bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Asphaltene: To Treat or Not
Authors: Becker Harold L. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
The work described in this paper has been conducted over several years under both laboratory and field conditions. Several field case histories and supporting laboratory observations are presented to substantiate the conclusions expressed.
Asphaltenes are often invoked to describe the nature of organic damage and obstructions found when atypical forms of organic deposits appear. In fact a majority of problems studied by this laboratory have been misidentified as asphaltene when the true problem was due to paraffin wax deposition. Asphaltenes are poorly understood, consequently methods aimed at dealing with deposit mechanisms and chemical prevention present a doubly difficult challenge. Asphaltene deposition mechanisms and the chemical structures responsible are less well characterized than those of emulsion breaking, corrosion protection, and paraffin deposit control. Since most asphaltene deposits are associated with paraffin and there exists many proven methods of paraffin control, in many cases it makes better sense to attack organic deposit problems with paraffin control products than some unproven "asphaltene inhibitor".
This paper suggests that adequate methods exist today for the removal and control of paraffin wax damage, and that methods for the control of asphaltenes are still in a relatively embryonic state of development. Until the day comes that asphaltenes are well understood chemically, as are waxes, emulsions, corrosion, and scale, the hope of economically treating them will remain a problem for research.
Plunger Lift Benefits Bottom Line for a Southeast New Mexico Operator
Authors: Schneider T. S. , Mackey V. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
The development of the Eumont gas play in Lea County, New Mexico created unacceptably high operating costs associated with gas well production. Two major issues were economically producing low pressure gas wells (1.5-2 psi/100 feet) with low connate water production and proppant production. The first choice for artificial lift once loadup occurred was beam pumps. Sand production and low fluid volumes however forced a paradigm shift to evaluate plunger lift as an alternative based on the low fluid volumes and low bottom hole pressures. The end result has reduced operating costs by over 70% in the areas that plunger lift has become the primary artificial lift method and reduced the lease expense per BOE by 25% over the 2-1/2 year implementation period.
This paper discusses the steps taken to apply basic plunger lift concepts and progresses to the current plunger lift system that incorporates annular flow to minimize bottom hole pressure; therefore maximizing production. Evidence will be presented to validate that switching from beam pump to plunger lift has on average increased production. Integrating this "new found" technology on high GLR oil wells has been beneficial as well.
Practical Applications of Compressor Sizing
Authors: Gajjar Hasmukh N. (Hasu) 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
Production companies purchase natural gas compressor packages designed for specific operating conditions. When those conditions change, the operator may be uncertain about utilizing the compressor package on the same application or moving it to another location. By following a concise procedure, an operator can determine the fitness of equipment for a new assignment. He must take into account the performance parameters of the engine, the compressor frame and cylinders, and the heat exchanger. With full information on gas analysis, brake horsepower of the engine, compressor frame and cylinder sizes, and pressure pulsation control, the operator can make the most efficient use of equipment.
New Production Logging Sensors Revolutionize Water/CO2 Conformance in the Pumping Wells of West Texas
Authors: Logan Dale , Strubberg Carl , Conner John 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
The Permian Basin is a mature oil province where many fields are under secondary and tertiary recovery. Waterfloods abound and it is not uncommon to have wells that make 20 BOPD and 2000 BWPD. At today's oil price the economics of these fields are marginal on a good day. The operators of these reservoirs would like to be able to shut off some of the water production without losing a drop of their meager oil production. Ideally, the drop in water production would affect relative permeability and result in an increase in oil. The only technique available to shut off water has been the "plug-and-see" (also known as the hunt-and-peck) method. Experience with this technique indicates that in 60% of the cases either the water cut increases or the oil production decreases.
If the reservoir engineers better understood where the oil and water were coming from they would be more successful in using plugs to decrease the water flow. There have been two major roadblocks to the successful application of production logging. First, the wells do not flow naturally so pumps are used. As a result the production logging string cannot get to bottom. Second, even if tools could be placed below the pump, conventional production logging tool strings cannot accurately detect oil cuts below 5%. Until the introduction of the new PS Platform* production services tool string, West Texas waterflood operators had no way to accurately determine what was happening downhole.
The sensors on the PS Platform string not only measure very low oil cuts, but the tool string has also been placed below electronic submersible pumps (ESPs) in an ingenious rig-up technique that required a joint effort between Schlumberger Wireline and REDA. Once the pump is turned on and flow stabilizes, the sensors can measure very low oil rates accompanied by high water rates.
This paper describes the use of the new technique on two wells in the Altura Midland Farms Unit. In both cases the PS Platform was deployed below an ESP and delivered high-quality answers that significantly impacted the economics of the field. These successes consequently lead to the use of the PS Platform sensors, in conjunction with TDT* Thermal Decay Time tool, in tertiary CO2 floods.
Low Permeability Gas Reservoirs and Formation Damage -Tricks and Traps
Authors: Bennion D. B. , Thomas F. B. , Imer D. , Ma T. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
As drilling and completion technology advances, the trend to exploitation of gas reservoirs exhibiting ever lower permeabilities continues. This paper discusses issues associated with the identification of productive, low permeability, gas-producing formations and the successful completion and production of these reservoirs. For the purposes of this paper, a very low permeability gas reservoir is defined as a formation having an in-situ matrix permeability to gas of 0.5 mD or less. Criteria are presented for identifying economic absolute permeability cutoffs for low permeability gas-bearing formations. Very low permeability gas reservoirs are typically in a state of capillary undersaturation where the initial water (and sometimes oil) saturation is less than would be expected from conventional capillary mechanics for the pore system under consideration. These formations are commonly referred to as dehydrated or desiccated formations and have been documented on a worldwide basis. Retention of fluids (phase trapping) is discussed as one of the major mechanisms of reduced productivity, even in successfully fractured completions in these types of formations. As well, a variety of diagnostic and remedial treatment options are presented.
Residual Gas Saturation Revisited
Authors: Kantzas Apostolos , Ding Minghua , Lee Jong 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
The determination of the true residual gas saturation in gas reservoirs is addressed in this paper. It is customarily assumed that when a gas reservoir is overlaying an aquifer, water will imbibe into the gas-saturated zone with the onset of gas production. The process of gas displacement by water will be forced imbibition in areas of high drawdown and spontaneous imbibition in the areas of low drawdown. It is further assumed that in the bulk of the reservoir spontaneous imbibition will prevail and that the reservoir is water-wet. A final assumption is that the gas behaves as an incompressible fluid. All these assumptions are challenged in this paper. The topics of imbibition and wetting phase film flow are reviewed along with a brief summary of the work on the determination of residual gas saturation to date. Furthermore, a series of experiments are presented whereby it is demonstrated that the residual gas saturation obtained by a short imbibition test is not necessarily the correct residual gas saturation. Imbibition tests by different methods yield very different results, while saturation history and core cleaning also seem to have a strong effect on the determination of residual gas saturation. In some cases, it was found that the residual gas by spontaneous imbibition was unreasonably high. This was attributed to weak wetting conditions of the core (no water "pull" by imbibition). It is expected that this work will shed some new light in an old but not so well understood topic.
Properties of Paleocene Fort Union Formation Canyon Seam Coal at the Triton Federal Coalbed Methane Well, Campbell County, Wyoming
Authors: Nelson Charles R. , Hill David G. , Pratt Timothy J. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
This paper presents results from evaluations of geochemical, petrographic and reservoir properties of Powder River Basin, Paleocene Fort Union Formation Canyon seam subbituminous coal at the Triton Federal #21C-2623 coalbed methane well in Campbell County, WY. The core analysis data reveal that at this location the Canyon seam coalbed is a multi-layered reservoir with each layer having different bulk compositional and fluid mobility properties. A very unique reservoir property of this subbituminous coal is its extremely fast gas desorption rate, which, in turn, facilitates a high early time gas production rate from the coalbed reservoir. The core analysis data indicate that the gas desorption rate is dependent on the maceral composition of the bulk coal organic matter.
It was found that several commonly used coal and coalbed reservoir property analysis methods required modification to prevent or minimize errors due to subbituminous coal's propensity to undergo aerial oxidation and desiccation. The occurrence of these processes during sample handling, storage or testing causes significant (15% or greater) underestimation errors in key reservoir properties such as the in-situ gas content, moisture holding capacity, sorbed gas composition, and percent gas saturation. Effective methods for avoiding or minimizing subbituminous coal property analysis errors due to oxidation and desiccation are described in this paper. Because these error prone analysis practices have been commonly used in the past, there may be significant potential for large coalbed methane resource and reserve estimate gains in this and other Rocky Mountain region basins.
Imports
Authors: O&apos;Connor Lawrence J. 
Published: December 2007

O'CONNOR JR., LAWRENCE J., ADMINISTRATOR, OIL IMPORT ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
It is a pleasure and honor to be with you today. I do not come to this meeting as a stranger to the American Institute of Mining Engineers because a large portion of my adult life has been spent in professional and personal contact with the members of AIME's Society of Petroleum Engineers.
Secretary of the Interior Udall has asked me to convey his personal greetings to you. Secretary Udall is new in the Department of the Interior, but let me assure you that his interest in the energy problems of the United States is far from newly acquired. Since he has assumed his new post, he has taken an active and vigorous interest in the oil problems of the Nation.
Also, I wish to extend to you the best wishes of John M. Kelly, a member of AIME, who has been recently nominated by President Kennedy to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Mineral Resources. Mr. Kelly is a professional petroleum engineer, and, in accepting this new responsibility, will bring a broad background of knowledge of oil and fuel problems to the post.
The Department of the Interior, through Secretary Udall, is the principal petroleum policy making body in our Federal Government—it is the agency of executive responsibility which devotes more time, effort, and thought to our complex national fuels problems than any other body in Washington.
The Department takes an active interest in all phases of oil—from the first shot of the seismographic crews to the ultimate delivery to the home and automobile of the Nation's consumers. And, the Department, through my office, the Oil Import Administration, has primary operational control over the flow of imports of petroleum and petroleum products into the United States from all other petroleum producing areas of the world.
Benefits of Using Deliquescing Desiccants for Gas Dehydration
Authors: Bowman Bob 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
Deliquescing desiccants have been used for gas dehydration for over 40 years. Historically this technology had limited applications due to poor desiccant quality and integrity, equipment design problems, operational difficulty, and limited drying ability. Recent advances in dry material blending and tableting, formulation, and equipment design have greatly expanded the application range of deliquescing desiccants. Deliquescing desiccants are now used to dry sales gas, fuel gas, sour gas, excess or "peak" gas, and for hydrate control. Operating and capital costs compare favorably to traditional TEG systems. Field data verifies the drying ability and performance of deliquescing desiccant systems. Because of the operational simplicity and closed system design, deliquescing desiccants offer many advantages over traditional drying methods such as triethylene glycol, including: no VOC or BTEX emissions, no ground contamination, no fire hazard, low capital expense, low maintenance, no "turn down" concerns, and simple operation. Used for hydrate control in gathering systems, desiccants offer a simple and inexpensive method to dry below pipeline dewpoint thereby allowing trouble free gas flow from wellhead to processing plant. At the plant, gas is further dehydrated to meet pipeline requirements. Desiccants have substantial advantages for drying sour gas both for hydrate control and pipeline sales. There are no emissions, odors, or glycol contamination, and vessels can be over-sized to extend the service interval to only several times per year, greatly reducing employee exposure to hydrogen sulfide. Because of it's simplicity and small footprint, desiccant drying of fuel gas yields increased revenues by using suction gas, not sales gas, for compressor fuel. The entire compressor throughput capacity can be sold, instead of a portion being used for fuel. Desiccant dehydration is well suited for remote, unmanned locations, which are not visited daily. Because operation is simple and service intervals long, operators can schedule maintenance and service weekly or even monthly. This reduces total operating costs and labor requirements.
Near-Critical Models of Thermodynamic Behavior for Gas-Condensate Mixtures
Authors: Gorodetsky E. , Panfilov M. , Kabanov N. , Sedykh A. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
Thermodynamic state of any hydrocarbon mixture in gas-condensate reservoir is characterized by the near-critical behavior. The new approach is proposed to simulate the behavior of gas-condensate mixtures under high temperature and pressure. Instead of the classical approach based on the updated theory of ideal gases, the new approach is based on the theory of fluid behavior in wide vicinity of critical point. New equations of state are proposed. Anomalous properties of gas-condensate mixtures appropriated to the near-critical systems are detected. They are the anomalous fluid density profile in gravity field, the influence of porous medium of thermodynamic fluid behavior. These phenomena are shown to significantly affect the hydrocarbon reserves estimation.
Oklahoma and Louisiana Statute—Help in Times of Low Oil Prices
Authors: Joyner Hagan D. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
In the United States both state and federal government have provided incentives in recent years to maintain production, increase production, and discover new production. On the state level, the incentives involve mostly abatement or rebate of severance taxes. Oklahoma and Louisiana (and possibly other states) have had severance tax relief statutes in recent years that are producer helpful in maintaining production in times of low oil prices. All of the incentives are noted but the two discussed most require no investment by the operator. This paper gives a brief history of the statutes which might be considered relatively generous. In the case of Louisiana, the major statute could be considered farsighted in nature. Oklahoma's incentives history shows a rapid willingness to adjust to help maintain production. The paper also comments on the applicability of use of the statutes.
A Risk Analysis of Transition Zone Drilling
Authors: Turley John A. 
Published: December 2007

American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, Inc.

Abstract
A technique has been developed to aid the drilling operator in making minimum-cost decisions regarding the selection of casing points. A mathematical model of the typical pressured environment drilling situation is operated on pressured environment drilling situation is operated on by Monte Carlo simulation techniques to generate quantified expected-loss information as a function of the systems various drilling and environmental parameters. Results indicate that it is possible to determine those combinations of mud weight, kick tolerance, and implied formation pressure that preclude further drilling and that economically justify the running of casing.

Introduction
One of the objectives of optimized drilling is to make as much footage as possible prior to running the next string of casing. prior to running the next string of casing. This philosophy has several advantages, two of which are significant to this analysis:Maximizes the fracture pressure of formations exposed at the most recent casing shoe.Maximizes the amount of hole logged and safety protected by casing during subsequent drilling.
In the context of this study, there is also a significant disadvantage to setting pipe at extreme depths, especially where mud pipe at extreme depths, especially where mud weight requirements are known to increase with depth; namely, that the deep-casing philosophy minimizes the margin of safety between open-hole fracture pressure and required mud weight.
The name of the game then, is "How deep can an operator drill and set pipe so as to be able to benefit by the advantages and not be overwhelmed by the disadvantages?"
A trite, but logical, answer is "Either drill and pay the price of the risks involved, or set pipe and pay the price of new casing, whichever is cheaper."
Comparison of Core Petrophysical Properties Between Low-Permeability Sandstone Reservoirs: Eastern U.S. Medina Group and Western U.S. Mesaverde Group and Frontier Formation
Authors: Byrnes Alan P. , Castle James W. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
Comparison of petrophysical properties between Eastern U.S. Silurian-age sandstones and Western U.S. Cretaceous-age sandstones illustrates the universality of certain low-permeability reservoir properties. In the Medina insitu porosities are generally within 97% of routine porosities and in Mesaverde-Frontier are approximately 0.8 porosity percent less than routine porosities. In both groups insitu Klinkenberg permeability (ki) exhibits an increasing difference from routine air permeability with decreasing permeability. Both groups of low-permeability sandstones exhibit very similar decrease in "irreducible" water saturation (Siw) with increasing ki. However, lithologic variations that are related primarily to grain size and shaliness cause variance in Siw at any given permeability. Both eastern and western low-permeability sandstones exhibit sharp decrease in gas relative permeability (krg,Siw) with increasing Siw. The krg,Siw values are generally less than 5% at Siw greater than 60%. Although average krgSiw is low and average Siw is high, these sandstones typically produce water-free gas. Analysis of cumulative flow capacity in wells in both regions indicates that a significant fraction of total flow capacity often comes from a few, thin, higher permeability intervals within generally low-permeability sandstone. Although storage capacity declines with decreasing permeability due to increasing Siw, low-permeability intervals still represent a significant fraction of total storage.
Effects of Diagenesis on Neural-Network Grain-Size Prediction
Authors: Faga A. T. , Oyeneyin B. M. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
The use of gamma-ray log shapes to determine grain-size trends is commonplace despite obvious limitations (Rider 1990, Hurst1990). In a recent development, this implied qualitative relationship between the gamma-ray response and grain-size was exploited in developing a quantitative means of predicting grain-size from well logs (Oyeneyin and Faga, 1999) using neural networks. However, for this in situ prediction methodology to succeed the relationship between gamma-ray log values and clay content and between clay content and grain-size needs to be consistent within a range that will not negate the generalisation capabilities of a Backpropagation-Neural-Network. One of the main factors affecting the natural variability that exists in these relationships and causes reduction in porosity and permeability is diagenesis. The others include compositional and textural factors (Rider 1990). This paper presents the results and recommendations of a study carried out to determine the effects of diagenesis on the accuracy of nonlinear grain-size modelling in sandstones.
The results of the study indicate that grain-size modelling in diagenetically modified formations is feasible. It characterises the effects of cemented zones. The study further concludes that cross-depositional environment prediction of grain-size in the case of the Brent and Statfjord formations generates representative grain-size trends and values.
Stimulation Fracture Height Control Above Water or Depleted Zones
Authors: Talbot D. M. , Hemke K. A. , Leshchyshyn T. H. 
Published: December 2007

Abstract
Many potentially productive zones located a few meters (feet) above a water or pressure-depleted interval are not fracture-stimulated, or are eliminated from further investigation rather than risk inter-zone communication. In either case, production fails to be optimized and often recoverable reserves are lost. Several techniques for controlling formation fracture height growth have been successfully field-tested. The fracturing fluid used was either water- or oil-based with a low viscosity of 20 to 50 cp. A general program, utilizing a timed sequence of rate and proppant concentration control, is preceded by application of fracture height-controlling material in the pad. Approximately 5 tonne (11,000 lb) of proppant were consistently placed with total fracture height growth traced to less than 15 m (50 ft). Post-stimulation well testing indicated fracture lengths to 90 m (300 ft) in reservoirs having permeabilities as low as 0.1 md. Fracture modeling using a numerical simulator prior to actual field stimulation has proven to be instrumental in designing an optimal fracture program. This unified procedure prevents or minimizes fracture height growth, from initial breakdown of the formation to the flow period after pumping. Well stimulation is performed through tubing to reduce fluid volumes. Pumping rates ranged from 0.5 to 1.5 m3/min (3.1 to 9.4 bbl/min). To date, ten treatments have been successfully placed and there is no evidence to suggest that fracture heights were greater than those predicted by computer simulation.