According to the Global Salary Guide 2015 by Hays Oil and Gas, 25.6% of the 45,000 survey respondents indicated they had worked for their current company for 3–5 years, and 16.3% for 6 years or more. As a rule of thumb, employers like to see signs of commitment and deep skill development, which typically means staying in a job for 5 years or more.
There is no clear-cut path that will guarantee a more successful career or one that pays more. Your worth is really determined by what value you bring to the role.
Contract Worker: Enjoy the Flexibility
Traditionally, contractors command a higher rate per unit hour or project as the employer does not have to pay the same overhead as a full-time worker, and benefits from having greater workforce flexibility. Choosing specific contracts can help you develop your expertise, creating demand for your skill set based on your specialty area. For example, niche expertise can help you demand competitive pay rates, particularly in areas where there are skills shortages. However, before committing to this path, there are a few things to consider to ensure your career progresses in a manner and at a rate that is going to help you achieve your career goals.
Training Plays an Essential Role in Delivering Practical Knowledge
Authors: Apodaca Martha 
Published: February 2016

Tech 101
Practical knowledge can be defined as “knowledge attained through action” while theoretical knowledge is “knowledge attained through established facts or thoughts.” One of my favorite quotes on this matter is from the recently deceased Yogi Berra, an American professional baseball catcher, manager, and coach. Yogi was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. In addition, he was famous for his paradoxical quotes.
We are living in exponential times and knowledge is at the center of it. By the time you graduate, the skills you learned in college will be outdated and it does not stop there. Before you even feel like you have mastered your current job, you will probably transition to a new job or even a new career. The typical person changes jobs 10 to 15 times during his or her working career. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics found that people born between 1957 and 1964 held an average of 11.7 jobs from ages 18 to 51. Training will be your constant companion, and your ability to learn, apply, and relearn will be your most important skill.
Knowledge Begins as Practical Experience
The first lesson in practical knowledge is that you must make room for it. As we attain theoretical knowledge through formal education, we can get caught up in a false sense of thinking that our learning is complete. Do not fall into that trap. You will really understand that the first time you go out to the field you are side-by-side with your colleagues who are pushing the boundaries. They tackle obstacles and challenges every day. It becomes part of their nature; it becomes natural and instinctive. That is what you want to learn from them. It is important to remember that “openness and humility” are the real signs of intelligence. People will not share their valuable knowledge and experience with you otherwise.
Three Strategies To Make Your Next Career Move the Best Ever
Authors: Furbee Nancy 
Published: February 2016

HR Discussion
It is time to polish those dress shoes and update your résumé. It is time to move on from your current organization and find a place that appreciates you more. After all, you have dreams. You have aspirations. You have a career path you have been following since you graduated high school. It is time for action. But wait! Before you pull up Word to start editing your outdated résumé, follow these three “must do” strategies to ensure success.
1) Core Personality Review
Take an honest look at your core personality and what really makes you tick. And, no, I do not mean falling back on your desire to be a chief executive officer, technical expert, or high-powered salesperson. You need to spend some introspective time finding out what role is going to be a good fit for your core personality. Start with some online personality assessments such as DiSC, Myers-Briggs, Predictive Index, and many others. Find one that appeals to you, take the time to go through the assessment, and spend quality time with the results.
Personally, I am a fan of the DiSC personality assessment, where the letters stand for D–Dominant, i–influence, S–Steadiness, or C– Conscientiousness. It is simple: You will find you are either a D, i, S, or C style. Once you have your results, you will have a better understanding of “why” you like certain work situations and avoid or dislike other situations.
To take this step to the next level, I encourage you to do some additional research to find a career coach in your local area, or someone who can work with you remotely. Employing a career coach will give you someone with whom you can discuss your next career move and the results of your personality assessment. My coaching clients who have taken this extra step have been incredibly happy with their subsequent career move, even if it meant staying in their current role with a new mind-set.
The Six Minds of a Whole New Engineer
Authors: Goldberg David E. 
Published: February 2016

Guest Editorial
Early engineers of the 19th century were rock stars of their times, much like famous dot-com entrepreneurs of our times. Petroleum engineering got its start after this early “generalist” phase of the profession when the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) formed a standing committee on oil and gas in 1913.
The first petroleum engineering degree followed suit at the University of Pittsburgh in 1915, and today SPE represents more than 140,000 professional and student members around the globe. From that early formative period of petroleum engineering, technical specialization increased and continued into the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, but more recently, engineering has faced pressures to change.
Mark Somerville, a professor of electrical engineering and physics at Olin College, and I have written about this in our book, A Whole New Engineer: The Coming Revolution in Engineering Education. In particular, we spell out the six minds that all of today’s engineers need to embody to reach their full potential. They are the
Analytical mind
Design mind
Linguistic mind
People mind
Body mind
Mindful mind
Analytical Mind
Most engineers will have no trouble identifying with what we call the analytical mind. They know (and have survived) the drill of “applying” mathematics and science, so let’s move to the others.
Design Mind
When we talk about design mind, we are probably still within most engineers’ comfort zone. However, maximizing our design capabilities has had some ups and downs over the years. A report called the Grinter Report in 1955 ultimately led to (a) raising the math/science content of the engineering curriculum, and (b) reducing the design and practical content. Meetings in the 1960s helped redress some of the perceived harm of the Grinter changes by establishing capstone senior design courses at a number of schools, and increasing design content has been an important trend ever since.
Today, these design education efforts are going further. Companies such as IDEO integrate industrial design, engineering design, and applied anthropology so that design thinking connects human usage and conceptual design directly. A required second-year class called User-Oriented Design at Olin College has students working in teams with groups of individuals (firemen, soup kitchen operators, flight instructors, bicycle messengers, to name a few) over the course of the semester. The goal of the course is to create a conceptual design of technology that will improve the work lives of the group studied.
Technology Update: New Microbial Method Shows Promise in EOR
Authors: Havemann G.D. , Clement B.G. , Kozicki K.M. , Meling T. , Beeder J. , Sunde E. 
Published: February 2016

Technology Update
Tertiary oil recovery technologies can extend the economic life of maturing waterflooded reservoirs. This article describes the results from a biologically based enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technology that has improved waterflood efficiency by increasing oil production and decreasing the decline rates, thereby significantly increasing the recovery factor.
Traditional tertiary recovery processes such as thermal methods, CO2 flooding, and chemical flooding require significant changes to field infrastructure and usually involve relatively high operating expenditures of up to USD 50 per incremental barrel of oil produced.
Called Activated Environment for the Recovery of Oil (AERO), the technology used in this project represents a breakthrough in biologically based EOR by using a continuous injection of inorganic nutrients to stimulate indigenous microbes. The use of continuous injection (water and nutrients), which differentiates AERO from most previously attempted microbial EOR methods, prevents production disruptions and makes it easier to accurately measure, assess, and document the production benefits.
The key advantages of this method are
Decreased decline rates, enabling significant reserve gains
Increased oil production
Low capital expenditures
Low operating costs
Rapid response
Biological EOR uses inorganic nutrients to activate indigenous microbes, those native to the field. Because no organic carbon is introduced, the microbial growth is restricted to the interface between the injection water and the oil, the carbon source for growing the microbes. The use of indigenous microbes is advantageous because they are perfectly suited to the local conditions and, unlike externally originated organisms, are neither costly to produce nor prone to rapid death in the reservoir and are thus in need of replacement. In addition, the concentrations of the nutrients required are relatively low, a major reason for the feasibility of continuous injection and stimulation.
The technology is among the most inexpensive tertiary recovery methods available and requires only minimal changes to waterflood facilities for deployment. It can likewise be used with relatively minor modifications in fields without an operating waterflood, such as fields with a natural waterdrive or very mature fields where waterflooding has ceased.
The biological EOR technology is producing a growing body of positive results, such as the following example from Canada.
Technology Update: Rethinking Gas Lift Intervention
Authors: Mitchell Donald 
Published: February 2016

Technology Update
Gas lift is an artificial lift technique used in wells in which the natural reservoir pressure is insufficient to deliver fluids to the surface in the initial production stage or has depleted to the point of being incapable of bringing fluids to the surface.
Gas is delivered from surface-based compressors by way of the annulus between the casing and production tubing to a series of gas lift mandrels (conduits), which are positioned at strategic points within the production tubing string. When a predetermined gas pressure is reached, valves that are set within the mandrels open, causing gas to be “injected” into the production tubing, thus reducing the density of produced fluid and enabling flowback to the surface.
Various types of valves are used in gas lift mandrels, depending on the need of the well. These valves are typically preinstalled and deployed with the production tubing string during well completion and may need replacement later in the life of the well. This will require an intervention.
When designing a gas lift completion, engineers must consider a range of factors such as the availability of gas and the infrastructure on surface to process and deliver the gas into the well. Placement of the mandrel within the completion string is also critical when planning for production optimization and future intervention strategy.
The industry remains cautious when designing gas lift completions, tending to place gas lift mandrels in areas of the well that are considered accessible when using standard slickline techniques. Most operators, if possible, place mandrels at no more than a 60° deviation within the completion string. However, this approach can lead to a suboptimal gas lift completion, with the benefit of optimizing production rates, by placing mandrels at greater true vertical depth, sacrificed for ensuring the ease of intervention access.
Effective gas lift remediation has been a major challenge for the well intervention service industry and has not advanced significantly in terms of technique or operational efficiency. Slickline tools and methods are generally the same as those used when gas lift was introduced to the market about 40 years ago.
Kickover tools deployed by slickline are used to undertake the vast majority of gas lift valve maintenance. The kickover tool is attached to the bottom of a standard tool string, which includes stem (mass) and mechanical jars that are positioned just above the tool. The mechanical jars deliver a critical upward and downward shock load during valve setting and retrieval. The tool string may also include power jars to deliver a significant upward jarring force when retrieving valves, if required.
Paying Mind to Lift Systems in Mature Fields Yields Profit
Authors: Jacobs Trent 
Published: February 2016

Artificial Lift
Case studies from around the world prove that big rewards await companies that optimize the artificial lift systems keeping their mature fields alive. The success stories involve a mix of monitoring, automation, and performance tracking. Through upfront sacrifices of time and money, companies that have taken the initiative are now enjoying the benefits of better production and reduced operation costs.
For Australian production company Santos, the off-the-shelf technologies it adopted for mature fields went from “nice to have” to “must have” after its operating costs on more than 200 wells were dramatically reduced. Such improvements are even more important amid today’s low oil prices.
“Your dollars per barrel is only going one direction right now, so we need to be smart about it,” said Blair Gardner, a production optimization engineer at Santos, who led the effort to automate his company’s lift systems.
On a grander scale, the world’s largest supermajor, ExxonMobil, overhauled its artificial lift operations on approximately 1,000 oil wells in Africa with monitoring and automation
systems and gained 10,000 B/D in added production.
But by and large, these are the exceptions. Some industry experts say the status quo remains that in most mature fields, lift systems break down long before reaching the end of their expected run life. Shauna Noonan, completion technology manager and artificial lift expert at ConocoPhillips, said the technology is not to blame.
“To make a long story short, when it gets to mature fields, it is not the fact that the lift systems will not work. It is that we really need them to be reliable,” she said. “If you want the reliability, you have to be willing to pay for it and put the time into it.”
Of all the factors involved with the problem, Noonan said most of the time it comes down to a preventable human error, which she explained might be made by the manufacturer, distributor, installation crew, or the operator.
Navigating in Deep Water: Greater Rewards Through Narrower Focus
Authors: Seitz Thomas , Yanosek Kassia 
Published: February 2016

Management
The deepwater oil sector is at a crossroads. Deepwater production (defined as oil produced in water depths of greater than 450 m) has had a spectacular run over the past decade as major oil companies broadened their portfolios worldwide. Global investment soared from USD 16 billion in 2003 to more than USD 70 billion in 2013, and production has more than doubled over the past 10 years to almost 6 million B/D, or 7% of the world’s total oil supply.
The major oil companies have seen deep water as an attractive business that can deliver large volumes at high margins, more than offsetting its handicap of tying up immense amounts of capital and technical challenges. They have doubled down, betting on deep water across the globe: the average number of countries in which the supermajors participate, including investments made by BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Statoil, and Total, in deepwater projects has increased from three to seven over the past decade.
In the past 12 months, however, deep water has come under new scrutiny. Even before the recent drop in oil prices, many big oil companies have been coming under pressure from investors to rein in their capital investment. Deepwater projects typically cost billions of dollars—the average cost of the 10 most recent deepwater projects in the US Gulf of Mexico (GOM) is USD 12 billion— and have been seeing sharp cost inflation in recent years, prompting companies to review them more critically, as onshore unconventional oil and other projects now appear to offer more capital efficiency.
The heightened scrutiny is coming at a bad time for deepwater operations. Setting aside the inherent volatility of oil prices, a number of well-recognized trends are now in place that could seriously affect the value-creation potential of deep water over the next decade compared to its historical performance. First, costs have been increasing rapidly, and project delays are recurrent. Not only are shortages endemic for certain types of equipment, but also supply-chain constraints in certain basins are causing steep cost inflation. Second, deepwater players know from experience that pushing the frontiers of exploration into more challenging geological areas at evergreater depths farther from shore slows development and incurs higher costs: rigs need to be hired for more days to drill each well and require more support vessels.
Third, oil companies also know that government requirements across the major basins are increasing and these requirements will be determining factors in the financial prospects of future projects. While the precise nature of the government requirements varies in different basins—whether it be degrees of operatorship control, local content requirements, new environmental regulations, or the share of revenue taken by governments—they all tend to reduce margins.