bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
En Route: The New Generation
Authors: Labastie Alain 
Published: February 2015

President's column
During my various trips to visit SPE sections, I have on most occasions also met with students. I also had the opportunity to meet with groups of young professionals, mostly in dedicated workshops. These were very interesting and pleasant experiences.
All these young people are quite impressive. The way they are organizing their SPE activities and the initiatives they are taking denote more maturity than my generation exhibited at the same age. For them, SPE is really a prestigious organization, and they have fully understood how to take best advantage of what is offered by our Society. They are really open minded. To them, globalization is not just a concept; they have abolished many borders, and they want to establish contact across legacy borders. Last year, I attended a meeting in Poland that was organized by students for students from all our European student chapters. This experience was really wonderful—an intense exchange of ideas between students from Siberia to western Europe, with also very lively social activities. (This is important for students! Note that I did not join all of these.) These students fully under-stood that SPE forms a unique community, without borders.
When meeting with these students or young professionals, I noted some-thing interesting: the questions they are asking are almost the same everywhere. Typical questions are about how to start a career, technical vs. managerial careers, oil companies vs. service companies, and work/life balance. Our young professionals are really open to the outside world, to the Society. I believe that for them the image of the “industry hero” is somewhat different than for the older generations—their “industry hero” is somebody who is fully loyal to his/her company, but who no longer devotes all of his/her time and energy for his job, and who keeps some time available for social activities. As an example, many groups of young professionals and students are involved in charitable activities. I believe that this balance is excellent for the industry. The public’s perception of what is socially and environmentally acceptable is quickly changing and will play an increasingly important role in our activities. Having staff who are more attuned to societal issues will definitely help us to better understand public perceptions of our industry.
Another positive point is that this young generation includes a much higher proportion of women than in the past, which will certainly reshape our industry. Diversity—in cultural background, education, experience, and gender—provides different perspectives that can lead to greater innovation. Companies with a gender balance will have a clear advantage.
Shaped Charge Patents 1942-1952: From Optimism to Solutions
Authors: Atzmiller Noel 
Published: February 2015

In the 1940s, the majority of research in America into shaped charge technology was performed by the US military and government laboratories. Information was largely classified. Shortly after the US Army declassified some details of this technology, extensive research and testing began in many American companies. Along with this came the filing of several patents. These US patents from the early years of shaped charge design reveal a transition from an almost naive optimism over the nascent technology to solutions for oilfield issues. A focus on the early claims and the issues with carriers and charge detonation reveals much in this regard.
The Early Years—Optimism and Uncertainty
A patent filed by E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company in 1942 (2399211) typified the wave of optimism of shaped charge capabilities (this was not too unexpected, for du Pont manufactured the charges) (Fig. 1). Liners for the charges were not required, stated the document, but if they were present the metal slugs (“carrots”) produced from the detonation would be “projected at very high velocity through the perforation and into the adjacent strata.” In other words, the liner remnant was a positive consequence of the detonation. The patent also advocated the use of plastics or cardboard materials for the carrier, stating that the charge “may or may not be enclosed in a watertight container…they are generally insensitive to the action of water and impervious thereto.”
Two years later, another du Pont patent (2605703) described a “novel and improved explosive device.” The document provided many details about shaped charge liners, but admitted that an understanding of why the devices worked was unclear and speculated the penetration was due to “pulverizing, molecular fragmentation or abrasion.” Even the liner was considered a contributing factor in the “net destructive effect,” but the patent admitted it “was not possible to determine this.”
A Gulf Research and Development Company patent filed in 1945 (2494256) proposed a panoply of shaped charge configurations—as if to cover all possible uses. The document mentioned “numerous results of our experiments” that verified the penetrating power of the lined shaped charge and revealed the charges should be “provided with a suitable cover to pre vent any liquid entering the cavity (the liner).” The patent optimistically predicted that a slug would be “sufficiently small to pass through the hole in the casing and come to rest deep in the formation where it has negligible effect on the flow of fluids through the hole.”
The Great Crew Change: A Challenge for Oil Company Profitability
Authors: Coton Simon 
Published: February 2015

Talent & Technology
We have all heard about the “great crew change,” the coming decade in which 50% of experienced and managerial personnel of international oil companies industrywide are expected to retire. While this will not all happen on a single day, it will create simultaneous gaps of unprecedented proportions in the staffs of many international and national oil companies.
As bleak a picture as such a summary suggests, the great crew change is only part of the personnel problem that will be common to oil companies over the next decade. The same period will be marked by many foreseeable challenges in virtually all producing areas of the world.
Take two examples: Iraq and Brazil. Iraq has already stated a goal of increasing oil production from the present 2.5 million b/d to 12 million b/d. Its infrastructure is outdated and war-torn. Needed power plants are yet to be built. Increased production will require three barrels of water for every barrel of oil produced, or a virtual river of 10 million BWPD flowing into the desert of northern Iraq. Material and logistics issues will be unprecedented. Iraqi projects alone could employ a large percent-age of the decade’s new engineers in all specialties.
Brazil has recently committed USD 200 billion to its five-year development plans. Their projections for these ambitious and well-funded goals show an estimated shortfall of 40,000 engineers stretching into the distant future.
But the competition for skilled and creative people does not stop: Some of the biggest oil and gas finds in the world are waiting development under the crushing Arctic ice of northern Siberia. Ultradeep subsea projects are getting deeper and farther from land by the year. National companies are also looking for the same kind of talent. Graduating engineers receive competitive offers from nuclear power and renewable projects proclaiming the careers of tomorrow. All of these factors are converging in the same decade.
Yet, even while facing such issues, international oil companies are questioning two of their traditional employment models: heavy reliance on expatriate workers abroad and heavy reliance on long-term career hires at home. Both practices will make workforces increasingly expensive in coming years.
The use of expatriate workers is already problematic both for host countries and foreign companies. Some countries now defensively ration expat positions by taking three to five months to process applications for work permits and visas. Additionally, a company wishing to employ an expatriate may have to satisfy protracted requirements to prove a negative, i.e., that there is no qualified national of that country available to do a given job.
On the home front, outside of core employee job tracks, the old model of long-term career hires will be incredibly expensive for international and fast-growing national companies. It will also be hard to implement in any worldwide operations where expat employees are increasingly restricted by host governments.
Technology Focus: Offshore Drilling and Completion (April 2011)
Authors: Santos Helio 
Published: February 2015

Technology Focus
It has been a year since a tragic event in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the industry to rethink procedures and regulations on offshore drilling and completion around the world. Our evolution process has been marked by learning from mistakes, and that event should be no exception. Questions such as “What should we do differently to reduce risks?” and “Is there a safer way to perform this operation?” should be always asked, regardless of statistics that indicate we have been doing a good job. There is always room for improvement, and when dealing with lives—whether human, plant, or animal—there should be no limits.
The event last year also triggered more discussion and awareness about well integrity, including about how wells should be designed and constructed to face natural events. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis are examples of natural events that we must take into account when designing and constructing a well. Most engineering structures that greatly affect the environment and human lives (e.g., buildings, dams, and airplanes) are designed considering parameters involving several times the expected life time of that structure, and with a generous safety margin when uncertainties exist. An offshore well falls into this category, regardless of how you analyze or look at it.
Understanding the challenges of the environment where we will construct our well, looking at available options and technologies that can reduce the risks, and learning from experiences are three basic steps that we should always take. The papers selected here try to cover these three aspects.
Offshore Drilling and Completion additional reading available at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org
SPE 128302 • “Innovative Use of Plug-and-Abandonment Equipment for Enhanced Safety and Efficiency” by Delaney Olstad, SPE, Weatherford International, et al.
SPE 139493 • “Emergency Severance of Casing for Deepwater Operations: A Design, Build, and Test Program of Novel Technologies” by N. Richmond, Geoprober Drilling, et al.
SPE 132701 • “Equipment-Design Change Improves Cementing Operations From MODUs Operating in Rough-Sea Environment: Case Histories for Two North Sea Jobs” by T.H. Romstad, Statoil, et al.
SPE 137223 • “Casing-Wear Prediction and Management in Deepwater Wells” by Bill Calhoun, Chevron, et al.
SPE 136392 • “Independent Verification of Safety-Critical Elements” by Julien Marty, Bureau Veritas, et al.
Drilling From an FDPSO: A Two-Stack Approach
Authors: Bybee Karen 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper OTC 20491, ’Drilling From an FDPSO: A Two-Stack Approach,’ by Kenneth C. Hampshire, SPE, and J. Greg Noles, Murphy West Ltd., and Albert Kachich, Doris Inc., originally prepared for the 2010 Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 3-6 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
One reason for the success of the Azurite floating drilling, production, storage, and offloading (FDPSO) vessel was the innovative approach in specifying the equipment to fulfill the drilling requirements. This resulted in the specification and deployment of many unique drilling components that combine to make up the drilling structure that extended from the seafloor to the surface.
Introduction
The Azurite field is in 4,600-ft water depth in the Mer Profonde Sud Block offshore Republic of Congo, a part of the world that is without significant infrastructure to transport or store hydrocarbons. As a result, a requirement for developing the Azurite field was to find a way to combine drilling activity and oil storage economically. To do this, a drilling rig was installed on a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessel—making it an FDPSO. This unique and innovative combination presented a variety of challenges. To address these challenges, one solution was to use two blowout-preventer (BOP) stacks while drilling, to ensure well control and reduce drilling risk.
Two-Stack Rationale
Controlling wellbore pressure is paramount to safety in drilling operations. Conventional deepwater-drilling operations use a subsea stack of BOPs to achieve this. Many combinations of closure scenarios are available with a properly specified stack to reduce or remove internal pressure in the riser column above the stack. Well control requires frequent actuation of BOP functions.
Functionality and ease of maintenance would be enhanced greatly if the stack could be installed above the water line. Additionally, the size and weight of the surface stack would be significantly smaller than a subsea stack. The riser also would be simplified in that it would not need to carry hydraulic control lines down to the stack, and the riser would not need to have a choke or kill line.
The idea of having a wellhead connected to a stack mounted above the water line with a high-pressure riser system was appealing, but having no protection at the seabed was not. The Azurite project team recognized that if the integrity of the riser was compromised for any reason and drilling or reservoir fluids escaped, the environmental consequences would be unacceptable. To address this concern, another stack, customized to safeguard against such an occurrence, was specified that would be a standalone module that would not require the rigorous functionality of the surface stack or require control lines running down to it from the surface. This package was called the subsea isolation device (SID). Fig. 1 shows the surface stack (left) and the SID.
Operational Risk Analysis of LNG Loading
Authors: Bybee Karen 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Assistant Technology Editor Karen Bybee, contains highlights of paper OTC 20982, ’Operational Risk Analysis of LNG Loading,’ by B.H.K. Chin, P. Friis-Hansen, and T.G. Saetren, Det Norske Veritas, originally prepared for the 2010 Offshore Technology Conference, Houston, 3-6 May. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
The increased interest in risk analysis is the result of several operators wanting to understand properly their risks in the operational phase, and in this way, through proper preparedness, to avoid or mitigate incidents and major accidents and to improve resilience toward these unwanted events. The full-length paper presents the results of a detailed risk analysis of a liquefied natural-gas (LNG) export loading operation at a jetty. The analysis takes into account the interaction between the vessel crew and the land-based operators.
Introduction
The objective of operational risk management is to satisfy multiple requirements of multiple stakeholders to control losses from operations. One particular objective of an operational-risk-management system is that it should provide a strong ability to forecast conditions and give input to management before the development of dangerous conditions. A second objective is to approach risk in a holistic way in assessing risk from unwanted losses resulting from loss of life and property and the effects on the environment. This requires a thorough understanding of the technical-systems reliability, of the organizational performance, and of how the interaction between the two affects the total-systems performance. This implies that a practical requirement for risk management of unwanted losses during the operation phase is that the risk modeling should encompass the systemic interactions between technical and human organizations. The solution for systemic risk requires a holistic perspective in hazard identification, risk analysis, and risk mitigation. This may provide the operator with a useful set of risk-based indicators to guide the risk-management process.
Case-Study Description
The intent of the test case is to model the loading mode at an LNG jetty, identifying potential failure scenarios and determining the risk profile for the loading operation. The main objective is to determine the safety and on-time performance of the loading operation. The investigation examines the possibility of technical failures, the errors caused by individual human performance, the organizational influences on the operation, and the combined factors from interfacing two sets of technical and human organizational systems (i.e., the land-based jetty operation and the ship-based operation).
The process of transporting LNG has inherent risks associated with it. The LNG is handled in cryogenic conditions and if released, the vaporized gas can form a flammable or explosive mix with air at a flammable range of 5 to 15% concentration. The LNG carrier is on fixed charter, and the delivery performance is affected directly by the on-time performance of the LNG loading.
Drilling Performance Is a Function of Power at the Bit and Drilling Efficiency
Authors: Pessier Rolf , Wallace Steven , Oueslati Hatem 
Published: February 2015

This article is a condensed version of paper IADC/SPE 151389, presented at the 2012 International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC)/SPE Drilling Conference and Exhibition, held in San Diego, California, USA, 6-8 March 2012.
Understanding of basic drilling mechanics has been greatly enhanced by the use of today’s sophisticated data acquisition systems for both surface and downhole drilling data. These systems have also helped in identifying major dysfunctions—particularly, harmful downhole vibrations. Various methods are used to optimize drilling practices, including monitoring efficiency indicators, such as mechanical specific energy (MSE), as well as preventing harmful vibrations by adjusting drilling parameters real time.
However, focusing on the efficiency of components and the prevention of dysfunctions is only a partial solution. It is also necessary to focus on the magnitude of mechanical power delivered to the bit, as that defines the capacity of the system and directly affects efficiencies, operating practices, and performance.
The paper shows how the power at the bit and drilling efficiency vary as a function of drillstring and bottomhole assembly (BHA) configuration, bit selection, and drilling parameter. Field examples illustrate the magnitude of parasitic losses caused by well geometry and the downhole environment. In many cases it is striking to learn how little power is left for the drill bit, which in the end dictates the potential rate of penetration (ROP) and thus the cost per foot and economics of the drilling process.
Particular emphasis has been put on new and intuitive ways to visually display the power at the surface and downhole. These make it possible to quantify system limits and identify key dysfunctions in one simple graph that can be used in real time as well as in both pre- or post-well analysis. Better understanding of the entire drilling system and the functional relationship of its parts can be a strong driver for both short- and long-term improvements in system design, drilling practices, and bit selection, ultimately resulting in higher productivity and lower well construction cost.
Introduction
The oil and gas industry, unlike others, seldom focuses on power requirements for the rotating drilling system and their effect on performance and efficiency. This might be explained in part by the fact that for about 100 years roller cone bits have been the industry’s preferred drilling tool. Roller cone bits require relatively little torque due to their low aggressiveness, and, due to the limited load capacity of the bearings, they act as perfect torque limiters. The rotating power system therefore utilized only a small fraction of the total installed power of a rotary drill rig; lack of power was not considered a limiting factor.
Technology Focus: Offshore Drilling and Completion (April 2012)
Authors: Santos Helio 
Published: February 2015

Technology Focus
In the 2 years since the Macondo incident, we have seen a lot of action toward new regulations, procedures, and norms to be implemented in an attempt to reduce the risks of those tragic events happening again. But the industry did not stop working; wells were drilled and completed, even in the Gulf of Mexico after the long period of inactivity. As expected, we saw a big focus on subsea-equipment testing and procedures and on needed equipment improvements. But we also saw many reports highlighting improved operational performance, confirming that the industry continues with significant activity.
We should work proactively with the public and regulators to bring a framework that will lead to a safer environment for everyone. And we should not be happy with just more paperwork that may not bring needed effective improvement. For obvious reasons, the first step has been focused on the equipment responsible for providing the last barrier of protection, the blowout preventer (BOP). One paper describes BOP upgrades, and another one discusses software-based deepwater-BOP testing. We all must recognize that there has not been a significant advance in terms of BOP testing in the last 30 years. We are still relying, most of the time, on the old paper disks to record tests and on forms filled in by hand to confirm the pressure and duration of the tests prepared on each component tested. We should do much better than that.
The third paper highlights the drilling campaign in a promising offshore area in Brazil. But do not forget the underground blowout that leaked oil into the ocean offshore Brazil a few months ago, reminding us that continuous improvement of all offshore operations must take place. The alternative is that we again will face setbacks like those in the Gulf of Mexico after the Macondo accident.
Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
IPTC 14868 RasGas Rigless Drift Experience: New Technology and Evolving Best Practice—North Field, Qatar by Russell R. Van Nuis, RasGas Company, et al.
OTC 21925 Large-Bore Expandable Liner Hangers Significantly Improve Operational Cost in a Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Well by Michael Johnson, Halliburton, et al.
SPE 145876 Temporary Storm/Cyclone Well Suspension Using Inflatable-Packer Systems by Colin Ingram, SPE, TAM International