As SPE's Distinguished Lecture series wraps up its SPE section presentations for 2020–2021, a new series of virtual presentations stretches through the summer, providing access for all SPE members. Three of the live virtual presenters will be speaking on topics in the health, safety, environment, and sustainability (HSES) discipline. Each year, SPE selects industry experts, nominated by their peers, to share their knowledge and expertise at SPE section meetings. Despite the many challenges faced this season, SPE's Distinguished Lecturers gave more than 450 virtual presentations to members in more than 191 SPE sections countries around the world. Starting on 22 June, 22 presentations will be made available live virtually, broadening the audience from SPE section meetings to all of SPE's membership.

Calgary-based Tourmaline Oil Corp. announced today that it is acquiring Black Swan Energy in an all-stock deal valued at CAD $1.1 billion. The transaction is set to boost Tourmaline's output by 50,000 BOE/D and the company expects to average around 500,000 BOE/D by mid-2022. The operator said the Black Swan acquisition is one of several it has made recently to become the largest producer in the north Montney Shale area of British Columbia. Black Swan's 231,000-acre position gives Tourmaline an estimated 1,600 horizontal drilling locations and proven and probable reserves of 491.9 million BOE. Tourmaline said in its announcement that Black Swan has not booked material reserves in other areas that it sees as having high potential and complementary to its existing footprint.

Schlumberger and Panasonic have announced that they will collaborate on a new battery-grade-lithium production process that they say will pave the way for improved lithium production to help meet the expected surge in demand from the fast-growing global electric vehicle (EV) market. The announcement came from the Schlumberger New Energy arm of Schlumberger and from Panasonic Energy of North America, a division of Panasonic Corporation of North America. The lithium-extraction and -production process will be used by Schlumberger at the Nevada pilot plant of its Neolith Energy venture. According to Schlumberger, Neolith Energy's approach uses a differentiated direct-lithium-extraction process to produce high-purity, battery-grade lithium material while reducing production time from more than a year to weeks. The company also said the process significantly reduces groundwater use and physical footprint vs. conventional evaporative methods of extracting lithium.

Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) said this week it has agreed to sell almost 25,000 net acres in the Permian Basin of Texas to Colgate Energy Partners III for nearly $508 million. Average output of the properties amounts to 10,000 BOE/D from about 360 wells in the southern Delaware Basin, Houston-based Oxy reported in its announcement. The sale, expected to close in the third quarter, will boost Midland-based Colgate's holdings in the Permian to about 83,000 acres with an estimated production of 55,000. Colgate said it plans to run up to six drilling rigs by year's end and boost average production to 75,000 BOE/D by 2022. Proceeds from the sale will be used to pay down Oxy's debt that was around $35.4 billion in March, down slightly from the $36.03-billion debt reported last June.

TC Energy said this week that it has terminated plans to complete the transborder Keystone XL Pipeline which has faced legal battles and permitting challenges for more than a decade. The Calgary-based pipeline operator halted construction on the project on 20 January, the day that US President Joe Biden took office and in one of his first acts as chief executive revoked the pipeline's permits. TC Energy's CEO, François Poirier, issued a statement that said the company values the experience it gained, and relationships made with various stakeholders while pursuing the ill-fated project. "Through the process, we developed meaningful indigenous equity opportunities and a first-of-its-kind, industry-leading plan to operate the pipeline with net-zero emissions throughout its life cycle. We will continue to identify opportunities to apply this level of ingenuity across our business going forward, including our current evaluation of the potential to power existing US assets with renewable energy," Poirier said in the statement.

The International Gas Union's (IGU) recent report on world LNG markets found that the trade increased by only 1.4 mt to 356.1 mt compared to 2019 supported by increased exports from the US and Australia, together adding 13.4 mt of exports. Asia Pacific and Asia again imported the most volumes in 2020, together accounting for more than 70% of global LNG imports. Asia also accounted for the largest growth in imports in 2020--adding 9.5 mt of net LNG imports vs. 2019. While 20 mtpa in liquefaction capacity was brought on stream in 2020, all in the US, startup of several liquefaction trains in Russia, Indonesia, the US, and Malaysia were delayed as a result of the pandemic, according to the report. The only project that was sanctioned in 2020 was the 3.25-mtpa Energia Costa Azul facility in Mexico, and in early 2021 Qatar took final investment decision (FID) on four expansion trains totaling 32 mtpa.

Transocean told investors the debut of the world's first two 20,000-psi-ready (20K) rigs has been pushed into next year. While the share price dropped on the news, the delay attributed to supply chain disruptions during the pandemic could be well timed to a rising tide of work with oil demand and prices up sharply. Transocean's message is that the market is recovering in time for the start of work by the Deepwater Atlas, which is set to begin drilling next year, and the Deepwater Titan, scheduled for early 2023. They are the new high-specification rigs to be available for deepwater work at a time when demand is rising for the limited supply of high-end deepwater rigs. Bobby Thigpen, chief executive officer for Transocean, predicted that by year's end nearly every active rig in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico is likely to be on contract.

Introduction Shear sonic logs can be used to calculate the rock mechanics properties of a formation, which is useful for geomechanics studies in the development of oil and gas fields. Shear sonic logs, however, are not often measured compared with other well logs. Empirical equations, such as Greenberg-Castagna relations, can be used to estimate shear sonic logs, but they only work for brine-saturated rocks (paper SPE 198764). Some efforts have been made to use machine learning to generate synthetic logs, and these obtained some positive results. The studies in the literature typically use the data from just a couple of wells, which makes scaling up the machine-learning solutions to other wells difficult.

Canada's oil sands have been criticized as being one of the most carbon-intensive assets in the world's vast basket of crude plays. If a new plan comes together, however, they will become a carbon-negative source of hydrocarbons by 2050. This is the goal of a group of operators that represent nearly 90% of oil sands production in Canada: Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus Energy, Imperial Oil, MEG Energy, and Suncor Energy. The five-company alliance is calling its plan the "Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero." In April, production from the region was nearly 3.2 million B/D.

Introduction Shear sonic logs can be used to calculate the rock mechanics properties of a formation, which is useful for geomechanics studies in the development of oil and gas fields. Shear sonic logs, however, are not often measured compared with other well logs. Empirical equations, such as Greenberg-Castagna relations, can be used to estimate shear sonic logs, but they only work for brine-saturated rocks (paper SPE 198764). Some efforts have been made to use machine learning to generate synthetic logs, and these obtained some positive results. The studies in the literature typically use the data from just a couple of wells, which makes scaling up the machine-learning solutions to other wells difficult.