bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
SPE's Distinguished Lecturer Program Celebrates 50 Years
Authors: Beckwith Robin 
Published: February 2015

Distinguished Lecturer Program
SPE’s Distinguished Lecturer Program has flourished throughout its 50-year history, consistently receiving accolades from SPE members. Since 1961, more than 800 Distinguished Lecturers have traveled far and wide, many giving their presentations 30 or more times—the living embodiment of SPE’s mission as they disseminate technical knowledge concerning the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas resources, and related technologies at SPE section meetings. Twenty-one Distinguished Lecturers have also served as SPE presidents. Distinguished Lecturers continue to be a great draw for section programs, providing content that meets SPE member needs for substance and quality.
Not only are Distinguished Lecturers in constant demand, but SPE members are eager to serve as lecturers. “I feel a little guilty,” said Michael Byrne, global technical head, formation damage with Senergy and a Distinguished Lecturer during 2009–10, “because I thought this was a way to give something back to SPE, but in fact what I found was I got a lot more than I think I gave.”
Giovanni Da Prat, president of Da Prat Consulting and Distinguished Lecturer during 2003–04, echoed this sentiment: “I feel that I gained enormously from the experience of meeting people from other SPE sections, reflecting wells and reservoir conditions different than in my country.”
Participants often express that their presence in remote SPE sections fosters a sense of belonging to a worldwide technical community. “I believe the success of the program is that Distinguished Lecturers see themselves as ambassadors of SPE,” said Thomas Blasingame, professor of petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. “I also believe that Distinguished Lecturers try to bring a sense of being in the SPE family. Despite all my travels, I never felt alone or out of place.”
The First Decade
When SPE was established in 1957 as one of three semiautonomous societies within the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers (AIME), its membership was 12,500. Over the next few years as it grew to almost 15,000 members SPE began to put more emphasis on the dissemination and exchange of industry-related experience and technical information. A key aspect of its maturation came from the desire of the SPE Board of Directors to secure excellent speakers for local SPE section meetings.
Rupture Disk Valve Improves Plug-and-Perf Applications
Authors: Arguijo Andrew L. , Morford Lee , Aviles Isaac , Baihly Jason 
Published: February 2015

Technology Update
Plug-and-perf completions have proved to be the most flexible multistage well completion schemes. The main reason is that each stage can be perforated and treated optimally because options can be exercised right up to the moment the perforating gun is fired. This allows the engineer to apply knowledge from each previous stage to the stage under treatment. For example, using real-time microseismic fracture mapping techniques provides a view of where previous fractures have propagated, which enables adjustments to be made to perforating depth and pumping schedules for subsequent stages.
Some people have argued that the plug-and-perf technique is too time consuming and that it is too slow at the start because of the need to run the first stage perforating guns in with coiled tubing, stick pipe, or a downhole tractor, thus adding an unnecessary expense.
A new technique introduced by Schlumberger adds significant operating efficiency and lowers the cost of cemented, multistage fracturing by eliminating the initial perforating run. The technique uses the KickStart pressure-activated rupture disk valve to enable the first stage treatment to be combined with casing operations. In addition to reducing downtime, the technique has been shown to lower fracture initiation pressure, thereby eliminating the risk of closed perforation tunnels caused by shale swelling, and to increase the likelihood of fracturing the stage to completion.
The extensive study of geomechanics has shown that rock formations fracture at their weakest point and that the weakest point aligns with the plane of maximum horizontal stress whenever the overburden (vertical) stress exceeds lateral stresses, which occurs most of the time. The pressure-activated rupture disk valve has a unique helical port design that exposes the formation outside the casing to fracture pressure, thereby ensuring that the fracture will align with the maximum horizontal stress plane and propagate at the weakest point in the formation. A major benefit of this alignment is the reduction of tortuosity at the fracture initiation point, which significantly reduces the probability of a premature screenout of the initial fracture treatment at the toe of the completion.
Reduced-Emission Completions Improve Safety, Decrease Footprint
Authors: Dunnahoe Tayvis 
Published: February 2015

Green completions
In its proposed New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) established in August 2011, the EPA estimated that, of the 25,000 new and modified fractured gas wells completed each year, approximately 3,000 to 4,000 currently employ reduced-emission completion (REC). Once finalized, the new rule will increase this number to more than 21,000 RECs annually as operators comply with the proposed NSPS. By 2015, every hydraulically fractured well will be required to use a green completion to capture and measure all oil and gas released during the flowback and drillout phases.
Typically, the gas/liquid separator installed for normal well flow is not designed for the high-rate, four-phase (gas, hydrocarbon liquid, water, and sand) flow of a typical shale well. A common practice for the initial well completion has been to produce the well to a pit or tanks where water, hydrocarbon liquids, and sand are captured and slugs of gas vented to the atmosphere or flared. Completions can take anywhere from one day to several weeks, during which time a substantial amount of gas may be released to the atmosphere or flared.
Green completion equipment is only necessary for the time it takes to complete the well. Operators typically transport this system from site to site to be used in a number of well completions, often on a truck-mounted skid. Don Atencio, manager at Fracmaster, said, “The setup for a green completion depends on the area and the type of well you are completing.” There is no set amount of equipment that is required.
An REC can be performed with one self-contained unit, or it can be set up using individual components. Each job is based on need, the volume of gas and fluids being produced, and the size of the pad. For a multiwell pad, the equipment set up can be extensive. “Some of the work we are doing in New Mexico involves three major pieces of equipment that are too big to load onto one skid,” Atencio said.
Middle East Attacks Raise Cyber Security Questions
Authors: Henni Abdelghani 
Published: February 2015

Cyber security
Cyber attacks on Saudi Aramco and Qatar’s RasGas have forced oil and gas companies in the Middle East to heighten their computer system security controls to prevent security breaches and to protect their assets. Companies operating in the region are also reviewing their security software and firewalls to ensure that they are updated and able to withstand more attacks.
Both Saudi Aramco and RasGas were hit with the Shamoon (also known as Disstrack) trojan, which led to serious network disruptions. Shamoon takes control of a system connected to the Internet before spreading to personal computers in an organization’s network. The second stage overwrites files and the master boot record of a machine, which makes a personal computer unbootable. Computer systems at Saudi Aramco and RasGas were shut down for weeks into September after the first attacks in mid-August, but oil and gas production was not affected. Kuwait Petroleum was not hit by the attack but immediately increased security to protect its information technology systems.
The attacks were similar to those carried out against Iranian computers earlier this year that wiped numerous hard drives. Security officials said they believe the attacks were unrelated and believe it was a copycat virus.
After the attacks, Saudi Aramco organized an information technology cyber security and protection response workshop in September, inviting representatives from the Saudi Arabian government and the country’s largest corporations to discuss the issues and share best practices.
Saudi Aramco talked about its reaction to the cyber attack and shared information about its crisis management and response strategies to counter cyber security threats. “We always realized that no matter what protections we had in place, we cannot be 100% sure that our information systems will not be breached,” said Khalid Al-Falih, president and chief executive officer of Saudi Aramco. “So we developed incident response plans to deal with different kinds of scenarios and contingencies. What happened to us can happen to anyone. Working together, we can increase our collective defense.”
Technology Focus: Field Development Projects (October 2012)
Authors: Rebelo Mauricio P. 
Published: February 2015

Technology Focus
During the past years, several discoveries have been made in deep and ultradeep waters around the world. Many development projects are ongoing, and exploratory campaigns are increasing in this type of play. This latter factor will certainly result in new discoveries; it has already been seen in the presalt in Brazil, the Lower Tertiary in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, and the fields off the coast of West Africa.
One of the challenges faced by the operators is making the appropriate selection for a field development plan. This is certainly the key to a successful project, requiring several studies by the operators to allow the technical groups to understand the complexity of the reservoir.
The drilling costs in deep water continue to increase every day and represent the bigger portion of the capital expenditures for deepwater-field development. Therefore, having a good knowledge of the reservoir will help define the well design and architecture, optimizing the costs and maximizing the oil recovery.
The papers selected for this month’s issue are related to deep- and ultradeep-water field development projects and are good examples of how operators are working on studies to help make the correct decision for the development plan to be selected. Please enjoy your reading.
Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
OTC 22993 The Who Dat Development: Evolution of a Project From Lease Sale to First Production by Rick Fowler, LLOG Exploration, et al.
OTC 23172 Pazflor, a Major Step for Angola by Gaspar Martins, Sonangol
OTC 22997 Overcoming Field Development Challenges in Depleting Ultra-HP/HT West Franklin Field by Slobodan Jezdimirovic, Total E&P, et al.
SPE 147956 Modeling of a New Field Development Plan for a Giant Offshore Oil Field in the UAE by S. Bachar, Zakum Oil Development, et al.
Technology Focus: Tight Reservoirs (October 2012)
Authors: Kubala Gregory 
Published: February 2015

Technology Focus
The wave of technology change in tight-reservoir exploration and production continues to gather momentum, with completion strategies and hydraulic-fracture stimulations customized to reservoir heterogeneity and quality as the central drivers for improvement. Another noteworthy driver for technology change is environmental-footprint reduction. Proppant-placement technologies now provide production enhancement with reduction in sand and water consumption. Other technologies are enabling the reuse of produced and flowback waters.
Tubular, materials, and fluids technologies are evolving to meet the challenges encountered in tight-reservoir drilling, especially for high-temperature or high-pressure applications in “soft” rock. Completion products and practices, such as casing selection, wellhead selection, and numbers of perforations and their placement with regard to the planned fracturing stages, are evolving to enhance production from multistage-fractured, long horizontal wells while reducing the associated costs. Thanks to basinwide reservoir and microseismic data, hydraulic-fracture modeling is evolving to rationalize the apparent contradiction between anecdotal evidence and established theories for (1) fracture initiation, growth, and closure; (2) fracturing-fluid functional requirements; and (3) proppant selection, transport, and placement.
At the same time, with reservoir-specific formation and production data, there continues to be growth in the understanding of production mechanisms and their relationship to the various formation types and understanding of geomechanical responses that result from hydraulic fracturing. Examples of such understanding are changes in permeability influenced by pore volume, near-wellbore choking as a function of rock properties, and slip/shear response as a function of rock properties.
Plenty of progress remains to be made in linking together the production mechanisms, geomechanical responses, and hydraulic-fracturing models into an effective knowledge base. Opportunities still exist in then using this knowledge base to create workflows for better completion strategies and hydraulic-fracture stimulations. This month’s feature presents papers and a reading list that reflect several of these observations.
Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
SPE 148940 Stimulation's Influence on Production in the Haynesville Shale: A Playwide Examination of Fracture-Treatment Variables That Show Effect on Production by Neil Modeland, Halliburton, et al. (See JPT, March 2012, Page 62.)
SPE 155640 Gas Flow Tightly Coupled to Elastoplastic Geomechanics for Tight and Shale Gas Reservoirs: Material Failure and Enhanced Permeability by Jihoon Kim, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, et al.
SPE 147462 Improving Fracture-Initiation Predictions on Arbitrarily Oriented Wells in Anisotropic Shales by Romain Prioul, Schlumberger-Doll Research, et al.
SPE 155756 A Pore-Scale Gas-Flow Model for Shale-Gas Reservoir by Vivek Swami, University of Calgary, et al.
Optimizing Frac-Pack Completions in Multilayer and Low-Stress-Contrast Zones
Authors: Denney Dennis 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by Senior Technology Editor Dennis Denney, contains highlights of paper SPE 151870, ’Systematic Approach Used to Optimize Frac-Pack Completions in Multilayer and Low-Stress-Contrast Environment Encountered in the Usan Field,’ by M. Prada, SPE, Chevron; J. Hernandez, SPE, and R. Bouget, Total; and S. Green, SPE, Schlumberger, prepared for the 2012 SPE International Symposium and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control, Lafayette, Louisiana, 15-17 February. The paper has not been peer reviewed.
The deepwater Usan field, approximately 100 km south of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, has multiple oil-bearing turbidite sands of varying thickness and permeabilities that are separated by massive and thin shale intervals, making the selection of completion intervals difficult. Fracture-height confinement is challenging because of the small stress contrast between the sand bodies and the bounding shales and the stress-field variability in a highly compartmentalized environment. Frac-pack completions were used in this field. The main challenges, lessons learned, and improvement opportunities captured during the first 2 years of the Usan completions campaign are presented.
Introduction
The Usan oil field is offshore Nigeria in Block OML 138, approximately 60 km south of the existing Amenan field (Fig. 1). Water depth ranges from 660 to 820 m. The Usan project is a stand-alone development and will comprise more than 40 subsea wells (oil producers and water/gas injectors) connected to a floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) facility. Oil producers are completed as cased-hole frac packs (CHFPs), and the water and gas injectors are openhole expandable-screen (OHES) completions. Some of the oil producers and gas injectors are equipped with surface-operated downhole flow-control valves to enable real-time reservoir management and production optimization.
Reservoir Aspect
These Usan Tertiary reservoirs have multiple turbidite-sand bodies of 3- to 30-m thickness with permeability up to 3,000 md and are separated by 3- to 20-m-thick shale layers, making them difficult to complete. In a smaller scale, some of the reservoir targets have very-thin (&lt;5 cm) to medium (5–10 cm) laminated shale intercalations that are difficult to predict and exclude from the completion interval. Because of the strong compartmentalization, there are important variations of fluid parameters between reservoir levels and panels. Oil density ranges from 20 to 40°API, and in-situ viscosity ranges from 0.2 to 4 cp. Oil is slightly undersaturated, with an average reservoir pressure 10 to 20 bar above saturation pressure.
Emerging Frontiers: Focus on East Africa
Authors: Spath Jeff 
Published: February 2015

President's column
Over the next year, I will use this monthly column to offer my thoughts on emerging frontiers—geographic as well as techno-logical. In some columns, I’ll take a look at the hottest new oil and gas regions around the world, state-of-the-art technologies that make it possible to succeed there, and the role that SPE is playing in the region. In other columns, I’ll consider a variety of broader, cutting-edge trends and developing technologies, such as big data and the evolving face of education, and the role they are playing within our industry as a whole and, more specifically, within SPE.
East Africa
To kick off, consider one of the most dynamic oil and gas regions to emerge, quite unexpectedly, in recent years—east Africa, in particular Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.
While exploration in this area dates back to 1904, recent massive natural gas discoveries by Anadarko, ENI, Statoil, and others have catapulted Mozambique and east Africa into the spotlight. Since 2010, for example, an estimated 100 Tcf of recoverable gas reserves have been discovered offshore Mozambique alone (US Energy Information Administration, 2013). Exploration success combined with greater political stability and reasonable commercial terms has brought an unprecedented surge of investors, operators, service companies, and associated vendors into the region.
One of the more significant challenges to supporting the influx of oil industry expatriates to east Africa is inadequate infrastructure in all of these countries, especially in Mozambique, which has had little to no investment following decades of civil war. With such a promising future, however, the number of hotels, restaurants, and international banks is growing daily. In a recent visit to Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, I heard people complaining about the novelty of traffic congestion—a sign of development. Nevertheless, the country has a long way to go. Despite being one of Africa’s fastest growing economies over the last decade, Mozambique still ranks 185 out of 186 on the United Nation’s 2012 Human Development Index—below Sudan and Afghanistan (United Nations Development Programme, 2012).
Local Talent Needed
Apart from infrastructure, perhaps the greatest hurdle in developing newly discovered gas resources is the scarcity of local engineering talent. Most students in east Africa leave the country or the continent to obtain degrees in oil and gas. As you can see from Fig. 1, there is a dearth of oil and gas universities in sub-Saharan Africa overall, and east Africa in particular. Yet these nations desperately need to train professionals in the oil and gas disciplines, especially petroleum engineering. As an example, Kenya’s Ministry of Higher Education noted that, following its first commercial discovery of oil in 2012, the country needs at least 30,000 engineers to realize its goal of becoming a middle-income economy by 2030 (Wanga, 2013). Imagine how many engineers the other countries in east Africa will need to achieve their potential.
Comments: Mexico's Oil Reform
Authors: Donnelly John 
Published: February 2015

Editor's column
Momentum appears to be growing for a proposal that would more fully open Mexico to outside oil and gas investment. The move could offer attractive upstream opportunities to operators and the service sector, and intends to rescue Mexico’s steeply declining production.
The proposal by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto lacks critical details for investors and is politically controversial, but it marks the most significant step to loosen restrictions on foreign investment in decades. Mexico nationalized its oil industry in 1938, and its constitution states that ownership of natural resources belongs solely to Mexico. Oil production and reserves have been falling sharply, however, and now pose a threat to the country’s economic health. The proposed reform addresses the downstream as well as power sectors, but the changes designed for the upstream are the most contentious.
Although Mexico is the 10th largest oil producer in the world, its output last year of 2.6 million BOPD represents a 20% decline since 2002. In July, oil production dipped to its lowest level since 1995. Aging oil fields and underinvestment have contributed to the fall, as the government leans heavily on state oil company Pemex for revenue that a private company likely would reinvest in oil infrastructure. The once prolific Cantarell field, the world’s third largest when it was discovered in 1976, produced 400,000 BOPD in July, compared with a peak of 2.3 million BOPD in 2003. The new proposal argues that the oil sector needs additional investment, technology, and expertise to fully exploit promising deepwater and shale opportunities.
The proposal would allow the government to offer profit sharing to private operators. However, it is unclear whether operators would be allowed to book reserves, which could be a deal breaker. A foreign company’s share would be based on a percentage of production relative to the oil price.
The president contends that his plan would increase oil production from the current 2.5 million BOPD to 3 million BOPD by 2018 and 3.5 million BOPD by 2025. Of particular interest is exploration in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, where most of the country’s future oil potential appears to lie, which represents both financial and technical challenges, and northern Mexico, where shale basins contain an estimated 60 billion BOE. The shale basins are just south of the Eagle Ford Shale development in south Texas, which has contributed to the “shale revolution” in the United States.
Oil nationalism in Latin America runs strong. But Brazil state oil company Petrobras blossomed after it was partially privatized in 1997. After it opened its oil sector to private participation, Brazil went from a net oil importer to self-sufficiency in just a few years and production rose from under 1 million BOPD to the current 2.4 million BOPD. Its recent pre-salt discoveries may enhance its output significantly. The development of those resources could propel Brazil into the league of the world’s largest oil exporters.