Oil & Gas

Whether you're interested in writing a paper or submitting a book proposal, SPE has a variety of resources to help you contribute to the knowledge and future of the upstream oil and gas industry.

ATCE is SPE’s annual meeting of members and features groundbreaking papers and special technical events designed to accelerate the application of innovations in every technical discipline. Attendees come from around the world to ATCE to keep up with the latest technologies, industry best practices, and new product launches.

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Obtain necessary clearance from your management and start preparing now. Authors whose paper proposals are accepted will be required to write a manuscript for inclusion in the conference proceedings by 10 December 2019. Your session chairpersons will review a draft of your manuscript. The deadline for submitting your draft is 19 November 2019.

Predicting the properties of reservoirs beyond the wellbore has been the cornerstone of reservoir characterization. The outcome provides the framework for efficient management and optimization of hydrocarbon reservoirs. Proper reservoir characterization affects all reservoir types and all stages during the life of a field. Far-field characterization encompasses seismic, electromagnetic, and other geophysical surveys. This characterization can be facilitated in various configurations such as cross-well or surface-to-wellbore, accomplished while drilling, in open and cased wells, and while producing hydrocarbons.

SPE is the recognized leader for technical information in the upstream oil and gas industry, and the SPE Bookstore is the source for books that set the standard for excellence. Offering something for every discerning petroleum engineer at any stage of career, the SPE Bookstore delivers up to 50% off retail price for SPE members. Most titles are available in digital versions, including Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks, with many offering a six month, low-cost digital rental version. Whether preparing for the PE or Certification Exam or just looking to stay ahead in this ever-changing industry, the SPE Bookstore can help engineers do more.

The SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) brings together thousands of E&P professionals and experts for learning, networking, and collaborating on the collective goals of the industry. A major highlight in 2018 was the Opening General Session focused on "Translating Big Data into Business Results" with key panelists from Shell, Encana, Schlumberger, and Google Cloud. Registration and housing information for the 2019 conference will be available in mid-June.

More than 8,100 E&P professionals gathered in Dallas for the 2018 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition (ATCE) for three days of learning, networking, and collaborating on the collective goals of the industry. A major highlight was the Opening General Session focused on "Translating Big Data into Business Results" with key panelists from Shell, Encana, Schlumberger, and Google Cloud.

The scope of the paper is to explain, at first, the modification done to the conductor deck of a jack up rig in order to drill two exploration wells from one open water location, offshore of east coast of India. Further the paper explains the process of batch drilling used in the campaign and how the combination of the two resulted in substantial cost saving.

For the modification in conductor deck, feasibilities were checked for each rig during the tender evaluation stage to create an additional slot in the conductor deck while maintaining the conductor tensioning requirement on both slots. The conductor deck of the finalized rig was fabricated accordingly. The wells were planned, with one being vertical and the other deviated, to two different targets. The conductors on both wells were batch set. Similarly, the surface hole sections on both the wells were batch drilled & cased. Then drilling of the production holes, logging & abandonment were carried out batchwise.

As a result of batch drilling, the time in installation & removal of wellhead was completely saved as it was carried out offline. Similarly the time in installation & removal of BOP was reduced to half as it was done only once. There were other instances as well, described in detail in the paper, which led to a cumulative savings of 29.86 days against total planned time of 96.51 days during the complete drilling campaign, apart from saving days & associated weather risk by eliminating one complete rig move. Much of the time saved above was due to the batch drilling which was a result of the conductor deck modification and also due to the well design changes based on actual well conditions, which are also explained briefly in the paper.

As industry is recovering from a steep decline in drilling activity, it is only incremental innovations & even more so, a combination of existing innovations like the one showcased in this paper, which can lead to a positive economics for E&P companies, especially for exploration drilling projects.

Hydrocarbons are trapped at great depths with pressure and temperature higher than surface conditions which would vary depending on reservoir properties. When the well is set on production, these hydrocarbons travel through the wellbore over reducing geothermal and formation pressure gradients. Hence, at shallower depths the temperature drops below the cloud point and sometimes, below pour point of crude thus creating an ambient temperature for the formation of wax and deposition of paraffin on the inner side of production tubing.

It has been observed that when hot fluid passes through a pipe which is covered by a continuously circulating hot water bath, the temperature difference of the fluid at surface outlet and sub-surface reservoir is reduced to a minimal value. This paper therefore proposes a practical application of such heat transfer within a wellbore for passively solving major industrial issues of paraffin depositions. The idea lies in minimizing the heat losses, which can be effectively done by insulating the inner side of the casing so that the annulus and fluid flowing within the tubing is isolated from exterior losses. According to the First law of Thermodynamics the fluid flowing within the tubing will experience reduction in thermal gradient. These loses can be compensated by injecting hotter brine through a pipe at the bottom of the annulus, which is isolated, using production packer. Further, circulating hot fluid in the annulus would result in isothermal heating of the fluid flowing through the tube which would minimize the heat loss across tubing, causing an increase in temperature of fluid at the surface above pour point. Several researchers have put forth heat transfer equations across the tubing's, annulus, insulator, casing, cement and the formation which can be used to calculate the overall heat transfer coefficient and thus, the amount of heat losses. Quartz sensors placed at the bottom of a wellbore would detect bottom borehole temperature based on which the injection temperature of fluid can be manipulated. The entire process can be automated by applying an artificial intelligent system which would monitor, control and respond. This method would increase the capex but would decrease the operating cost thus leading to an increase in the life of the well.