Where Are The Oil & Gas Technology Successes Of The Future?

9th Apr '10 by Oilvoice

5 comments 4187 reads

If a man……………make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. Ralph Waldo Emerson; 1803-1882

Finding the Oil & Gas technology successes of the future news story image In this article, I want to see if I can identify some key technology trends, and therefore potentially successful technology companies. My approach will be to look at business and exploration trends to identify the key ‘pulls’ on technology; it seems important to think about the issue this way round – as opposed to identifying “wouldn’t it be neat if…….” technologies and ‘pushing’ them into exploration (and business). This seems like a good moment to declare my views on energy policy, climate change…..

Where I am on this is that:

There's just no point in denying that burning fossil fuels is having an impact on the planet. I was very much in the 'old' BP position of "as scientists we should accept the evidence and think about how to respond". Pretty well as Shell articulate today.
As we see in most of life, we will wait a long time for politicians to do anything sensible….and if you don’t believe that, I suggest you review what happened in Copenhagen a few weeks ago!
I don't believe wind and solar will provide more than a fraction of the energy we need (tides may be a special thing for the UK) and I still find nuclear a bit scary [partly because of b) - imagine if this UK Government treated the nuclear industry like they treat our armed forces!].
So I see little alternative to fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. That said, I'm going to trust a) our inventiveness and b) technology. For example, you will perhaps have seen that the US has discovered enough Gas (which is by far the cleanest of the fossil fuels) that somebody as experienced as T Boone Pickens thinks they could aim at getting by without 'foreign oil' and I like Carbon Capture & Sequestration if it means we can use all that coal without choking everything and everyone.

So the first question I ask myself is - where are the Majors (and larger Independents) going to find oil & gas new resources in the next decade? It seems to me that there are two…

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AbAngus

9th Apr '10

David,

Firstly many thanks for such an interesting article - which is of great value to someone like me who has no background in oil.

One of the companies that presented at your 'Finding Petroleum' event was Vialogy Plc (LON:VIY) . They seem to have had exceptional success at finding sweet spots with relatively high porosity in otherwise difficult rocks - and also presented a retrospective analysis explaining satisfactorily why individual wells had failed before in the same area. I am always a bit suspicious of post-hoc retrospective research - but the results looked good (as far as I could understand them!) Do you think that their 'noise' techniques might transfer to the world outside Texas and 'shake up the world of ... seismic the way that GECO and PGS shook up the offshore world 15 years ago' ?

Many thanks,

AA

Murakami

Hi AA, we actually syndicated this article from OilVoice as we thought that it was really interesting but we will pass your query onto David and see if he is happy to post a reply back. Best, M

Hi M - many thanks! AA

SW10Chap

can you point to one technology that was invented in Schlumberger, Halliburton, Baker Hughes or Weatherford that improved anybody’s exploration success rate?

Are you seriously suggesting that none of those companies, nor any of their forerunners, have invented a technology that improved the success in exploration. How far back do you want to go and how long have you got? Without leaving my keyboard or this page I'd suggest game-changers over the past 50 years have included:

Borehole Imaging, shaped-charge perforating, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Logging, Neutron Lifetime Logging, Tubing-conveyed wireline (and some of the extraordinary 'bodges' that went with it, including Borehole Imagers run in association with Formation Testers!)...

wells are well known for having time-consuming, high cost, unplanned events that with hindsight often turn out to have been predictable.

They are - and I modestly refer to this phenomenon as SW10's Law having been responsible for, as well as a victim of, such delays :-)

One key to world class performance seems to engage everyone involved in drilling the well (operating company staff, the rig contractor, all the service providers) during the planning phase, as a team, building a comprehensive risk picture; then mitigation measures can be planned, for every risk.

I've known a process like this to have been used by at least one major for workovers in the SNS during the nineties. It seems to me that with today's technology it should be possible to carry out something simpler for larger and more complex operations.

I would like to hear from any company that has a wiki-based implementation which allows everybody in a (potentially) world class drilling team to collaborate in planning a well or wells.

However, I am dead against Wiki--ization in this context - it may lend itself to certain types of cooperative document writing but I think it would very dangerous to use it for anything like well-design - the whole aim of the exercise, after all, is to get people to understand how various elements of the process impact on each other and I think that requires everyone to be in the same place at the same time, rather than editing wikis from the comfort and prejuidice of their own offices.

Thanks for the article - thought-provoking and informed.

SW10

StrollingMolby

23rd Sep '10

[Not sure if a better place for this article could be found, but reproduced here anyway.]

As Russia lays claim to the lions-share of the Arctic north of its border (with a potential 75bn barrels of oil), new ways of drilling there must be devised. Cue the construction of floating nuclear power stations by Rosatom.

The struggle for Arctic riches

In a grimy shipyard in St Petersburg, an ugly hulk of red-painted metal sits floating in the dock. On deck, workmen scurry back and forth, hammering, drilling and welding.

This strange construction, part ship, part platform, is unique and lies at the heart of Russia's grand ambitions for the Arctic. When it is completed in 2012, it will be the first of eight floating nuclear power stations which the government wants to place along Russia's north coast, well within the Arctic Circle.

The idea is the nuclear reactors will provide the power for Russia's planned push to the North Pole.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11381773

One can imagine Blofeld-types hatching devious plans to sieze such platforms...

Where are the Oil & Gas technology successes of the future?

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