In this example the reservoir engineer is called on to estimate the potentially recoverable resources in an exploration project that is located near a series of small discoveries. The engineer has a map generated (by geologists and geophysicists) from seismic, geological and petrophysical data and has estimated a “most likely” gas-in-place based on analysis of [...]

The oil and gas industry has invested billions of dollars in finding, discovering, developing, producing, transporting and refining hydrocarbons for more than a century and has long been an enormous source of wealth creation.  In countries such as the United States where a great deal of the ownership of subsurface mineral rights are privately owned, [...]

I joined the World Oil Advisory Board in 1996 while working for a large independent oil company. Each December World Oil (and my subsequent employers) have allowed me wide latitude to opine on technical, commercial and related issues that I think will be important to the industry. For this blog entry I have included this [...]

Consistent gathering and analyzing of the data relevant to waterflood performance is called waterflood surveillance and it has many forms. Simply measuring and recording phase rates and pressures is an initial step. Unfortunately many waterfloods rely on relatively infrequent well tests of individual wells to allocate production that is gathered and measured at any of [...]

The asset team responsible for optimizing the value of a field under waterflood doesn’t have the ability to change the existence of reservoir heterogeneities but must recognize them and properly characterize them in the static and dynamic models. They utilize the results of pre-existing reservoir monitoring data and recommend optimal data gathering to improve their [...]

Oil and gas operators are faced with a difficult task in extracting their product from geological formations deep beneath the earth’s surface. One of the most difficult issues is of course identifying where such formations exist and contain all the properties needed to be productive. Geological formations are rock layers. Oil and gas is usually [...]

The majority of current activity in shale reservoirs involves the use of horizontal wells and most reservoirs are also hydraulically fractured in the completion process. The hydraulic fracturing process has evolved rapidly in the last decade and techniques most common in the early days of hydraulic fracturing have largely been replaced by several new concepts. [...]

Reservoir management is the application of earth sciences and engineering to safely optimize the recovery of hydrocarbons and associated materials from subsurface reservoirs. These reservoirs are rock formations that trap hydrocarbons and are primarily accessed by wellbores drilled from the surface. While crude oil and natural gas with its associated natural gas liquids are the primary commercial [...]

Shale as reservoirs? Shales are known to be the principal sources for conventional hydrocarbon plays. They also often function as reservoir seals because of their low permeabilities.  They can also be the reservoir and trap under certain circumstances. Most of the gas created in such reservoirs would be thermogenic in origin although some shales (e.g. the Antrim) have [...]

Okay, so some of you have looked at my picture and said “What on earth is that thing in your hand?” It is a choke used in oil and gas wells. Chokes are usually used in relatively high-rate wells. They have reduced diameters compared to the tubing and/or flowlines and cause a pressure drop. As [...]