technology

The quarterly magazine for industry innovators ● Q1 2013

Waterflooding:
Clair Ridge
passes the salt

Arctic
The rocky road to
hydrocarbon heaven

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 Contents
Spotlight

20
Arctic — the last frontier
With an estimated 22% of the world’s
undiscovered technically recoverable
hydrocarbon resources, the Arctic’s
potential is huge – but so are the
challenges.

40
3D on ice
Not least of the Arctic’s challenges
is under-ice 3D seismic, still very

Q1 much a work in progress for the

geosciences community.

13

Spotlight

12 52
Recovery position Delivering downhole
BP is driving towards the world’s first offshore The big four oilfield service companies
low-salinity waterflood at its Clair Ridge smarten up their bottom hole
development in UK’s West of Shetland area. assembly act.

Bits
&
The 30-year-old Magnus
testing platform is looking to go
the distance with its latest
Pressure point
US perforating flow test
team raises its game.
Bytes production well.

66
Core belief
With its services in great
Tech Talk
63
demand, a year-old
Houston core analysis lab is

6
already talking expansion. Eye on innovation
Breakthrough energy
technologies are in the
crosshairs of Shell’s
GameChanger team.

68
Project progress
Repair work progressing
at Siri, but future looks
47 Magic circle
Sevan Marine eyes
new circular FPSO
bleak for jack-up at Yme. opportunities.

upstream technology Q1 2013 3

 AgEndA

technology
www.upstreamtechnologymagazine.com Q12013

Editorial officEs
Seeing the light
I
Editor: David Morgan, t took 16 years, but Upstream has now finally ‘seen the light’ and launched a technology
Upstream Technology,
magazine. We do recognize the irony of this, for us, watershed event.
The Nexus Building,
25 Farringdon Street,
When Upstream was launched in November 1996, the oil and gas industry was already
London EC4A 4AB. served by a plethora of glossy magazines, many of them concentrating to a large extent on
Tel: +44 (0)20 7029 4182 technology. The idea with Upstream was to forge a very different editorial identity and thereby
david.morgan@upstreamonline.com stand out from the crowd — in style (exclusive industry news), in format (tabloid newspaper),
and even in colour (business pink).
US Editor: Jennifer Pallanich, Little, if any, attempt was made to infringe upon the territory of the glossy technology
Upstream Technology, magazines. Yet here we are with an Upstream publication in which the ink — for the first
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technology and innovation. This die-hard newspaper has branched out in a shiny new
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Why now, after all this time? The argument can easily be made that the technological
Contributing editors: challenges facing the energy industry are greater now than they ever have been. We’ve all
Andrew McBarnet received the memo: the easy-to-find oil and gas has all been found and national oil companies
Terry Knott control the vast majority of conventional reserves. International oil companies and their
Adrian Cottrill contractors now need to push back the technology envelope and take their quest to deeper,
Beate Schjolberg tighter, colder, hotter, saltier and more hostile environments in order to replenish their
reserves from year to year. And they generally need to do so under stricter regulatory regimes
HEad officE
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Editor-in-Chief: Erik Means erik.means@upstreamonline.com
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E
volution rather than revolution is traditionally the way of the upstream oil and
gas business, yet every so often the industry virtually reinvents itself on the back
of a stunning technological advancement. Think 3D seismic way back and its huge
impact on the interpretation of reservoir structures; think the Cormorant underwater
manifold centre (UMC) and the blossoming of subsea engineering; think horizontal drilling
and its myriad continuing influences today, not least in the exploitation of shale gas.
Doubtless other technologies are out there now, ready to step up from humble ‘innovation’
and perhaps assume the mantle of ‘key enabler’ or even ‘game changer’, a term already
appropriated by at least one oil company as it seeks to identify and encourage breakthrough
energy technologies (see page 6).
The mission of Upstream Technology, the new quarterly magazine from the publishers
of Upstream newspaper, is to target the technologies and developments that really matter
across the oil and gas spectrum globally. By combining visual appeal with an authoritative,
‘technical-popular’ writing style, the aim is to provide access to even the most complex
upstream issues for both the specialist practitioner and the inquisitive layman.
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always, your feedback on the team’s efforts — whether good or not so good — will be welcome
and invaluable in shaping the magazine’s forward agenda.
David Morgan
Editor, Upstream Technology
david.morgan@upstreamonline.com

4 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

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Tech Talk

The game changers

6 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

 What’s the
big idea?
Every once in a while a piece of technology comes along
that stands traditional oil and gas industry thinking
firmly on its head. Jennifer Pallanich catches up with
Russ Conser, the man tasked by Shell with pinning down
the next big idea, and gets the company’s take on “true
innovation” from chief technology officer Gerald Schotman.

R
uss Conser heads
Shell’s GameChanger
department, a team
dedicated to finding
and encouraging breakthrough
energy technologies. The
department’s moniker, he
concedes, is a bit of a paradox.
GameChanger “is absolutely
what we do, but we at Shell don’t
believe in silver bullets”.
To Houston-based Conser, one
of the ways to get new ideas for
technologies is to put groups of
people together and let them
talk about how they use certain
approaches in their own industry
to achieve specific results.
“There are so many solutions
out there,” he says. “Part of it is
to connect what is already there
and make it fit specific needs.”
The Texan oil capital is not
short of high-tech connections
Photos: Michael Stravato
just waiting to be made,
Houston also being home to
the US National Aeronautics &
Space Administration’s (NASA’s)
Johnson Space Center and a
world-class medical district.
“We can connect between
these entities and make things
happen,” Conser maintains,
citing this example of how to
draw on local expertise.
Shell may need to gain access
to a subsea facility in deep water,
and NASA needed the ability to
get access to its Mars Exploration
Rovers on a completely different
planet as early as 2004.
Through considering similar
needs in different industries, it
became apparent that a sensible
option for Shell might be to
seek ways of employing some of
NASA’s existing space technology
in deep-water applications. A
project is being planned.
Again with a view to
capitalising on local know-how,
Conser put enhanced oil recovery
(EOR) engineers together with
doctors at the MD Anderson
Cancer Center in Houston, given
that cancer drugs need to be
delivered to specific sites within
the body, while chemicals used
in EOR need to be placed for
maximum effectiveness.
“What we’re looking at is: Can
we take advantage of some of
these things that bring special
materials to do special things in
those places in the reservoir,” he
says.
It takes more than just putting
a lot of intelligence in the same
room, Conser acknowledges.
“You’re trying to get a spark, a
seed of ideas,” he says.
But first, a common language
needs to be developed, one
that dispenses with the jargon
common to the different »

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 7

 tech talk
HOUSTON HUB: Pictured in Houston discussing innovation across multi disciplines during Shell’s Innovation Summit in January are: John Saiz,
who serves as the chief technologist for NASA’s Johnson Space Center; Russ Conser, head of Shell’s GameChanger programme; Dr Giulio Draetta,
director of the MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Institute for Applied Cancer Science, and Kirk Coburn, co-founder and managing director, SURGE
Accelerator.
» industries. “You have to be
patient when you start talking
because things take a while to
emerge.”
Since emerging ideas may
be discarded quite rapidly,
“failing small” is part of the
process, admits Conser, whose
background is mechanical
engineering.
“In GameChanger we expect
that 90% of the things that we
touch might fail,” he says.
The approach relies on the
premise that finding the weakest
links of an idea early will allow
the team to drop unworkable
ideas and move on more
quickly to an idea that
may work.
“Innovation is
about learning
from things that
don’t work and
triangulating your
way into what does
8 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
work. And when you find what
works, then you can scale.”
Failing to learn
Conser has concerns that there
will be fewer innovators in the
future. “I learned physics by
jumping my bike off a wall,” he
says.
“As modern society we tend to
take so much care of everything,
sometimes almost to a point
where we don’t let kids fail
anymore.”
As a result, he wonders, do they
still take on projects that
may fail like they
would have in the
past?
“We have to tell
them that failure
is okay, that you
have to fail to
learn.”
The person with
the bright idea may not
“Innovation is
about learning
from things
that don’t
work and
triangulating
your way into
what does
work.”
Russ Conser,
Shell
even come from the same field.
“Experts in the field or the
non-experts in the field or the
tattoo artist” could come up with
a novel but workable method,
Conser observes.
“To my way of thinking, it’s
all of the above. To me, it could
be anyone — but not everyone —
who comes up with the next big
thing.”
GameChanger, which he
describes as an “early stage angel
investor for people who have
unexpected, sometimes crazy
but promising ideas related to
energy,” bases its consideration
of a new technology on four key
criteria:
• Potential value, or how
high the potential economic
impact could be.
• Novelty, or how unusual
the idea is compared to what
went before.
• What Shell brings to the
project and its impact in
capability terms.
• There is a “doable” plan for
the project.
When Conser refers to “early
stage”, he means precisely that.
“GameChanger is kind of like the
nursery school for innovative
ideas,” he says. If an idea makes
it through the GameChanger
programme, it still must be
developed and tested and
commercialised.
Being accepted and later
dropped from the GameChanger
programme does not spell doom
for a potential technology, either,
he adds.
For example, GameChanger
started a project about a decade
ago with a company called
WellDog that would develop a
logging tool to measure coalbed
methane in situ.
The project did not achieve
quite the “moonshot” it aimed
to achieve, so the GameChanger
team stepped back, freeing
applicant John Pope to pursue
the technology on his own.
Over time, WellDog went on
to provide in-well solution gas
measurement and downhole
gauges for coalbed methane.
Today, an Australian joint
venture with Shell involvement
is a WellDog customer for these
services.

Meet
Gerald
Schotman
Making the right connections
T Working with
o Gerald Schotman,
Shell’s chief technology
officer and the
company’s executive
vice president for innovation,
research and development, true
innovation requires more than
just a good idea or new insights.
Innovation, he maintains,
cannot happen without
connecting those with the ideas
to those who can help make
them a reality. Two other details
to factor in are creativity and
persistence, he adds.
To Schotman’s way of thinking,
collaborating with those outside
the industry can be as rewarding
as with those inside the industry.
For instance, Shell has
been involved in a number
of partnerships with
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology in the US, a college
known for admitting smart
students with a scientific bent,
but not known for turning out
petroleum engineers.
The operator is currently in
its third year of its most recent
five-year, $25 million research
programme with the college.
By teaming up, Schotman
says, the partnership has
invented a way to enhance
the characterisation of
unconventional shales and shale
properties.
The partnership was further
extended to a programme
with oilfield service giant
Schlumberger, and Schotman says
he believes that project will, in
the coming months, “significantly
enhance our understanding of
these shale formations”.
Also, in terms of
unconventionals, Schotman
says there is a focus on better
understanding liquids-rich
shales because this segment of
the industry is still nascent.
There has already been “a lot
of improvement in reducing
the number of wells needed for
development”.
Schlumberger
will
“significantly
enhance our
understanding
of these shale
formations”.
Gerald Schotman,
Shell
The goal in research here, he
adds, is improved understanding
of the plays to make it possible to
better tap the “sweet spots”.
Not only is Shell looking for
ways to bring the number of
wells down, it is also looking for
methods that will minimise the
amount of fracking necessary.
“We need to move on from the
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
tech talk
more rough approach,” Schotman
declares. Under consideration
for alternatives to traditional
fracking methods, he says, are
waterless fracking and electric
fracking.
The latter has a small
probability of success, he notes,
but if it does work will have a
“huge” impact.
excited about eOR
The supermajor is also on the
lookout for ways to extract more
hydrocarbons from its reservoirs.
As Schotman points out, even
an increase of 1% in the global
efficiency of hydrocarbon
recovery could deliver three years
of annual production at today’s
level.
This is significant when the
industry, on average, extracts
only about a third of the original
reserves in place in any given
reservoir.
Some techniques, such as
steam and miscible gas, are »
9
 tech talk
» suitable only for onshore
locations because of the size of
the equipment required for these
processes.
Chemical and desalinated
seawater solutions, however,
require less in the way of space
and are much more suitable for
use in offshore environments, he
explains.
“That’s why I’m excited
about it,” Schotman says of the
progress Shell is making with EOR
technologies.
Last year, Shell and Malaysian
national oil company Petronas
signed two 30-year production
sharing contracts for EOR projects
offshore Sarawak and Sabah.
The projected increase in the
average recovery factor in the
Baram delta operations and North
Sabah fields is 36% to 50%, which
could add significant value to the
upstream industry in Malaysia
over the coming decades, he notes.
Data is another of Schotman’s
technology targets. Dealing with
the huge amounts of data being
recorded and stored is a challenge
for the oil industry now, but that
data mountain is expected to
TOPSIDES
D E S I G N E D
ACCOMMODATE ANY SUBSTRUCTURE
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INGENUITY
double in size over the years to
come.
“It’s becoming more urgent,
and will be pressing within the
next five years,” he says. “And as
an energy company, that’s short-
term for us.”
Improved visualisation and
filtering techniques are also
in his crosshairs. To that end,
he is open to somewhat non-
traditional collaborations — such
as working with leading-edge film
and gaming specialists on ways
Shell could adapt their state-of-
the-art film animation and video
game technologies for oil and gas
industry applications.
These technologies could
prove invaluable in delivering
next-generation subsurface
visualisations, he believes, adding:
“It’s all about how to better use
3D technologies to combine data
sets and yield information that is
easier and more intuitive to work
with.
“At the end of the day it’s the
right combination of imagination,
innovation and investment that STEP FORWARD: Shell chief technology officer Gerald Schotman
can take us another significant sees imagination, innovation and investment as the way to advance
step forward,” he concludes. technologies.
T O
K13000 © 2012 KBR. All Rights Reserved
www.kbr.com
| INTEGRITY | INNOVATION | SAFETY | PERFORMANCE
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 EOR

GOING EASY
ON THE SALT
12 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

All photos: BP
high tech: Testing
reservoir rock core samples
in the CT scanner at BP’s
Sunbury research centre.
BP is driving towards the world’s first
offshore low-salinity waterflood in its
upcoming Clair Ridge development.
Terry Knott investigates the science
underlying this promising new
approach to enhanced oil recovery
O
ne of the oil
industry’s more
sobering statistics
relates to reservoir
recovery rates. On average, only
about one third of the original oil
in most reservoirs is brought to
the surface, with the rest staying
in the ground.
No surprise, therefore, that for
more than a century operators
have been trying to squeeze
out more of the oil by using a
variety of techniques that today
are grouped under the banner of
enhanced oil recovery.
The potential rewards are clear
— capturing just a few more per
cent from this huge resource
could equate to finding some
impressively large new reserves.
“The prize for being able to tap
into these untouched reserves
is very significant,” says Chris
Reddick, who heads BP’s Pushing
Reservoir Limits® flagship EOR
technology programme.
“For example, just a 1%
increase in recovery from BP’s
reservoirs could deliver an
additional 2 billion barrels of oil
equivalent.”
Among the many conventional
EOR techniques, the most
common is waterflooding; about
60% of BP’s oil is produced using
traditional waterflooding.
When an oilfield comes into
production, the natural pressure
in the reservoir soon begins to
fall and wells stop flowing after
perhaps only 10% to 20% of the oil
has been recovered.
At this point the normal
practice is to pump water
down into the reservoir to help
maintain pressure and to drive
more oil towards the producing
wells, increasing overall recovery
of the oil in place, perhaps to
between 30% and 65%.
In the offshore arena, seawater
provides a plentiful supply
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
of injection water for such
operations.
To improve on these levels of
recovery, Reddick and his team
are working on developing a suite
of advanced EOR technologies.
Of these, the one taking centre
stage as it readies for action at
full scale is LoSal® EOR, BP’s new
approach to the industry’s long-
established use of waterflooding
and one that is expected to
deliver significant gains in
additional oil recovery.
At first sight, the fundamental
difference between LoSal EOR
compared with conventional
waterflooding appears to be
simple — by reducing the
natural salinity of the injection
water, more oil comes out of the
reservoir.
However, this seemingly
simplistic fact is underpinned
by a deep understanding of
the chemical and physical
mechanisms at work at the
molecular level at the rock
surfaces within the reservoir, an
understanding that has resulted
from a long and patient journey
undertaken by BP.
Pyramid of proof
That journey began in the early
1990s during the company’s
participation in a joint industry
project at the University of
Wyoming into the wetability of
reservoir rocks.
Laboratory experiments
designed to shed light on why
some reservoir rocks tend to be
more “oil wet”, while others are
more “water wet”, indicated that
more oil could be displaced from
the minute pores in the rock’s
structure when reduced salinity
water was used to flush the oil out.
“BP followed through on this
early finding with more specific
research at Wyoming,” says
Andrew Cockin, technology »
13
 eor
northern exposure: Endicott field off Alaska’s North Slope, the site for BP’s low salinity inter-well trials.
» innovation leader in the Pushing
Reservoir Limits team.
“The next step was to conduct
flooding tests of oil-bearing
rock cores taken from actual
reservoirs around the world.
These were carried out at BP’s
Sunbury R&D centre in the
UK, where we can simulate the
high temperature and pressure
conditions found in reservoirs.”
BP carried out more than 50
low-salinity core flood tests,
employing a scanning electron
microscope and a modified
CT scanner as key tools in its
sophisticated testing regime to
determine what was happening
inside the rock cores.
The results were entirely
positive, showing improvements
in oil recovery from a few per
cent in some rocks to between
20% and 30% or more in others,
compared to conventional
waterfloods.
However, would low-salinity
waterflooding work at scale,
given that the large volumes of
water pumped into reservoirs
can find numerous pathways,
possibly bypassing some of the
trapped oil?
14 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
“We recognised that to achieve
the confidence for this technique
to be applied at the large scale, we
had to build a pyramid of proof,”
adds Cockin.
The next step in building that
pyramid came at the end of the
1990s when BP carried out a well
log test in Kuwait.
Brines of varying salinities
were injected into the well
and changes in residual oil
saturation were measured in the
reservoir rocks within about 15
centimetres of the wellbore, at
closely spaced intervals down the
well.
Again the results were positive
— more oil was released from the
rocks when low-salinity brine
was used.
Moving up in scale, BP began
to carry out single well chemical
tracer tests in 2003 at various
locations around the world, to
“see” further into the reservoir
rocks.
By injecting a chemical tracer
into the reservoir, the amount of
oil left in the rock pores can be
measured, up to six metres into
the reservoir.
More than 30 tracer tests
demonstrated that by controlling
the salinity of the injection
water, oil recovery from the
single well tests could be
improved over conventional
waterflooding, in some cases by
up to 50%.
Tough testing
While BP’s excitement was
growing that low-salinity
waterflooding held the potential
“The prize for to deliver great benefits, the
pyramid of proof needed one final
being able to building block before it could be
tap into these topped out — a full scale inter-
well test.
untouched For this, the company chose
reserves is very two wells in its Endicott field on
the Alaskan North Slope near the
significant.” huge Prudhoe Bay field. Endicott,
which came on stream in 1987,
Chris Reddick, is arguably the first “offshore”
BP development in the Arctic by
virtue of being operated from a
man-made island connected by a
causeway to the mainland.
Several low-salinity coreflood
and single well chemical tracer
tests had been performed
previously on Endicott’s high-
porosity, high-permeability
sandstone reservoir.

CORE SCAN: A
modified CT scanner
is one of the tools
used by BP to check
how a reservoir may
respond to low-
salinity waterflooding.
Before the inter-well test, the
reservoir zone was injected with
salty produced water to pre-flood
it until a high level of water cut,
more than 95%, was established,
to act as a reference for the
ensuing low-salinity waterflood.
The multi-million-dollar inter-
well test involved pumping low-
salinity water into the reservoir
and monitoring the changes in
oil recovery in the producing
well, some 300 metres away, over
almost a year until mid-2009.
“Conducting carefully
controlled pilot tests in the Arctic
environment presented many
challenges,” notes LoSal EOR R&D
manager Pete Salino.
“Some 5000 barrels per day of
water of the required salinity
for the tests was hauled from
a lake 16 kilometres from the
injecting well. We operated three
insulated trucks, 24 hours a day
for 11 months, sometimes in
temperatures 30 degrees Celsius
below freezing to bring the
water in, all achieved safely and
without incident.”
The tough trials paid off. The
water cut at the producing well
was reduced and oil recovery
increased by 10%. “The inter-
well test demonstrated that
low-salinity waterflooding works
equally well at field scale as it
does in corefloods and single
wells tests,” Salino points out.
“And importantly, the
performance was consistent
with laboratory data and our
prediction of when oil would
be produced, the production
profile we would obtain and the
ultimate incremental benefit.”
Eyes on the ions
While the pyramid of proof was
being built up, in parallel BP was
digging into the fundamental
science of why and how low-
salinity waterflooding works,
initiating research at Edinburgh’s
Heriot-Watt University and the
BP Institute at Cambridge in the
UK, which has led to a deeper
understanding of the oil release
mechanism.
Sandstone reservoirs are one of
the most common hydrocarbon-
bearing reservoir types. Most
sandstone reservoirs contain
a mixture of sand and clay
particles, with the spaces in
between the particles — the
Eor
pores — acting as the storage
spaces for oil and water (see
diagram on next page).
Flushing the liquids from
these pores is the objective of
flooding the reservoir with water.
However, the clay particles are
negatively charged and some oil
droplets can be chemically bound
to the clay through a mechanism
known as cation bridging, in
which positive divalent ions such
as calcium and magnesium form
“We recognised a bridge between the clay surface
and an oil droplet.
that to achieve These bridges, or tethers, cause
the confidence the rock to be oil wet and make it
difficult to displace the oil from
for this the pores during conventional
technique to waterflooding.
The tether exists in an
be applied at “electrical double layer” between
the clay surface and the water
the large scale, in contact with the clay. The
we had to build double layer consists of an
inner adsorbed layer of positive
a pyramid of divalent ions and an outer layer
proof.” of mainly negative ions.
The thickness of the double
Andrew Cockin, layer is determined by the
concentration of ions in
BP
the surrounding water. In
conventional high-salinity »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 15
eor
How it works
1. Waterflooding is a common method
of secondary oil recovery in which water
is injected into the reservoir formation
to displace oil. Water from injection
wells physically sweeps the displaced
oil to adjacent production wells.
4. Low-salinity waterflooding involves
replacing the conventional injection
water in sandstone reservoirs with
water whose salinity is close to that of
drinking water. When low-salinity water
is introduced to the reservoir, the double
layer around each clay particle expands,
enabling monovalent ions such as
sodium, carried in the injection water, to
penetrate into the double layer.
16 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
2. Most sandstone reservoirs contain a
mixture of sand and clay particles, with
porous spaces between them holding a
mixture of water and oil.
5. The monovalent ions displace the
divalent ions, breaking the tethers
between oil droplets and clay particles.
Source: BP
3. Some residual oil droplets are
chemically bound to the surface of the
negatively-charged clay particles, and
are not easily displaced by conventional
waterflooding. Between the surface of
each clay particle and the surrounding
water is an ‘electrical double layer’,
consisting of an inner adsorbed layer of
positive ions and an outer diffuse layer
of mainly negative ions. The adsorbed
layer includes divalent ions such as
calcium and magnesium, which act
as tethers between the clay and oil
droplets. The thickness of this double
layer depends on the ion concentration
in the surrounding water. High-salinity
water normally used in waterflooding
contains more ions, keeping the double
layer relatively compact and holding the
oil tightly bound.
6. This allows the oil droplets to be
swept out of the reservoir.

» waterfloods using injected
seawater, ion concentrations are
high, keeping the double layer
compressed towards the clay and
the oil droplets tightly bound.
However, when low-salinity
water is introduced, the double
layer relaxes and expands,
allowing free cations, such
as monovalent sodium ions
in the injected seawater, to
penetrate into the double layer
and exchange with the divalent
calcium and magnesium ions.
This action breaks the tethers
between the clay and the oil —
the rock changes from being oil
wet to water wet, enabling the
waterflood to flush the oil from
the pores and out of the reservoir.
Getting the salinity of the
injected water right is a key
factor for a successful low-
salinity waterflood, as the
composition of the reservoir
rocks and hence the surface
chemistry can vary greatly from
one reservoir to another.
To set the scene, in the offshore
regions where BP operates,
seawater salinity is typically
33,000 to 38,000 parts per million.
As a guide, BP indicates that
for a low-salinity waterflood, the
injection water salinity needs
to be below around 8000 ppm to
allow the electrical double layer
to begin expanding.
In practice, salinity levels well
below this would be desirable,
ideally less than the World
Health Organization’s 600 ppm
recommendation for palatable
drinking water, as the lower the
salinity, the more effective it will
be in displacing the oil.
However, there is a lower limit.
If the salinity is too low, the clay
particles can swell, plug the
reservoir’s pores and damage its
permeability, hence a salinity
balance must be struck.
A further requirement is that
the concentration of divalent
ions in the injection water must
be lower than the divalent ion
concentration in the reservoir’s
connate water.
Eor
CLOSE UP: Scanning
electron microscope
used in BP’s analysis
of rock core samples.
Developing the in-depth
understanding of reservoir
characteristics and water
chemistry to get the salinity
operating envelope right is just
one of several areas of specialist
expertise built up by BP during
the development of its LoSal
technology.
So how would salinity be
reduced for the application of
“Conducting LoSal EOR technology at full scale?
“We reviewed a wide range of
carefully desalination technologies and for
controlled various reasons have currently
opted for reverse osmosis as the
pilot tests preferred treatment method,”
in the Arctic explains LoSal EOR facilities
manager Dale Williams.
environment “Reverse osmosis is a long
established membrane separation
presented technology and is widely used
many for producing drinking water
from seawater and other brackish
challenges.” supplies.”
Pete Salino, At the heart of a reverse
osmosis plant is a semipermeable
BP membrane that allows water
molecules to pass through it »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 17
 eor
» while largely acting as a barrier to
the passage of dissolved ions.
In the case of seawater
desalination, the seawater feed
is passed on one side of the
membrane.
The application of high
pressure to the feed overcomes
the osmotic potential of
the seawater and creates a
differential pressure across the
membrane.
This drives water molecules
through the membrane, but most
of the dissolved salts cannot
pass through, including a large
proportion of the unwanted
divalent ions such as calcium
and magnesium, and are retained
on the feed side, which becomes
increasingly concentrated and is
ultimately returned to the sea.
The low-salinity permeate
water that is produced becomes
the injection water for the
waterflood.
“In general, about half of the
feedwater is converted to low-
salinity injection water,” adds
Williams.
“The required pressure is a
function of the water feed quality,
as well as the conversion rate
required, the specific membrane
utilised, its ageing and other
18 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
process parameters. For the
seawaters in which BP operates
the operational differential
pressure will typically be in the
65 to 75 bar range.”
Before entering the reverse
osmosis plant, the seawater must
pass through a prefiltration stage
to remove particulate matter.
BP has selected ultrafiltration
to do this, another established
membrane separation process.
As Williams points out,
the offshore industry already
employs a selective form of
reverse osmosis for sulphate ion
removal from seawater used for
waterfloods in some reservoirs.
This process targets selective
removal of the sulphates to help
inhibit reservoir scaling and has
more recently been applied to
reduce the potential for reservoir
souring.
“Compared with sulphate
removal membrane processes,
the desalination reverse osmosis
membrane operates at higher
pressures and targets removal
of all of the dissolved salts,”
Williams explains.
“It actually reduces the
sulphates to even lower levels
than achieved by the standard
sulphate membranes, so we also
FIRST UP: Left, the £4.5 billion Clair Ridge development
West of Shetland will be the first offshore field to use
full scale low-salinity waterflooding. Above: BP’s Mad
Dog phase one spar platform in the deepwater Gulf of
Mexico. Mad Dog phase two will employ low-salinity
waterflooding.
benefit from this characteristic. “Another benefit is that the
“In addition, the ultrafiltration particulate-free, pristine quality
followed by reverse osmosis low-salinity permeate also means
process removes an extremely the water will not plug low-
high percentage of all the viruses
and bacteria from the injected
water, as well as organic matter
permeability entry points at the
injection well, which helps get
the water into the poorer swept
W
— which can be a food source for
bacteria already in the reservoir
low-permeability layers of the
reservoir.” s
L
to grow on — and so it helps After BP’s 20-year journey, LoSal
to inhibit the reservoir from EOR is set to start delivering
turning sour and producing on its promise as the company
s
hydrogen sulphide. begins to put the technology into
Reverse osmosis
Seawater Retentate
Higher pressure
flow
feed flow
(contentrated
brine)
Permeate
Semi- flow
permeable (product low
membrane Lower pressure
salinity water)
Water molecule Salt ion
PUTTING ON THE PRESSURE: Basic principle of desalination by reverse
osmosis, creating a low-salinity product stream from seawater.

action in its field developments.
The first of these will be at the
new Clair Ridge development in
the UK’s West of Shetland area.
With co-venturers
ConocoPhillips, Chevron and
Shell, operator BP expects
the £4.5 billion ($7.3 billion)
development to come on stream
in 2016, producing up to 120,000
barrels per day of oil at peak.
Ahead of the game
Success in Clair phase one, which
came into production in 2005,
has paved the way for the larger
Clair Ridge project, based on
two bridge-linked platforms, to
target more of the estimated six
billion barrels of oil in place in
what is thought to be the largest
oil accumulation on the UK
continental shelf.
The LoSal desalination plant
will be integrated into the
overall water injection treatment
process — for example, a
conventional deaeration stage
will still be required — and will
be able to desalinate up to
145,000 bpd of seawater. An
additional mezzanine deck has
World class
solutions for the
LNG terminal
sector
been added to the Clair Ridge
quarters-utilities platform to
accommodate the $120 million
of additional LoSal equipment,
which has a footprint of some
700 square metres and a dry
weight of around 1000 tonnes,
requiring an incremental six
megawatts of power to drive it.
BP estimates that low-salinity
waterflooding will produce an
additional 42 million barrels of
oil compared with conventional
waterflooding, making a
significant contribution to the
estimated 640 million barrels to
be recovered from Clair Ridge.
Overall, the company believes
that going for LoSal EOR will
add about $3 per barrel to
incremental oil production costs,
which compares favourably with
an incremental cost of around
$20 per barrel for other EOR
techniques.
Also in line for LoSal EOR
is BP’s Mad Dog phase two in
the Gulf of Mexico, which will
have a low-salinity waterflood
injection capacity of more
than 250,000 bpd of water. The
company has at least four other
“We reviewed
a wide range of
desalination
technologies
and have
currently opted
for reverse
osmosis as
the preferred
treatment
method.”
Dale Williams,
BP
Smit Lamnalco delivers
innovative solutions for the
LNG terminal sector.
Based on decades of
experience, we have an
in–depth understanding of
the needs of this highly
specialised branch of the
industry. We have one of the
world’s most sophisticated
and modern LNG terminal
support fleets. This includes
high performance tugs, with
advanced LNG terminal
capabilities, and also pilot
boats and mooring vessels.
Eor
new and retrofit projects under
active evaluation.
While other oil companies
are known to be looking at
low-salinity waterflooding,
BP believes its in-depth
understanding of the chemistry
and physics, its thorough
evaluation of the technology
and now its full-scale sanctioned
project applications place it at
the forefront of the game.
“Our intention is to apply
our LoSal EOR technology
to all appropriate oilfield
developments going forward,”
concludes Reddick.
“Full implementation across
BP’s portfolio could increase net
recovery by up to 700 million
barrels of oil equivalent. Genuine
game-changing technology
does not happen overnight and
does not occur frequently in our
industry but we believe we have
such a winner in LoSal EOR.”
Going easy on the salt looks set
to help deliver a healthy future
for BP.
LoSal® and Pushing Reservoir Limits® are
trademarks of BP plc
This skill and experience can
be adapted to the require-
ments of future FLNG facilities.
What we do
Leading provider of marine
services in the following
areas:
• Oil & gas terminals
• LNG terminals
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• Floating Production
(FLNG, FPSO, FSO)
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T +31 10 454 9911 (24/7)
info@smitlamnalco.com
SMITLAMNALCO.COM
 Spotlight
the Arctic

Rising to the Arctic

offshore challenge
In a 19-page review Adrian Cottrill world’s most costly to operate
in and the advent of cheap shale
estimates from the US Geological
Survey, there is more than 400
looks at the fundamental technology gas and the impact of April 2010’s
Macondo disaster is taking even
billion barrels of oil equivalent
waiting to be discovered and
challenges of all icy waters, and at the more wind out of the sails there. technically recoverable in the
There is no better underlining Arctic’s combined onshore and
details of Shell’s current programme off of that fact than last August’s offshore regions. Close to 85% of
Alaska. Activity in other icy areas will indefinite postponement of
Russia’s undeniably mighty
that is thought to be offshore,
and two-thirds of it is gas.
be detailed in future editions. $15 billion Shtokmanovskoye
gas field project. One of the
As for resources that are already
discovered, the offshore Arctic

I
t is high profile, high cost,
and very difficult to make
the economics work. But
the lure of discovering huge
accumulations of oil means the
offshore Arctic is impossible to
ignore.
Meanwhile, the steady and
ominous shrinking of the Arctic
Ocean’s ice cover year-by-year
(see article on page 24) is making
it ever easier to operate in, and
to stay longer each open-water
season.
However, the notion that the
offshore Arctic is attracting
anything like the goldrush that
popular opinion seems to imply
is far from the truth.
The area has always been the
world’s largest such undeveloped
finds, Shtokman is way out in
the eastern Barents Sea but at a
location that sees very little sea
ice.
Yet, as we are frequently
reminded, the Arctic is the most
promising place on earth for new
reserves.
According to oft-quoted
contains about 140 billion barrels
of oil equivalent, reckons UK
business analysis company Infield.
The region is “primarily a gas
play and discovered resources are
overwhelmingly Russian,” points
out Infield’s James Hall.
Russia also leads the list
in undiscovered reserves. As
for economic attractiveness,

20 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

 Tough Terrain: Icy seas present
a wide spectrum of challenges for
rig and platform designers, ranging
from ‘ever more accessible’ settings
to ‘still out of the question’. This
scene is actually at sub-Arctic
Sakhalin 1 — the Orlan platform
in fast-moving winter ice — but
still one of the most demanding
locations yet to see development.

Photo: ExxonMobil

his summary for the Arctic
is “oil better than gas, and
onshore better than offshore”.
Nevertheless, the prospect of
giant discoveries of oil means
that the offshore scene is
irresistible for some.
Without doubt, the big story in
Arctic waters at present is Shell’s
exploration drilling programme
in the Alaskan Beaufort and
Chukchi seas (see article on page 27).
Here Shell is playing the
unenviable role of trailblazer for
the rest of the industry. For the
past six years it has pressed ahead
in a blizzard of legal wrangles,
environmental challenges and
— since Macondo — hugely
increased regulatory scrutiny.
Others with sizeable
interests in the area, such as
ConocoPhillips and Statoil, are
watching from the sidelines.
From time to time they simply
put off their plans for “just
another year or two”.
But Shell has no real choice.
In 2008 it spent a staggering
$2.2 billion obtaining leases in
the Alaskan Chukchi. Further
investment for its Arctic drilling
fleet and Beaufort leases has
doubled that figure.
With that much spent, there
was no going back. Shareholders
needed to start feeling they
might get some return.
Many observers reckon the
huge price Shell has been willing
to pay to gain a prime position
in the Chukchi has its origins
nearly half a century ago. In a
move not to be sidelined late
on in the scramble for Prudhoe
Bay acreage, the company still
allowed itself to be outbid in a
1965 lease sale that paved the
way to the huge 10 billion barrel
discovery there in 1968. “Never
again”, Shell is rumoured to have
resolved.
In the 1990s, Shell did discover
condensate at the Burger
location in the Chukchi. Now the
company has come back to drill
around it in pursuit of the oil it
suspects is also there — maybe as
much as 2 billion barrels of it.
If it is successful, the state of
Alaska will be delighted as well.
As the North Slope declines,
the trans-Alaska pipeline that
heads south is now running at
below one-third capacity and
getting ever closer to becoming
uneconomic.
Canada and Greenland
Just to the east, in the Canadian
Beaufort Sea, various operators
have plans moving forward at a
slow and stately pace.
ExxonMobil company Imperial
is operator in a joint venture with
BP, and has interests in areas
such as Ajurak.
Preliminary plans announced
in December involve “one or
more exploration wells in water
depths ranging from 60 to 1500
metres”, but no investment
decisions have yet been made.
ConocoPhillips continues »

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 21

 spotlight: the arctic

Arctic rivAls: These are the 1800 E/W

nations contending for polar

riches in the north. This map,
produced by the International USA
Chukchi
Sea
Boundaries Research Unit at the
UK’s Durham University, also 5
0W
13
50
13 W
highlights areas of boundary

A
rc
tic
dispute. Hatched lines indicate

Ci
Beaufort

)
'N

rc
Sea

le
33
potential extensions beyond 200

(6
60

6
(6

03
nautical miles.

cle

3'N
Cir

)
tic

R
Arc

U
A

S
N

S
Northwest Passage
A

I
D

A
North
900W Pole 900 E
A

Hans Island

Greenland
(DENMARK)

)
'N
33
60
45
Ar

(6
E
ct

0
0
W

45

le
ic

irc
Ci

C
rc

(6 RUSSIA t

ic
le

6 rc
33 NORWAYF A
IN
0

'N
) LA
N
D
Polar sterographic projection ICELAND SWEDEN

400 nautical miles 00 E/W

at 660N

Legend

Internal waters Russia claimed continental shelf

Canada territorial sea and exclusive beyond 200nm
economic zone (EEZ) Norway-Russia Special Area
Potential Canada continental shelf USA territorial sea and EEZ
beyond 200nm
Potential USA continental shelf
Denmark territorial sea and EEZ beyond 200nm
Denmark clamed continental shelf Overlapping Canada / USA EEZ
beyond 200 nm
Eastern Special Area (note)
Potential Denmark continental shelf
beyond 200nm Unclaimed or unclaimable
continental shelf
Iceland EEZ
Straight baselines
Iceland claimed continental shelf
beyond 200nm Agreed boundary
Median line
Norway territorial sea and EEZ / Fishery
zone (Jan Mayen) / Fishery protection 350 nm from baselines
zone (Svalbard) 100 nm from 2500 m isobath
Norway claimed continental shelf (beyond 350 nm from baselines)
beyond 200nm Svaldbard treaty area
Russia territorial sea and EEZ

Graphic: International Boundaries Research Unit / Durham University / Upstream 20©13 Christian Andvik

» to consider a range of possible
development options for
Amauligak, so far the largest find
in the area, originally discovered
by Gulf Canada in 1984.
Way over on the other side
of the country, the latest news
in the sub-Arctic region off
Newfoundland is ExxonMobil’s
official confirmation on
4 January this year that it will
develop the Hebron field.
A $14 billion scheme based on a of a consortium of companies. in the even more demanding
concrete gravity platform in 90 Advanced techniques, and ice conditions off the north-east
metres of water will recover more streamers six kilometres long coast.
than 700 million barrels of oil, were used (see article on page 40).
says the company. So remote is the area that Russia
Greenland saw Cairn finish a Shell took the novel approach of In Russia’s Pechora Sea,
four well drilling programme off posting doctors on three vessels, the long saga continues at
the west coast in 2011. complete with operating theatres the Prirazlomnoye project
In 2012, farther north in so that no medevac would be operated by Gazprom company
iceberg-strewn Baffin Bay, needed. Sevmorneftegaz.
Shell has carried out a large 3D In March this year Greenland Construction of the platform
seismic campaign on behalf is due to award the first licences started way back in 1998 but the

22 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


Polar majesty: Icebergs are the ultimate symbol of icy waters. If one presents its mighty bulk in the sub-Arctic regions where they are
concentrated, the only option is to cast off moorings and move. .
on-off nature of work on it at the
Sevmash yard meant it did not
float out from Murmansk to the
field until summer 2011.
Now, sited in 20 metres of
water, this huge 125 metre
square four-part steel caisson is
ballasted with internal concrete
to resist the first-year ice to be
found here in the south-eastern
corner of the Barents.
The slow pace of development
drilling since its installation
means that start-up of Priraz will
not come before the second half
of this year.
Greenpeace showed its
displeasure last August when
activists attached themselves
to the side of the caisson. When
invited to go aboard, they
apparently declined.
On the other side of Novaya
Zemlya, the highly-promising
Kara Sea is the target for a
potential new design of mobile
gravity base drilling platform,
able to operate in water depths to
60 metres.
Last September Rosneft and
ExxonMobil awarded a contract
to the Vostochniy yard for
concept evaluation and study of
such a unit, designed to extend
the drilling season by several
months.
The two behemoths signed
their strategic partnership deal
for the Kara Sea in August 2011.
They describe the region as “the
world’s most promising and least
explored offshore area”.
On the nearby Yamal
peninsula, onshore development
is well established.
Gubkin State University
professor Anatoly Zolotukhin
recently spoke of Yamal as “the
second highest place on earth for
petroleum resources, exceeded
only by the Middle East”.
The combination of the Kara
Sea and Yamal “holds more than
half of Russia’s Arctic resources”,
he said.
Sakhalin Island is yet another
big Russian story, albeit sub-
Arctic, but with very challenging
winter sea ice conditions.
Mega-developments at
Sakhalin 1 and 2 are already
in production and steadily
expanding.
The most recent major news is
the September 2012 installation
of the region’s third giant
concrete gravity base, again built
by Kvaerner.
The Arkutun-Dagi platform on
ExxonMobil’s Sakhalin 1 project
stands in 35 metres of water.
This summer that base will
receive its topside in a world-
record floatover operation by
Heerema, placing 40,000 tonnes
in a single piece.
Exploration rigs
Although designers of mobile
drilling units have steadily evolved
vessels that are increasingly
suited to service in extremely cold
environments, none of the most
recent examples of this trend has
as yet seen service in that primary
target area.
The most impressive of these
is undoubtedly drillship Stena
Drillmax Ice, delivered last spring
at a world-beating price tag said to
be about $1.3 billion.
However, instead of being
snapped up for work in polar
regions, this most advanced
among ice-resistant rigs has
found its first work in the
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: the arctic
Photo: AP/Scanpix
positively equatorial climes
of French Guiana, where it is
spending the first assignment in a
five-year charter by Shell.
Other recent drillships with
Arctic overtone to them have
also found themselves in warm
weather instead.
The two Bully drillships
owned by Noble Drilling have
gone to the Gulf of Mexico and
Brazil.
GustoMSC, one of the most
active designers of drilling rigs
aimed at Arctic service, is
working on further initiatives
such as a turret-moored
drillship and a jack-up for
operation in ice.
The two Aker H-6e harsh
environment semi-submersibles
now owned by Transocean
continue to work off northern
Norway.
There they encounter
much the same sort of ice-
free conditions that will be
experienced by the circular
Sevan Marine floating production
platform when it is installed this
autumn at Eni’s Goliat field in
Norway’s Barents Sea. »
23
 spotlight: the arctic
16 September 2012
Smaller every summer
H
» ow soon it is likely
to happen depends
on who you talk to.
However, no-one
disputes that summer sea ice
will disappear completely from
the Arctic Ocean in the very near
future.
On 16 September last year, the
area covered by ice at the North
Pole fell to the smallest ever
recorded.
Compared with the same
month 30 years ago at this time of
summer minimum, it has exactly
halved — to 3.5 million square
kilometres.
This dramatically low figure
highlights a well-recognised
annual trend that has been
accelerating in recent years. The
world is warming up and the
Arctic sea ice is steadily shrinking.
Each year the ice cover grows
thinner and becomes less
resistant to the next summer
melt. This means the decline in
ice volume, as opposed to area, is
even more dramatic. How long
24 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
will it be before the ice starts
disappearing completely at some
point in September?
“We may be looking at an
Arctic Ocean essentially free of
summer ice only a few decades
from now,” said Mark Serreze
when last year’s coverage was
announced. Serreze is director
of the US National Snow & Ice
Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder,
Colorado, which has been
monitoring the ice by satellite
since 1979.
Others are far more
pessimistic. Peter Wadhams,
professor of ocean physics at
Cambridge University, is one of
them.
“My view is that the ice could
be gone for a month or two in
summer about three years from
now,” he says.
He bases this on the rate of
reduction of volume shown by
the submarine data.
“We calculate the ice has
sustained a 70% loss of volume
over the past 30 years,” he says.
A number of other modellers
agree with Wadhams, though he
points out that the official view
represented by the UK Met Office
is that it will last until at least
2030.
“I don’t see how it can last that
long if you look at the data,” he
says,.“It’s going to be gone in
2016.”
As for the other extreme of the
year, at the winter maximum
in March, the area of ice
coverage has declined much less
dramatically.
NSIDC maps indicate that the
15.2 million square kilometre
ice area in March 2012 was only
5% smaller than the norm about
30 years ago. However, this does
not reflect the far gloomier
comparison in terms of volume.
What does this mean for an oil
industry keen to uncover all the
petroleum treasures it can find?
Thirty years ago, the Canadian
and Alaskan Beaufort regions
were busy during “the first ice
age” of exploration drilling from
IN PERSPECTIVE: Satellite
view of the ice on the day
it shrank to smallest
yet recorded.
gravel islands and mobile units in
shallow inshore waters.
At that time a description of ice
conditions would have spoken
of the permanent polar pack as a
huge disc of ice, 2000 kilometres
across and containing a high
proportion of multi-year ice.
This is stronger than first-year
ice because salt slowly leaches
out of it over a period of roughly
three years, so that essentially it
becomes fresh water ice.
An early 1980s description
would have gone on to speak of
the wind-generated Beaufort Gyre,
in which this whole disc of pack-
ice rotated relentlessly clockwise
once every seven to 10 years.
It would have spoken of the
complicated shear zone relatively
close to shore where the Gyre
ground against the seasonal
landfast ice, and it would have
indicated a maximum distance of
summer open water off Alaska’s
north coast of little more than
100 kilometres.
All that has changed. “In areas

Summer
SHRUNKEN SUMMER WHITENESS: Arctic ice coverage last September
reached its lowest extent since satellite monitoring started in 1979. The
magenta line is the median of September ice from 1979 to 2000. That
line also almost exactly indicates minimum ice during “the first ice age” of
Beaufort activity around 1980.
that might have been choked
with ice 30 years ago, now
there’s not a piece to be seen
in summer,” says one veteran.
Circulation patterns have altered
fundamentally.
“In the 1990s things flipped
over to a state where there isn’t
actually a Beaufort Gyre any
more,” says Wadhams.
“The ice just flows round in a
sort of open loop that varies in
direction. You don’t have very
old ice any more because it is not
circulating in closed loops.”
Nor do people talk much
about the shear zone these
days, he continues, because of
the disappearance of a definite
boundary between pack and
landfast ice.
As for open water at summer
maximum: where 100 kilometres
was typical in the Beaufort
30 years ago, nowadays that can
stretch to 500 kilometres or more.
In turn, “the fact that you’ve got
a lot more open water in summer
means that you have a lot more
wave action,” says Wadhams.
“So in the Beaufort you now have
a marginal ice zone like you used
to have in the Greenland Sea,
with all the ice broken up by
waves, and that enhances the
retreat rate.”
In a matter of just a couple of
decades the decay of the Arctic’s
ice cover has opened the way for
drilling in waters beyond the
edge of the continental shelf at
a distance from shore that was
previously way off limits.
Instead of a maximum water
depth around 30 metres in the
old days in the North American
Beaufort, operators now coolly
contemplate 1500-metre depths.
The one Arctic phenomenon
not mentioned yet is the iceberg.
These present a completely
different challenge due to their
potentially irresistible bulk and
are chiefly relevant in the sub-
Arctic Labrador Sea rather than
the Arctic Ocean.
They are the critical
influence for developments off
spotlight: the arctic
Winter
Graphics: NSIDC.
AND WINTER MAXIMUM: Equivalent information for ice extent in
March shows that last year’s coverage was not far short of the norms
experienced three decades ago. What it does not show is the reduced
thickness of the ice these days.
“I don’t see Newfoundland as they drift down
from the glaciers of western
how it can last Greenland where they spawn.
more than In recent years iceberg numbers
have greatly increased because
three years if the speed of Greenland glacier
movement has accelerated,
you look at the sometimes to twice previous
data.” levels.
This is thought to be because
Peter Wadhams, the enhanced summer melt on
professor of the Greenland ice sheet surface
sinks through big drain holes
ocean physics called moulins and lubricates the
at Cambridge interface between ice and
bedrock.
University In contrast, certain very
northerly areas hardly see sea
ice at all. This applies to most of
Norway’s Barents Sea due to the
Gulf Stream’s benign influence.
Even the location of the
postponed Shtockman gas project
off Russia is only just into the
edge of seasonal ice cover on the
eastern side of the Barents Sea,
and the main threat there is of
the occasional iceberg spawned
on Novaya Zemlya. »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 25
spotlight: thE arctic

26 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


BUCKLE UP: Workers assigned
to the drillship Noble Discoverer
are transported by helicopter
from Barrow, Alaska to the
unit hired by Shell to drill in the
Chukchi Sea. Photo: Shell
Shell
blazes
today’s
trail off
Alaska
O
n 9 September last
year, Shell touched
seabed with drillbit
off north-west Alaska.
Work had at last started on
the first well to be spudded in
Alaska’s Arctic seas for 20 years.
More than four years later than
originally planned, Shell finally
began drilling in a shallow-
water Alaska programme that
had already cost the company
a staggering $4.5 billion of
investment to get to that point.
Close to half that sum
($2.2 billion) went on the oil
major’s bids for a vast swathe of
Chukchi acreage in a February
2008 lease sale.
A comparatively meagre
$85 million was needed to secure
its acreage to the east, in Alaska’s
Beaufort Sea.
Another $500 million has been
spent on upgrading the two
mobile drilling rigs selected to
drill the exploration wells in each
of these areas.
To be precise, Shell has put
a price tag of $193 million for
the upgrade work that has
been carried out on 46-year-
old drillship Noble Discoverer
— assigned to the Chukchi
area — and $292 million on the
upgrade of 30-year-old, saucer-
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: thE arctic
shaped Kulluk — assigned to the
Beaufort and the only one of its
kind.
Beyond this, Shell also has a
back-up fleet of 20 vessels and
had as many as 1000 people
offshore last summer.
The marine fleet includes
Aiviq, a $200 million newbuild
ice-class anchor handler, able to
assist Nordica and Fennica.
These are the two primary
vessels for Shell’s active ice
management strategy of
steering large ice floes away
from drilling locations where
possible.
In what Shell describes as
“the most robust Arctic oil spill
response system known to the
industry” (see article on page 31),
several vital members of the fleet
are dedicated to rapid deployment
for containment, or recovery and
storage of any spilt oil.
The presence of two rigs
in the region completes the
precautionary cover needed,
providing the ability to move
across to the other location and
drill a relief well in the worst case.
So a world-beating price
tag was always inevitable for
this pioneering exploration
programme.
And it was a price tag that »
27
 spotlight: thE arctic
UniqUe saUcer: Partnered with drillship Noble Discoverer, the conical drilling unit Kulluk is at the heart of Shell’s campaign in the north. Here the
novel rig is seen in the less than happy circumstances of its recent temporary grounding in the Gulf of Alaska while being towed to Seattle for winter
maintenance work.
» could only go up in the face of
the seemingly unending stream
of regulatory wrinkles, legal
challenges and environmental
opposition that Shell has steadily
had to respond to.
Not for nothing is Ken
Salazar, while in his role as US
Interior Secretary, said to have
described it as “the most watched
programme in the history of the
US”, a far cry from the level of
regulatory scrutiny 20 years ago.
Although last summer
represents a watershed for
Shell with both Discoverer and
Kulluk at last starting to do
useful work, between them the
two rigs managed to notch up
only a few weeks of actual work,
rather than the four months or so
theoretically available for a rig to
be on location.
“The year 2012 has been as
challenging as we have known
for decades,” said Robert Blaauw,
Shell’s senior advisor for global
Arctic theme, speaking at the
Arctic Technology Conference in
28 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
Houston in December. “You can
also say that is likely for 2013 and
2014 as well.
“The start of the 2012 season was
delayed by the heaviest ice in 10
years, and the whaling season was
twice its normal length,” he said.
Just one day after that
9 September start by Noble
Discoverer in the Chukchi, the
drillship had to stop work, cast
off anchors and move away.
It was forced off by the
possibility that a vast
50-kilometre long floe of ice in
the vicinity could head for this
location on the Burger prospect.
Once the floe had passed, the
rig was able to resume work
and finish its planned tophole
drilling at Burger before the
mandatory 24 September close of
the Chukchi drilling season.
Meanwhile, over in the
Beaufort, Kulluk was unable
to start work until 3 October
because of an extended season for
bowhead whale hunting by the
Alaskan Inuit. The official open
water season for drilling runs
longer here — until 31 October —
in which time Kulluk was able
to complete its tophole work at
the Sivulliq location. At the start
of the US Arctic summer season,
rigs are allowed to enter the
Bering Strait on 1 July.
So what Shell has to show for
the 2012 season is two “top-
hole” sections going down 400
metres — one in each of its two
prospects. water depth at both is
40 metres.
In essence this means the
foundations are in, ready and
waiting for full drilling this
coming summer down to the
target strata a further thousand
metres or more below the seabed.
This is a far cry from what
Shell hoped could be achieved in
2012 — a season it had originally
budgeted to cost $1 billion.
The company has spoken
of drilling at least three full
wells in a Chukchi summer
with Discoverer, and two in a
Beaufort summer with Kulluk.
Photo: AP/Scanpix
At that rate its present 10-well
Alaska programme would be
accomplished in two years.
Nevertheless, initial drilling
has at least now started. The
reality last summer was that,
even if there had been more time
for the rigs to drill, they would
not have been permitted to go
deeper than 400 metres.
This was because Shell’s full
suite of oilspill containment
equipment — the containment
dome and receiving barge — were
not signed off by the regulatory
authorities in time to be deployed
north from Seattle.
That meant drilling had to be
kept well above any potentially
petroleum-bearing strata.
This year, when a fully-certified
oil spill containment system
should be ready right from the
start, Shell should at last be
able to drill down to the strata
which it hopes will yield the oil
that makes this huge scale of
effort, cost and perseverance all
worthwhile.

Kulluk
Kulluk is unique among floating
Arctic exploration vessels. It
has a saucer-shaped steel hull
designed to break incoming ice
by downward deflection and
diversion, whatever direction
that ice comes from.
Built in 1983 for Gulf Canada’s
drilling company BeauDril, and
designed by Earl & Wright, it
was described at the time as
“capable of operating safely in the
Beaufort Sea from break-up to well
beyond freeze-up — a significant
extension of the historically
brief summer drilling season for
conventionally shaped drillships”.
Its Arctic Class 4 hull was rated
to enable it to keep drilling in ice
up to 1.2 metres thick without
needing icebreakers to manage
that ice.
At deck level, this conical
semi-submersible is 81 metres in
diameter. Down at its base, its 12
anchor lines radiate from beneath
Photo: AP/Scanpix
a protective ring. Operating water
depth is from 18 to 180 metres.
Kulluk was bought by Shell in
2005, moved out of its Beaufort
stack to Dutch Harbor in the
Aleutians in autumn 2010, then
on to Seattle in June 2011 for
upgrading.
That $292 million upgrade by
Shell has included new engines
and emission controls, noise
control, and improved drilling
equipment.
Recently Kulluk has been most
in the news for drifting aground
near Kodiak Island in the Gulf
of Alaska on 31 December after
engines failed on its main towing
vessel Aiviq.
The drilling unit was en route
to Seattle for maintenance and
additional upgrades over the
winter.
Kulluk’s sea-keeping
characteristics are of course
tailored for the relatively calm
waters of the Arctic Ocean, rather
than one of the stormiest regions
of the world. In the Gulf of Alaska
the fetch is from Antarctica.
spotlight: thE arctic
Photo: Shell
Noble Discoverer
Noble Discoverer is an ice-strengthened drillship built in 1966 initially
as a log carrier. It was converted to a turret-moored drillship 10 years later.
The 157 metre long vessel has been upgraded and refurbished twice in
the past 10 years to work in the US Arctic.
Shell’s $193 million upgrade has included new drilling equipment, ice-
strengthened sponsons on the hull, emission control technology and, like
Kulluk, two blowout preventer stacks with dual shear rams.
The midship turret mooring system has eight anchor lines, along with
manoeuvring thrusters.
As with Kulluk, the anchor lines incorporate a quick connection
system designed and built by Delmar Systems to allow rapid mooring and
unmooring.
Discoverer’s operating water depth runs to 300 metres, and the self-
propelled vessel can transit at eight knots.
Tophole details
Drilling for the tophole (foundation) sections of Shell’s offshore
Alaska wells starts with a narrow 8½-inch pilot bore 400 metres
into the seabed.
This is to check for any pockets of shallow gas or other unknown
hazards in this surface portion.
Next comes 36-inch diameter casing around the first 100 metres
of pilot hole.
With that done, a large six-metre diameter cutter moves into
action, excavating a 12-metre deep mudline cellar that will later
protect the blowout preventer assembly from any ice that might
gouge across the seabed here.
Installation and cementing of 30-inch conductor pipe provides
the permanent guide base for the BOP.
Then, once the surface casing string has been installed and
cemented, the well is ready for the BOP to be lowered.
spotlight: thE Arctic

capping stack: Is specially

tailored to fit down into mudline
cellars on seabed that protect
wellheads in Shell campaign.

Photo: Shell

30 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


Spill preparedness —
the burning issue
I
f the issue of potential oil
spills in fragile Arctic waters
was not already explosive
enough in the public eye, the
Macondo blowout in the Gulf
of Mexico pushed it to another
league of intensity.
When a supposedly world-
beating operator and its
contractors between them
managed so comprehensively
to shoot the whole offshore oil
industry in the foot in April
2010, those who oppose Arctic
development at any cost could
not have been gifted a more
potent propaganda weapon.
Nowhere has the effect of all
this been more apparent than for
Shell and the high profile drilling
campaign it is trying so hard to
push ahead off north and north-
west Alaska.
This programme has thrust
Shell into the unenviable role
of flagbearer and trailblazer for
the whole of industry for Arctic
exploration in a post-Macondo
world.
The event caused an even
greater deluge of regulatory
paperwork, scrutiny and protest
activity than the impressive
levels it had already attracted.
Nevertheless Shell has stuck
doggedly to its path despite
regular delays and ever-rising
costs.
The evolution of an acceptable
strategy for avoiding an oil spill
— or for dealing with one should
such a disastrous event occur
— was always central to the
credibility of Shell’s campaign.
In the aftermath of Macondo
that work has included evolving
a capping stack system ready
to attach at the wellhead in the
event of a blowout.
Photo: Shell
This programme has not been
without its setbacks, such as
the buckling of the associated
containment dome during tests
in Puget Sound last September
and delays in signing off the
main containment vessel.
But Shell remains confident
that it will have the industry’s
best level of oilspill preparedness
in place this year for its Beaufort
and Chukchi Sea exploration
drilling programme.
The whole package should at
last be fully approved and ready
for its intended standby role by
the time the summer drilling
season starts.
In the words of Shell Alaska
vice president Pete Slaiby,
the company “has spent the
last six years in creating
an unprecedented oil spill
prevention and response plan for
a very unlikely event”.
At the heart of its strategy
is a “first of a kind Arctic
containment system”. This
includes the subsea capping
stack, and a steel containment
dome designed to capture oil and
gas and funnel it to processing
equipment on the vessel Arctic
Challenger.
Stack and dome
The capping stack here is a
variant of the emergency
pressure-containing device that
finally conquered the Macondo
blowout.
Described as “an amalgam of
connectors, pipes, valves and
blowout preventers”, it has since
become widely required for
offshore exploration plans.
In the aftermath of Macondo,
Houston company Trendsetter
went on to design stacks for two
different consortia of companies
involved in drilling deep-water
high pressure areas of the Gulf of
Mexico.
The stack it has built for Shell’s
Alaska operations stands up in
shell’s
dome:
The final
containment
structure in
the armoury
for Alaska
aims to
gain official
approval soon.
the mudline cellar excavated to
protect the BOP there.
Clamped firmly onto the
hardware at the seabed after
a blowout, it opens up the
way to close-in the well using
traditional kill methods inside
the BOP, or to flow the oil and
gas to the surface for storage and
disposal.
The capping system is a
key addition to Shell’s oil spill
response fleet since 2010 and will
be carried aboard one of Shell’s
support vessels even before
drilling begins.
It gained approval from the
authorities in July last year after
successful tests in 60 metres of
water off Bellingham.
The dedicated containment
barge Arctic Challenger is home
to the separation equipment
that would process spilled oil
captured and piped from below.
The vessel has had its own
challenges in gaining the
regulatory clearances required
from ABS and the US Coastguard.
However, in mid-October last
year it finally reached that goal
and was signed off in Bellingham,
Washington.
That means it is dubbed
ready for service and can be
towed north to the Arctic Ocean
when retreating ice allows this
summer’s drilling programme to
start.
Meanwhile, on 15 September,
Shell suffered a setback in
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: thE arctic
qualification of the containment
dome. After a series of trials at sea,
it was damaged during a final test
at the same site.
A faulty electrical connection
opened a valve and caused the
dome to descend too quickly.
“While safety systems
ensured it did not hit the
bottom, buoyancy chambers
were damaged from the sudden
pressure change,” says Shell.
The company “remains
confident that the technology is
robust” and that it can repair and
modify the dome ready for the
start of 2013 operations.
Ironically, the dome was
something that Shell first
proposed as a voluntary addition
to the capping stack.
But once it became part of the
exploration plan it came into the
scope of regulatory approval and
has turned out to be the critical
element in signing off the whole
of Shell’s response approach.
When drilling reaches a depth
below seabed where oil might
be encountered, the Arctic
Challenger vessel will be ready
and waiting in the vicinity.
That means it is likely to spend
most of its time stationed around
the half-way point between the
Chukchi and Beaufort drill sites,
ready to be towed east or west
by dedicated support tug Corbin
Foss in the event of trouble at
either of those locations.
Other specialist oil spill
response vessels in the Shell
fleet in the area include an oil
storage tanker of 500,000 barrel
capacity, and heavy duty barges
to handle booms and mechanical
skimmers to deal with “fugitive
oil emissions”.
In addition, further options
include dispersants and
controlled in situ burning of ice
pooled on the surface.
31
spotlight: the arctic
Steady study of spill
countermeasures
T
he major chapters in
the industry’s history
of investigation
into Arctic oil spill
countermeasures start with
significant work in Canada in the
1970s and early 1980s.
Early experiments on the
behaviour of crude in ice
included successful burning
of more than 300 barrels of
oil intentionally spilled under
landfast ice in the Canadian
Beaufort.
These pioneering projects
were followed by two sets of oil
releases in dynamic pack ice —
one off Nova Scotia in 1986 and
one in Norway in 1993.
After that it was another
15 years before anyone was
permitted to go out and spill oil
offshore in ice again.
That was in the multi-
company Barents Sea joint
industry programme handled by
32 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
Norwegian research organisation
Sintef, which ran from 2006 to
early 2010.
This oil-in-ice programme used
just over 100 barrels for a series
of tests over two years in pack ice
east of Svalbard.
Costing about $13 million, the
programme’s sponsors were the
Norwegian Research Council
and six oil companies — Statoil,
Shell, ConocoPhillips, Chevron,
AgipKCO and Total.
Several innovative response
techniques were tested, such
as new skimmer concepts, the
use of booms and herders to
enhance in situ burning of oil
in ice-covered waters, and the
dispersion of oil in ice.
Among key findings was the
conclusion that “in situ burning
and chemical dispersion can
be highly effective response
methods. Also the presence of
cold water and ice can enhance
response effectiveness by
limiting the spread of oil and
slowing the weathering process”.
Over the past year, the industry
has started an even bigger
programme of work in the shape
of the International Association
of Oil & Gas Producers’ $21 million
Arctic oilspill response technology
programme, currently gathering
momentum (see article on page 33).
Now, nearly three years after
the Macondo spill, a number
of important themes have
been highlighted, reckons
Arctic oilspill clean-up expert
David Dickins from his base in
California.
His involvement in this field
goes back four decades, starting
with that early experimental
work in the Canadian Beaufort.
An important trend Dickins
senses is an increasing focus on
subsea injection of dispersants.
“The emphasis is more and
biggest until now:
The $13 million Sintef
Photo: Sintef
JIP included real oil-in-
ice burning experi-
ments off Svalbard.
more coming around to subsea
dispersant injection as the one
technique that potentially could
offer a quantum leap in our
ability to limit impacts on the
environment,” he says.
“This has to be done in concert
with a capping stack system fully
engineered and ready to go,” he
continues.
“That means the duration of
the discharge should be reduced
to around a week or 10 days, as
opposed to the month or more it
would take to drill a relief well.
“There is an increasing
feeling that the relief well is not
necessarily the preferred option,”
he reckons.
An Arctic offshore drilling
review by the Canadian
government two years ago
culminated in a huge town hall
meeting in Inuvik in September
2011.
There, all the operators in
 spotlight: the arctic

effect presented their answers even in Arctic waters, can readily

to the question — what would
happen in the Beaufort if you had
a Macondo-like blowout?
One consistent message from
all the companies, Dickins points
out, was to admit that “you
cannot deal effectively with a
really large incident in the Arctic
using mechanical recovery.
Everything’s against you in terms
of logistics, lack of infrastructure,
storage sites and so on.
“You can’t rely on skimmers
and booms so you have to come
back to these other strategies
involving burning or dispersants
— Macondo demonstrated that
conclusively,” he says.
“With literally hundreds of
vessels and in relatively ideal
conditions, the final recovery
achieved there might just have
reached 3% to 4% of the oil
discharged. To me that says it all.”
So modern dispersants offer a
very promising path. “By injecting
dispersants at large scale at the
source you can disperse literally
100% of the spill if you do it
properly,” says Dickins.
“It’s very effective, and the
dispersed plume is kept at depth
because these oil droplets are
more or less neutrally buoyant
attack and consume it in a short
period of time.”
To achieve this, the dispersants
must be mixed with oil very
efficiently. So the ideal place
to inject them is where the oil
is exiting the wellhead and
already creating highly turbulent
conditions.
“There’s a lot of evidence now,
post-Macondo, that you need far
less dispersant if you apply it
subsea rather than on the surface
from an aircraft or ship,” says
Dickins.
“The reduction amounts to at
least five times less dispersant
needed than the dose rate of
one in 20 commonly used when
applied on the surface.”
Dispersants are not
automatically a bad thing, he
continues, “there are no terrible
compounds there”.
Toxicity tests have shown,
he says, that one of the most
common dispersants used in the
Macondo spill is at least 25 times
less toxic to fish than the washing
up liquid on an average kitchen
shelf.
All in all, he concludes, “if you
don’t have subsea injection of
dispersants as your mainstay

Photo: Sintef
and hardly rise at all. of blowout response you are
Photo: Sintef

“You’re breaking the oil down increasing the odds of facing a

into minute drops — less than a very large spill that could last a
hundred microns — so that the long time with limited options to
bacteria that reside naturally, mitigate it”. What no-one Wants to see for real: Here oil and ice was mixed
on purpose in Sintef JIP

Industry gathers for biggest effort yet

T
he most comprehensive
programme of research
into Arctic oil spill
response technology yet
mounted by the oil industry is
now a year into its four-year life
and has most of its 10 projects
initiated and starting to gather
momentum.
The formation of a joint
industry programme under the
auspices of the industry’s main
global representative body — the
International Association of Oil
& Gas Producers (OGP) — was
announced in Tromso in January
last year, though its origins lie in
industry discussions that started
well before the Macondo disaster.
This “collaborative research
endeavour” is currently costed
at $21 million and sponsored by
nine major oil companies.
These are BP, Chevron,
ConocoPhillips, Eni, ExxonMobil,
North Caspian Oil Company, Shell,
Statoil and Total.
“Working together in this
four-year JIP, the companies are
ensuring the most efficient use of
resources, funding and expertise
to improve the technologies
and methodologies for Arctic
spill response,” said programme
manager Joseph Mullin at the time
of the launch.
Mullin has a long career with the
US Minerals Management Service
behind him and now runs his own
oil pollution consultancy, based in
Maryland.
Becky Peavler, of ConocoPhillips,
has the current one-year post
as chair of the programme’s
executive committee.
Mullin describes it as a
continuation of the industry’s
decades-long research and
development for response in Arctic
and cold weather conditions — not
least the major project by Norway’s
Sintef, finished in 2009 — then the
largest effort of its kind.
As well as having a far broader
scope than the Sintef work, the
OGP programme is also putting
much emphasis on public
outreach, with a well-funded
communication strategy.
Phil Dyer, chairman of the
programme’s communications
committee, notes: “It is essential
that operations in the Arctic will
be supported through public
awareness of our technical
capabilities and we can enable
that through active sharing of
information from the programme.”
The programme will manage 10
research projects in six key areas —
dispersants, environmental effects,
trajectory modelling, remote
sensing, mechanical recovery and
in-situ burning.Assembly of an
extensive information base is also
planned.
It is hoped the programme
can include several controlled-
oil releases in the field to verify
research results.
However, “permitting approval
for such field experiment could
be one of our hardest challenges”,
notes Mullin.

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 33

spotlight: thE arctic
Technology development
– a case for lateral thinking
T
he Arctic’s unique
challenge for
exploration and
production brings with
it an equally strong need for
science and technologies that
can take the quest forward as
effectively as possible.
In the western hemisphere
there is little doubt that Shell is
front and centre of the stage.
Certainly the company
is highly conscious of the
trailblazing role off Alaska that
it is playing on behalf of an
industry mostly content to watch
a while longer before joining
Shell in major active operations
in such areas.
So it is not surprising that
the company has well-formed
views on where to concentrate
attention when it comes to
refining existing technologies
and seeking new ways of
operating, and has a wide-
ranging effort going ahead in
technology development, both
co-operatively and on its own.
34 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
Senior Shell people had useful
things to say on that score
in several presentations at
December’s Arctic Technology
conference in Houston.
At the opening Shell’s senior
advisor for global Arctic theme,
Robert Blaauw, based in The
Netherlands, pointed out that
“we should not be going for
‘biggest ever’.
“Instead we should be thinking
about how to reduce footprint,
drill faster wells to take maximum
advantage of short summer
seasons, reduce risk and exposure
of people, and improve logistics,”
he said. In the drive to achieve
much of this, “collaboration and
co-operation is key”.
Later in the conference — at
the panel session on “Future
directions of R&D” — Mitch
Winkler, Shell’s manager, Arctic
projects and technology in
Houston, gave more detail on
priorities.
“The number one technology
challenge is to ensure operations
are safe and protect the
environment,” he said. “Cost
“The number
effectiveness follows from that.” one technology
In the principal area of oil
spill response, “the emphasis challenge,
is very much on prevention.
And on the response side, over
is to ensure
the last six years we have been operations
able to demonstrate how well
countermeasures work in the
are safe and
Arctic”. protect the
Winkler himself has an Arctic
pedigree that stretches back to environment.”
the 1980s as a young engineer Mitch Winkler,
working on shallow water
development solutions for the Shell’s manager,
Beaufort, chiefly centred on Arctic projects
gravel island concepts.
The issues of operational and technology
footprint — such things as
submarine sound, air emissions,
water and solids discharge —
are all intensified in the Arctic
environment, he stresses, and
Shell has a variety of initiatives
aimed at such topics.
“The industry must think
more out of the box and
consider non-intuitive solutions

when addressing the specific
challenges of operating in the
Arctic environment,” says
Winkler.
“Logistics is a great example
of this, and one that we know is
going to be a big challenge.
“The answer does not
necessarily lie in better
icebreakers or new types of
aircraft such as lighter than air,”
he continues.
“It lies in things like reduced
manning requirements and
reduced use of consumables, for
example by drilling slimmer
wells and more quickly.
“And there are opportunities
around robotics, such as use of
unmanned vehicles, both aerial
and underwater.”
Winkler also speaks of the
balance between collaboration
and competition.
“By and large, many of the
specific challenges of the Arctic
environment, such as operating
in ice, potential ice gouging of
the seabed, spill response, and
footprint have a common thread
of HSE running through them,”
he says.
As with the whole of industry,
“HSE is not an area where Shell
competes. There is a strong need
for collaboration across industry,
government agencies and others
to develop proven solutions”.
Pulling together
This clearly has huge relevance
in the field of oil spill response.
Shell is strongly supporting
such efforts as the International
Association of Oil & Gas
Producers’ work on guidelines,
and ISO’s work on international
standards, and “commits its
resources and sharing of its
knowledge and experience to
such efforts”.
“There’s a lot of power in
standardisation,” remarks
Winkler. “It’s a great enabler.
Guidelines and standards like
ISO’s create a level playing field
and minimum baseline, for
example in ice load prediction or
pipeline design, and demonstrate
the rigour of our solutions.”
Nevertheless, with all of the
above said, Winkler concludes:
“The role of proprietary
technology is huge. The Arctic is
largely conventional oil and gas
in an unconventional setting.
“So technology aimed at
things like improved well
delivery, extended reach
drilling, hydrocarbon recovery,
and management of wells,
reservoir, and facilities has great
significance.”
Other specialists agree. “We
need collaboration, and the
Arctic is a natural area for it in
areas like HSE standards, risk
mitigation, and sharing of R&D
costs,” says Arne Gurtner, Statoil’s
principal researcher for Arctic
technology.
“Innovation is not just a
buzzword. There is a risk that cost
may be a showstopper for some
Arctic projects and R&D can help
avoid that,” he says. “Of course
you must ask ‘how does my R&D
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: thE arctic
proving ground: Sub-
Arctic projects such as here
off Sakhalin provide ample
opportunity for all sorts of
technologies relevant further
north to prove themselves.
Photo: ExxonMobil
fit in the bigger picture’ — you
cannot do it decoupled from the
business case.”
But there is always further
work to be done. Mooring,
station-keeping, connection
and disconnection, material
behaviour, ice management, flow
assurance - these are just some
of the areas that need to be kept
under the spotlight.
As other sections in this review
demonstrate, organisations
such as Canada’s Petroleum
Research Newfoundland &
Labrador are nurturing excellent
examples of joint industry
co-operation in fields such as
subsea development and seabed
trenching.
But, for example, specialists are
still far from reaching consensus
on the structural loads exerted in
different ice scenarios (see article
on page 38).
There is a great need for
instrumentation and full-scale
measurements from as many
installations as possible.
35
 spotlight: thE arctic
SubSea below ice:
Recent study by IntecSea has
investigated subsea technology
status for such settings
Newfoundland
is lively
test bed
Graphic: IntecSea
T
wo separate joint
industry projects under
way in Newfoundland
over the past two
years have each just reached a
significant milestone.
One has been looking at the
state-of-the-art for use of subsea
production technology in Arctic
and ice-prone regions and the
other is aimed at developing a
pipeline trenching system that
is able to dig deeper than
currently possible to avoid ice-
gouging.
Both are being managed
by Petroleum Research
Newfoundland & Labrador
(PRNL), and in each case this
non-profit corporation has
contracted the work to IntecSea’s
office in St John’s.
Two years ago, the organisation
(formerly known as Petroleum
Research Atlantic Canada — PRAC
— until a November 2011 name
change) restructured to become
“the principal delivery agent for
industry-based R&D funding in
the province”.
Its origins lie in regional
government policies to encourage
industrial development that
require a percentage of the
revenues generated offshore
to be spent on research and
development locally.
With a commitment from the
oil and gas companies there to
spend tens of millions of dollars
over a period of years, PRAC was
set up as a regional entity in 1999
before the recent restructuring
36 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
and associated focus on
Newfoundland & Labrador.
As chief operating officer David
Finn puts it, “our job is to fund
and facilitate collaborative R&D
on behalf of our members”.
Those members are a mix of
oil companies — the partners in
the Hibernia, White Rose, Terra
Nova and Hebron projects. Non-
members can also participate.
Since 1999, the organisation has
awarded more than C$20 million
(US$20 million) in direct funding
of projects with a total value
approaching C$50 million.
Subsea project
Although at present detail
is scarce about the subsea
technology JIP carried out by
IntecSea, it appears that the
programme is now essentially
complete, with reports issued
to participants just before
Christmas.
The aim has been to update and
expand information on the state
of the industry, and to compare
each emerging technology by
evaluating it in several notional
field development scenarios.
These cover subsea elements
such as boosting pumps,
separation, compression and
direct electric heating.
IntecSea has developed a
database tool for screening and
cost estimation in such settings.
All in all, the project has
aimed to assist in understanding
selection and deployment issues
for these subsea technologies in
Graphic: Boskalis
Trenching challenge: Four
concepts for difficult seabeds
are being evaluated in JIP. This
indicates the one from Boskalis.
challenging Arctic and sub-Arctic
regions.
It did, in fact, double in length,
growing from one year to two in
recognition of the scale of input
required to do the full job.
Trenching project
The first phase of the trenching
JIP that has run for about 18
months and is likewise managed
by IntecSea, is also just reaching
completion.
This work has been aimed
at developing a system to
bury pipelines in ice scour
environments and in highly
variable soils that may include
boulders. This calls for an
impressive jump beyond existing
capabilities.
Explaining the project in the
early days, PRAC senior technical
advisor Charles Smith noted: “in
contrast to the current norm of
trenching to no more than three
metres depth, it’s going to be
different off Newfoundland and
Greenland.
“Not only do we have difficult
glacial seabed soils here, but we
could need a trench depth of
as much as seven metres, and
to excavate it in deep water —
initially, say, up to 300 metres.”
Since then, Smith has moved
to Newfoundland Research &
Development Corporation, and
at PRNL the trenching project
is now under the wing of Metzi
Prince.
The goal of phase one has been
to examine concepts and shortlist
a number of contenders from the
companies who have expressed
interest, then go on to carry out
more detailed engineering and
feasibility studies in phase two.
In August last year, IntecSea
awarded contracts to four
companies to complete a
conceptual study and phase two
execution plan.
Those companies are Boskalis
Offshore of The Netherlands,
DeepOcean from Darlington
in the UK, and two companies
from St John’s, Newfoundland
— Pangeo Subsea and Rocksaw
Atlantic.
Their submissions are
apparently now being evaluated
and a decision is expected by the
end of February on how to move
forward.
In the long-term, the plan
may include a full-scale field
demonstration project of a
chosen system in phase four.
Currently there is also talk of
large-scale ice-gouge modelling,
with model ice keels being
dragged through different soils.

The ice force enigma
I
“ ce and Arctic engineering are
highly controversial subjects,”
points out Andrew Palmer,
whose long connections with
the region include the pioneering
subsea operations at Drake Point
in Canada’s High Arctic islands
in 1976.
Currently professor at
the National University of
Singapore’s Centre for Offshore
Research & Engineering,
Palmer has been pondering the
conundrums of ice mechanics
throughout a career that has
regularly oscillated between
academia and mainstream
industry.
The subject of ice is
progressing, he reckons, but
only slowly. “What most needs
to be done is some serious effort
to make comparisons between
the many theories and proper
measurements on full-scale
structures in real ice. Of course, it
is just that kind of research that
is the most expensive.”
The ISO standard 19906 for
Arctic offshore structures,
published in 2010, “represents
an immense effort by many
dedicated people,” Palmer told
the POAC conference in Montreal
in July 2011.
“Completed after years of
hard work, it is a valuable
and powerful document, and
everyone in the industry will find
it useful.
“However, it is not premature
to consider how to move on.
The standard is necessarily an
imperfect product of imperfect
human beings, and it has
inconsistencies and gaps, like
most consensuses. In part
they reflect the difficulties
spotlight: thE arctic
Photo: AP/Scanpix
getting to the nub: Feedback
from the real environment is vital to
improving knowledge of ice forces
“What most and disagreements of a still
immature subject.”
needs to be One aspect of the current
situation, Palmer reckons, is
done is some that “a lot of people are trying to
serious effort reach conclusions about ice and
the Arctic by reboiling existing
to compare the knowledge rather than through
many theories genuine research”.
This is compounded by the fact
with proper that operators are cutting back
measurements on Arctic work, with the possible
exceptions of Shell and Conoco-
on full-scale Phillips.
Palmer’s latest contribution to
structures in the subject is the wide-ranging
real ice.” and admirably thorough book
Arctic Offshore Engineering,
Andrew Palmer co-authored with Canadian ice
consultant Ken Croasdale and
published last November. (The
350-page book is published by
World Scientific at $108.)
The need for feedback »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 37
 spotlight: thE arctic
Photo: SEIC
feeling the force: Bottom founded drilling unit Molikpaq has
provided valuable ice force data during its long life. Built for exploration
in the Canadian Beaufort it was then moved to Sakhalin 2 for an early
production role. Here it is seen in that late role.
» from site-specific work was
also underlined in internal
discussions of the ABS offshore
committee in December.
Ice loading and load
measurement require additional
study and future installations
should be highly instrumented,
they emphasised. Also, full-
scale measurement is needed to
validate tools and models.
Meanwhile, ISO 19906 remains
the de facto standard, with the
major class societies such as ABS
and DNV going on to address
specific issues and evolve their
own individual recommended
practices and detailed design
guidelines about how to apply
those basic principles.
Speaking at the time of
the ISO code release, DNV’s
Gus Cammaert noted: “This
is the first attempt at a truly
international code for offshore
structures in the Arctic and cold
regions.
“It specifies requirements and
provides guidance for the design,
construction, installation and
decommissioning of offshore
38 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
structures, although it does not
cover pipeline issues, nor apply to
mobile drilling units.”
Previously the field had been
somewhat fragmented, he said.
“In the past there have been
American codes, Canadian and
Russian codes, and seven draft
Chinese and Japanese codes.
“Now everyone can follow
an international code which
addresses many of the
deficiencies in previous codes.
Also it is one that the Russians
appear to support.”
Still probably one of the most
useful regions of activity for
drawing general lessons is off
Sakhalin.
Here multi-leg platforms and
caisson structures are producing
and working well in a setting
where there is challenging ice
every winter.
Indeed, two structures that
were evolved for exploration
roles in the early days of Beaufort
Sea activity — Molikpaq and CIDS
— were subsequently moved
to Sakhalin to perform early
production roles there.
Still far from ice
load consensus
J
ust how much the
estimation of ice loads
can vary when calculated
by different experts
was underlined in a highly
instructive joint industry
workshop experiment organised
by Canada’s National Research
Council (NRC).
Seven international experts
were invited to participate
in predicting loads at a two-
day event in Calgary attended
by representatives of the six
companies that joined the
JIP — ConocoPhillips, Shell,
ExxonMobil, ABS, DNV and
Keppel.
The confidentiality clause on
the project is now well expired
and speaking at December’s
Arctic Technology conference
in Houston, Garry Timco, who
organised the workshop for NRC,
described what came out of the
event held in May 2007.
The aim was to determine the
degree of consensus of leading
ice mechanics experts on the
loads exerted by multi-year ice on
offshore platforms.
The seven experts were
asked to predict loads for three
different ice loading scenarios
involving multi-year ice floes.
These were an isolated floe, a
multi-year floe in pack ice, and
a multi-year hummock field in a
sheet of first-year ice.
Their interaction with two
different structures was analysed,
namely a 150-metre wide vertical
caisson, and a 45-degree conical-
shaped structure.
“The experts chosen for this
study had significant experience
with multi-year ice loads yet there
were still very large differences
in the predicted values and in
the methodologies used and
assumptions made,” said Timco.
The outcome of the exercise
was that, overall, the experts
differed by a factor of four in the
loads they anticipated.
More precisely, their estimates
differed by a factor of 4.6 for the
vertical caisson and 3.5 for the
conical structure. In spite of
these ratios, the experts were
more confident about loads on
the vertical caisson.
Timco noted that these results
should be kept in perspective.
“The experts were given a
limited budget and limited time
to provide predictions for a few
simple scenarios,” he said.
“If they were truly asked
to develop design loads,
considerably more effort would
be required than was allowed in
this study.”
In the previous year, Timco
and Calgary-based consultant
Ken Croasdale also organised
another study that had brought
together 29 predictors from
seven countries — Canada, the
US, Russia, Germany, Finland,
Norway and Japan.
In that case, predictions
differed by a factor of seven
for the multi-year ice scenario
against a vertical structure.
All of this “clearly pointed out
the problem associated with the
lack of understanding of the pack
ice driving forces in the Beaufort
Sea, where multi-year ice floes
are formidable features”.
In the past year, Timco and
others have outlined “some
approaches which could be
developed to improve knowledge
of such driving forces, still one
of the key unknowns in the
Beaufort Sea.
“Knowledge of ice loads has
been significantly enhanced
by the data from the Molikpaq
bottom-founded steel caisson
exploration unit when it worked
in the Beaufort Sea,” he said.
Molikpaq later went on to perform
early production at Sakhalin 2.
All the experts at the Calgary
workshop made a plea to the oil
industry to instrument all new
structures to get as much data on
the table as possible, said Timco.
Key areas identified for further
research included improved
knowledge of ice thickness and
its variation, new and innovative
techniques for obtaining ice
loads, improved knowledge of
pack ice driving forces, and better
understanding of the failure
behaviour of multi-year ice.
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spotlight: the Arctic

SeiSmic

40 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

 spotlight: the Arctic

3D on
ice for now
Widespread under-ice 3D seismic is probably the sector’s
biggest challenge yet. Leading oil industry geosciences
commentator Andrew McBarnet explains why.

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 41

 spotlight: the Arctic
A
» rctic 3D seismic under
the ice: it’s a tantalising
prospect but mission
impossible, or so it
would seem.
No one knows exactly what is
at stake, but the US Geological
Survey’s widely quoted estimate
suggests that 22% of the world’s
undiscovered technically
recoverable hydrocarbon
resources lie in the Arctic Circle
— and 84% may be offshore.
It is not clear what proportion
is literally in the deep freeze, but
those ice-covered environs of the
Arctic Ocean remain a step too
far for marine seismic vessels to
unlock the oil and gas potential
of this last, vast frontier region.
On the other hand,
geoscientists are nothing if not
inventive. Think 3D, 4D, ocean
bottom and wide-azimuth
seismic; permanent reservoir
monitoring; controlled source
electromagnetics.
These are innovations that in
a generation have transformed
our expectation of what can
be achieved using seismic
data acquisition to find and
characterise hydrocarbon
potential.
No surprise, then, that seismic
companies appear up for the
42 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
challenge. They are already
beginning to edge operations
into increasingly ice-infested
regions where governments and
the oil industry are keen to map
prospective structures.
Credit for the first baby steps
must go to ION Geophysical,
which was honoured for its
achievements at the 2012 OTC
Arctic Conference in Houston in
December.
In a sense, the company
is an unlikely hero for
these pioneering surveys in
Arctic waters. ION (formerly
known as Input/Output)
traditionally manufactured
seismic acquisition and related
equipment for land and marine,
to which it added GX Technology
(GXT), one of the first processing
companies to specialise in depth
imaging.
Then, in a move towards a more
service-oriented business model,
it launched its multi-client 2D
seismic BasinSPAN programme.
The idea was to offer
geologically rich, basin-scale
studies to improve understanding
of the petroleum systems of
frontier and other conventional
and unconventional under-
explored areas around the world,
optimising the offering with GXT
depth imaging of the data.
Today, the SPAN portfolio
contains projects on every
continent except Antarctica as
well as the Arctic. Since 2006 the
company says it has accumulated
40,000 kilometres of depth-
imaged data in the US Chukchi
Sea, the Canadian Beaufort Sea
and off eastern Greenland. 2009
was a breakthrough year.
That was when ION felt
confident enough to capitalise
on its experience of seismic
operations in remote Arctic
conditions, which present
significant operational, safety
and environmental challenges,
even in open waters. It decided
to take things to another level by
acquiring data under-ice.
The planned ArcticSPAN in the
prospective area off Greenland’s
northeast coast required
modifications to just about every
aspect of its previous approach
to single-streamer 2D seismic
acquisition.
Top of the list was the
introduction of an ice-breaker.
This was brought in for service
with an Arctic-class seismic
vessel, the Geo Explorer, supplied
by the Octio Group.
Octio chief executive Bjarte
Fageraas is a former ION chief
Follow my leader:
Icebreaker clears the path for
seismic. Photo: ION Geophysical
technology officer, so was
familiar with the company’s
aspirations.
Keeping icebreaker
in check
The job of the ice-breaker was
to plough a fairway through the
ice cover to create the conditions
for the seismic vessel and its
streamer to operate effectively
without obstacle.
Not that simple, of course.
There can be no sudden stopping
in the middle of a seismic line
without risk of equipment
failure.
Keeping the icebreaker in
check can often be an issue,
according to Joe Gagliardi, vice
president marine, for ION’s
GeoVentures division, who has
been overseeing ION’s Arctic
projects. “Icebreakers leverage
speed to break the ice, and that
doesn’t always coincide with
operational objectives from a
data acquisition perspective.”
An elaborate communication
protocol between the bridges of
the two vessels was established
to integrate the ice management
strategy with all the navigation
and positioning equipment on
board.
Ice navigation, radar and

Steering clear oF
trouble: PGS’s Ramform
Challenger at work in free
water Arctic conditions.
satellite imagery enabled the
ice-breaker crew to carve an offset
track in the ice so that the Geo
Explorer and its streamer could
follow along the pre-plotted line.
Keeping everything on track
should be ION’s strong suit. It
provides the industry with Orca,
a command and control system
for seismic operations, plus
DigiFIN, DigiBIRD and DigiSHOT,
all respected solutions to the
navigation and positioning of
seismic vessels and their towed
equipment.
In addition, its DigiSTREAMER
cable is well suited to Arctic
operations — it is solid and
thus less vulnerable to damage;
environmentally friendly
compared to any liquid-filled
streamer; and said to be reliable
with low technical downtime, a
valuable capability in icy waters.
Some special adjustments had
to be made. For example, source
floats and tail buoys, normally
on the surface and used, among
other things, to take streamer and
source GPS measurements, were
inappropriate in this case because
of the danger of ice damage.
A submerged solution
needed to be developed for all
components. This included a
proprietary flotation system with
depth control to accommodate
the air-gun array, whatever the
weight.
Experience showed that
more accurate positioning
measurements obtained along
the length of the streamer could
compensate for the lack of GPS
readings from the tail buoy,
which had to remain submerged
in icy conditions.
However, this meant
having to come up with a
way to compensate for the
magnetic variation of compass
measurements being used so close
to the North Pole.
ION also designed an “ice skeg”
to provide a protected channel
and a submerged tow-point
for the streamer and source
umbilicals.
Seismic recording in these
circumstances presents special
challenges. To ensure the
quality of the data, the noise
of the surroundings, such as
ice multiples, the ice-breaker
operation and ice collisions
with the seismic vessel have to
be recorded, so that they can be
identified and eliminated during
processing, otherwise they can
contaminate the data.
ION is beginning to build a
significant track record for its
ArcticSPAN, including the under-
ice coverage.
Sustainable business
That first trial in 2009 ended with
the successful acquisition of
5200 kilometres of long offset 2D
seismic said to be of high quality.
This was way more than
the originally planned 4000
kilometre survey and, according
to the company, was achieved
without incident to the crew or
harm to the environment and
with a minimal 2% technical
downtime.
Since then, more than 30,000
kilometres of seismic data under
the ice have been recorded,
expending more than
1 million man-hours, with a total
recordable incidence rate of 0.62,
which ION says is well below
accepted industry thresholds. No
environmental problems were
encountered either.
Surveys have been carried out
in the Beaufort and Chukchi
seas, and in 2011 the company
got within 200 kilometres of the
North Pole on an assignment in
the High Arctic offshore Russia,
to determine the extent of the
country’s exclusive economic
zone.
Gagliardi believes ION has
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: the Arctic
established a sustainable
business for 2D seismic under-
ice, which for the time being
will be largely dictated by
government licensing rounds.
Ahead of the 2012-13 East
Greenland licensing round,
ION was back in the region for
the third time. In partnership
with ARKeX, it also carried out
an airborne full tensor gravity
gradiometry survey covering
all of the licence blocks being
offered by the Greenland Bureau
of Minerals & Petroleum.
The idea was to integrate the
airborne gravity data with the 2D
seismic to provide an improved
3D model for oil companies
considering the East Greenland
play.
In 2012 the multi-client
specialist TGS adopted the ice-
breaker approach to complete
its NEG12 2D seismic data set off
northeast Greenland ahead of the
licensing round.
In partnership with Dutch-
based oil services group Fugro,
it acquired more than 3400
kilometres of 2D data.
Two successive licensing
rounds involving northeast
Greenland’s offshore cover 49,948
square kilometres, divided into
19 blocks. »
43
spotlight: the Arctic

Photo: ION Geophysical

Icy challenge: Under-

ice seismic surveying on a
good day.

44 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


Safe haven: Greenland township with local colour.
» The pre-licensing round
reserved for the members of
the Kanumas Group (Statoil,
BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell,
Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National
Corporation and Greenland’s
Nunaoil) offered 11 of the 19 blocks
covering 29,867 square kilometres,
with a decision on applications
promised on 15 March.
An open round will follow,
consisting of any block in the
round not assigned, with the
results expected in January next
year.
The only other player in the
under-ice survey game to date
has been the UK company WGP,
best known for its support
services to the Valhall life of
field seismic project off Norway,
where it has completed 15 repeat
surveys over the field using its
portable modular source system
(PMSS).
Last year, WGP carried out one
of the ongoing 2D surveys in the
East Siberian and Laptev seas of
the Russian High Arctic on behalf
of state-controlled research and
production company Sevmorgeo
to delineate the continental shelf.
WGP outfitted the Russian
ice-breaker Dikson in the port
of Kirkenes, northern Norway,
with its PMSS equipment, plus a
Sercel Sentinel seismic streamer
and associated deck handling
equipment.
The Dikson was escorted by the
ice-breaker Kapitan Dranitsyn, to
act as a lead vessel through pack
ice and provide replenishments
for the Dikson.
The vessel was able to operate
in Arctic waters for 45 days
between mid-August and the
end of September, during which
5300 line kilometres of towed
streamer data were acquired,
along with some ocean bottom
seismometer data.
Among the big five marine
seismic contractors that
control 90% of the market —
WesternGeco, Petroleum Geo-
Services (PGS), CGGVeritas,
Polarcus and Dolphin
Geophysical — there is little overt
interest being shown in this
under-ice seismic survey activity.
They are playing a waiting game.
Playing it safe
The reason is simple. These
companies make their money
from multi-streamer 3D seismic
surveys, and the aerial footprint
of such surveys makes it
impossible for their vessels to
work in anything but ice-free or
possibly bergy waters with sea ice
concentrations of less than 10%.
Essentially the main players
have been edging their 3D
seismic operations as close to
“mission impossible” ice areas as
they safely dare.
The focus has been on
personnel, equipment,
operational and environmental
issues to maximise the safety
and productivity of 3D seismic
during the short summer season
of mainly open water conditions
in the Arctic Circle between
June/July and October.
It would be hard to
characterise this as anything
more than adaptation of existing
technology and procedures. This
is still a serious undertaking.
Of the major contractors,
Polarcus has been making the
“We will
definitely see
under-ice 3D
seismic, and
probably
sooner than
you think.”
Joe Gagliardi,
ION Geophysical
biggest play to be “Arctic ready”,
even including a declaration
of intent when launching
the company in 1998 with its
reference to polar.
Since then it has built eight
vessels vessels, six of which are
ICE-1A or ICE-1A* rated with
winterized capabilities (the two
others are ICE-IC rated). This is
the only seismic fleet of its kind
in the world.
It is not clear how much
competitive advantage the
company can gain from its focus
on operating 3D vessels in Arctic
conditions.
One positive may be that Shell
is reportedly insisting that all
vessels working on its projects,
including support vessels, should
have a proper ice rating.
On the other hand, companies
such as PGS and CGGVeritas have
satisfied their clients that they
have the means and expertise to
carry out surveys safely in these
environmentally hazardous
conditions without specific
Arctic outfitting.
Last summer Polarcus made
its debut in the short Arctic
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: the Arctic
Photo: PGS
operating season with surveys off
western Greenland for Shell and
Maersk, covering about 10,000
square kilometres.
Planning for the operations
came under headings such as ”ice
management plan”, “logistics”,
“medivac and marine mammals”,
all important considerations in
these remote regions.
The reality was that on the
Shell survey of 7000 square
kilometers in the Anu and Napu
blocks of Baffin Bay, the Polarcus
Amani and Polarcus Samur
ICE-1A survey vessels were each
supported by two chase vessels
with ice management as their
main priority, plus a supply
vessel to provide bunkering, crew
change and other services to the
operation.
The seismic vessels had marine
mammal and seabird observers
(MMSO) on board to ensure no
damage to an environment on
which local communities are
dependent.
As an additional precaution,
Shell placed two of these MMSOs
on all five support vessels.
No barriers to entry
On the Tooq block for Maersk,
the Polarcus Asima was towing
a one-kilometre spread of 10
streamers, each six kilometres
long, to acquire 1850 square
kilometres of 3D seismic data.
A smaller airgun array than
initially envisaged as source for
the survey was used in order to
help reduce potential impacts
to local mammal communities.
Three chase boats equipped with
ice radar and satellite tracking
equipment were used to prevent »
45
 spotlight: the Arctic
IcEBERG AHEAD: Object to be avoided.
» encounters with floating glacier
ice and icebergs.
Polarcus has concluded from its
foray into the region that there
need be no barriers to entry.
Its chief geophysicist, Phil
Fontana, says: “We intend to
continue acquiring seismic in
potentially very cold, remote
regions with sparse infrastructure
and sail through ice to get there.
“But we recognise that taking a
vessel into ice, even with suitable
ice ratings and preparation,
involves significant risk.
“Extensive passage planning in
close coordination with third-
party ice service information
providers, including additional
experienced ice navigation
personnel, are just some of the
critical elements.”
The remaining question
is when, if ever, there will be
extensive 3D seismic surveying
under the ice cover.
Fontana cannot see that
happening without intervention
from Big Oil, because the solution
is probably very expensive and
beyond the resources of the
seismic business.
It is hard to disagree. Talk in
the industry is that any solution
looks as though it will have to
involve placing recording devices
on the seabed. These will then be
retrieved and moved along the
planned survey area.
In other words, some form
of node-based ocean bottom
seismic — a technology that is
in its infancy in normal offshore
46 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
Photo: PGS
conditions, let alone an extreme
Arctic environment. Nodes are
also seen more as a seismic survey
tool for targeted areas, rather than
exploration-scale projects.
Several companies, including
ION, are known to be looking at
how 3D seismic can be achieved in
covered ice offshore.
One of the more futuristic
“We intend research projects with possible
to continue Arctic applications is being
undertaken by a UK company, GO
acquiring Science (see panel).
seismic in Whether any such solution
gains traction in the near term
potentially must be a matter of conjecture.
At the macro level it is clear that
very cold, oil companies are not falling over
remote regions themselves to take on difficult
remote Arctic projects.
with sparse Nor, for that matter, are the
infrastructure main marine seismic contractors
paying much attention, when
and sail demand for 3D seismic is on a
high with the revival of the Gulf
through ice to of Mexico, renewed interest in the
get there.” transatlantic rift potential and
emerging prospects in the eastern
Phil Fontana, Mediterranean, East Africa
Polarcus offshore and elsewhere.
In a recent presentation of
worldwide seismic exploration
prospects, PGS marked interest in
the Arctic Ocean as “growing but
unlikely to be substantial near/
medium term”. That seems about
right.
However, the last word goes
to ION’s Joe Gagliardi: “We
will definitely see under-ice 3D
seismic, and probably sooner than
you think.”
Robots may
be solution
Research at UK-based GO
Science is all very hush-
hush, but a practical method
for carrying out 3D seismic
surveys under ice could
be an outcome. We can
only speculate because
some of the company’s
funding is coming from
Shell Technology, which
is insisting on a code of
silence.
We do know that GO
Science is working on a
more efficient and economic
method of ocean bed
seismic. This would seem
the logical route to go for 3D
seismic in locations like the
Arctic where streamers are
inappropriate.
Among other wizardry,
GO Science is developing a
mobile sensor solution to
seabed recording said to
offer dramatic savings in
time and money compared
with legacy technology
using manual deployment
methods. Based on new
automated deployment
methods, the company
believes that large grids
of 1000 or more sensors
(swarms) could be launched
and fully operational within
24 hours.
The grids are based on a
network of ”flying robots”
— self-propelled RHyVAU
(Ring Hydro Vessel Agent
Under-liquid) vehicles made
with an elegantly simple ring
design for easy deployment
and retrieval.
GO Science, which
has some links with the
University of Bristol in
southwest England, was
founded 10 years ago by
Harry Gosling, previously an
executive of the UK defence
organisation BAE.
STARTInG GRID: Harry
Gosling in 2009 with an early
version of the self-propelled
robot.
Photo: Dagens Næringsliv

LOOKING NORTH:
Sevan’s Arne Smedal
sees Arctic prospects tech talk
for his company’s
distinctive FPSO shape
but more model testing
is needed.

Squaring the circle

Norwegian floating production player Sevan
Marine sees its current Goliat field assignment
in the Barents Sea as a “natural stepping stone”
into the Arctic for the company’s characteristic
cylindrical vessels. Beate Schjolberg finds out
why from co-founder Arne Smedal and chief
executive Carl Lieungh.

S
evan Marine is well on
the way to establishing
itself as a specialist in
tough, northern climes.
Its Goliat floating production,
storage and offloading unit is
due to come online in 2014 for
Italian operator Eni off northern
Norway, while it already has two
FPSOs operating in the UK North
Sea and another on the drawing
board for Dana Petroleum’s
Western Isles project.
It will also soon find out
whether its designs have found
favour with Statoil for its
Skrugard and Havis discoveries
farther north in the Barents Sea.
“Goliat is our first real harsh-
environment unit in the widest
sense of the word,” says company
founder and deputy chairman
Arne Smedal.
“There are not only harsh sea
conditions, waves, wind and
current, but also icing issues
and darkness, which makes this
a natural stepping stone for us
farther into the Arctic.”
It was in 2001 that Smedal and
some colleagues from mooring
and loading specialist APL started
up Sevan.
After initially meeting a lot
of scepticism, the company’s
groundbreaking floater design
was picked up by Brazil’s
Petrobras and brought into
service on its Piranema field in
2007.
The two UK central North Sea
units that followed — the Voyageur
Spirit, now at E.ON’s Huntington
field, and the Hummingbird
Spirit, now owned by Teekay and
operating at Centrica’s Chestnut
field — allowed the company to
test its metocean data and model
basin analyses of the circular
FPSO’s movements at full scale
in true harsh-environment
conditions.
Sevan fitted the units with
measuring instruments and
deployed a weather buoy to
get the results it confidently
expected.
According to Smedal, the
results showed that the floater
was much more stable in rough
weather than other floaters, just
as the model tests had indicated.
“This was the breakthrough
for the technology,” he says.
“Without the development from
the Brazil unit to the full-scale
measurements and the studies in
the North Sea, we would not have
won Goliat.”
Goliat and Skrugard are
considered sub-Arctic because
this part of the Barents Sea has
open water year round.
The company also conducted
extensive ice testing of the
technology in 2008 and 2009,
as part of a study for Statoil in
connection with the Norwegian
company’s involvement in the
on-again, off-again Shtokman »

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 47

 tech talk
» project off northern Russia.
Employing a two-metre wide
model at Germany’s Hamburg ice
research laboratory, the company
tested how the circular unit
would handle sea ice up to two
metres thick and ice ridges as
deep as 20 metres.
The results were positive and
showed that the design has
several features that together
make the units well suited for
Arctic use, says Smedal.
The hull shape itself is an
important element. In the
Shtokman study, the company
developed a concept that would
have a summer version able
to operate in open water and
rough weather, and a winter
version where the unit would be
ballasted down until the water
line reached the middle of the
conical section that connects
the narrower hull with the wider
deck.
In the winter version, the hull
would act as an ice breaker, but
with the added advantage that
it does not matter from which
direction the ice comes, Smedal
explains.
Measurements in the Pechora
Sea off northern Russia have
shown that sea ice can change
direction up to 180 degrees in as
little as half an hour, which could
make a moored, ship-shaped unit
list dangerously if the forces hit
it from the side.
“When the ice moves, it will
break into pieces against the hull,
and away from the vessel quickly
because of the shape,” notes
Smedal.
48 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
“Technically
and
technologically
within our
concept, we
have all the
elements in
place to start
development in
the Arctic.”
Arne Smedal,
Sevan Marine
Because the water and ice
speed will increase around the
hull, the ice moves away fast,
without coming into conflict
with risers and mooring systems
beneath the unit.
Another Arctic challenge is
topside icing due to freezing
ocean sprays. The buoyancy and
stability of a unit such as the
Goliat FPSO needs to be adjusted
to handle the extra weight, and
also have a heating system to
remove the ice from critical
equipment.
The need to enclose as much of
the topsides as possible creates
another challenge, as natural
ventilation is also needed to
account for possible gas leaks.
In this area, ship-based vessels
have an advantage in that they
need only winterize that part
of the topside that will go up
against the wind, allowing for
better ventilation and lower
costs.
However, following extensive
studies including computational
fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses of
ventilation, air flows, potential
explosion pressure and other
factors, Sevan has come up with
custom-made panels it believes
will provide the necessary
protection and ventilation.
For operations in icy waters,
there is also the issue of icebergs.
Sevan has conducted studies for
disconnecting the unit from the
mooring and riser systems so
that it can sail out of harm’s way.
Next step
With Goliat and Western Isles
under its belt, Sevan is looking
to the Skrugard-Havis project
as a possible next step into the
sub-Arctic.
The proposed concept for
Skrugard is a somewhat larger
unit than Goliat, with a storage
capacity of 1.2 million barrels, but
is otherwise similar.
“There has been a design
development from our side,
so there are some changes
compared with Goliat, but the
principle is the same,” says Sevan
Marine chief executive Carl
Lieungh.
One advantage Sevan claims to
have over competing solutions
is the unit’s ability to add
more risers to tie back other
discoveries.
Statoil is drilling four prospects
near Skrugard this year to see
if there are extra resources in
TOUGH TEST: The Goliat
FPSO for Eni is being hailed as
Sevan Marine’s ‘first real harsh-
environment unit’.
Image: Sevan
the area, and plans to use the
Skrugard unit as an area hub.
“There is a limit to how many
risers you can have in a ship
turret,” says Smedal. “Making
it bigger is very expensive, and
you may then have to increase
the width of the ship, and the
mooring system, and so on.”
Applying the Sevan Marine
technology in icy conditions
even farther north is possible,
but is not on the cards until the
industry decides to move ahead
with projects there.
In the meantime, Sevan
is concentrating on harsh-
environment prospects in the
North Sea.
“Technically and
technologically within our
concept, we have all the elements
in place to start development in
the Arctic,” says Smedal.
“We would need more studies
and model testing, but the
basis is in place through our
experience from open waters and
model testing.”
He points to a number of
challenges to Arctic operations
that will demand a wider
approach from operators and
governments, including how to
handle transport of supplies and
people, as well as emergency
preparedness in a cold, dark
and icy environment far from
populated areas.
“I think there is a long way
ahead in the Arctic,” concludes
Smedal. “The investments
are large, and the risk profile
would have to be considered
accordingly.”

Logistics role in the offing
S
evan Marine is looking
not just at floating
production, but also
at a number of other
uses for its hull design by
adding alternative topsides and
functionalities to the cylindrical
units.
One option the company has
discussed with Brazil’s Petrobras
is to set up a unit as a supply and
transport centre to reduce costs
and streamline logistics to fields
that lie far from shore.
“It would be a hub, where you
bring out people and supplies
by fast ships, and then send the
workers on from there to the
platforms with helicopters —
essentially moving the supply
base out to sea,” says Sevan
Marine chief executive Carl
Lieungh.
The company has worked on a
design for a floater with several
helipads and three docking gates,
where vessels could sail into
the hull to safely unload people
and cargo. With some of Brazil’s
pre-salt discoveries located 300
kilometers offshore, the potential
savings on helicopter transport
would be considerable, Lieungh
says.
Other possible uses include
power generation, gas
liquefaction, regasification and
accommodation.
The company has also looked
at floating production, storage
and offloading vessel solutions
using steel catenary risers, as well
as Arctic drilling solutions with
former subsidiary Sevan Drilling.
Of these, accommodation seems
to be the application most likely to
see the light of day first, possibly
using one of two existing hulls
for which Sevan is eager to find
employment.
Originally built in 2008 to
serve small and medium-sized
fields, the two hulls have too little
storage capacity to satisfy many
tech talk
of today’s potential clients, which
are increasingly looking to bundle
several developments using
larger units. “We expect to reach
a solution for the hulls this year,”
says Lieungh.
The company is also pursuing a
number of possibilities in its core
business of FPSOs, both on its own
and in co-operation with its main
owner, Teekay.
One aim is to get a study
contract with a major operator
“It would be… to cement the acceptance of the
Sevan design, says Lieungh.
essentially After a turbulent period in 2011,
moving the Sevan no longer seeks to own its
units, choosing instead to generate
supply base income by licensing and providing
out to sea.” engineering services based on its
design.
Carl Lieungh, The deal with Teekay transferred
ownership of its three operating
Sevan Marine vessels to the larger FPSO player,
and Sevan Marine is “very
pleased” with the subsequent co-
operation, says Lieungh.
WHAT IS

Upstream Technology is a new

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 Special focus themes Q2:
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 Spotlight
downhole
Photo: Baker Hughes

on track: The AutoTrak Curve

rotary steerable is a closed-
loop drilling system that takes
commands from the surface to
place the wellbore in the desired
location.

52 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

Extending
the reach
Drilling took quite a turn when traditionally vertical
wells gave way to the new breed of directional, horizontal
and extended reach wells. The trend brought with it
more exacting operator demands on the reliability front,
particularly for the drillstring’s crucial bottom hole assembly
(BHA). Jennifer Pallanich reviews service company
advances to date.

T
he oil and gas industry
has yet to formally
agree what constitutes
an extended reach well.
To some it is a ratio of at least
two to one of measured depth to
true vertical depth. Others set the
threshold at three to one.
The results are wells that
snake more than 15,000 feet
horizontally, and up to 40,000
feet, through the earth, often not
too far below the surface.
Schlumberger vice president
for drilling and measurements
sales Mike Williams says: “The
best definition I’ve heard is from
one of our clients, and they define
it as a well that has a step out or
[total vertical depth] TVD ratio of
over three to one and at least a
departure or step out of over five
kilometres [16,405 feet].”
What’s so difficult about
extended reach wells? Operators
want wells to be drilled quickly,
for a number of reasons, and with
the smoothest wellbores possible.
However, more elements
than tool reliability and anti-
tortuosity measures factor in
when service companies take on
the task of designing BHA for use
in drilling extended reach wells.
“You’re asking a lot of the BHA
components,” Williams says.
“You’re pushing to the extreme.”
There may be uncertainty
about the location of the current
wellbore in relation to existing
wells drilled at a time when
measurements were less precise
than they are now.
The right mud properties are
needed to lubricate the drilling
process and transport the
cuttings out of the well.
Lost circulation, apparent
by a reduced amount of mud
returning to the surface as it
circulates in the hole, can at
best reduce the efficiency of the
drilling operation and at worst
lead to a blowout.
Tool failure requiring a fishing
operation can spell days of delay
on an extended reach well.
According to Jim Tilley, Latin
America drilling optimisation
manager for Halliburton: “Some
of the factors that come into
play are friction, torque, drag.
The further extended you get
out there, the more difficult it is
to drill... all of these forces are
increasing, making it more and
more difficult to drill.”
Relishing a challenge, it seems,
the industry is drilling more and
more extended reach wells these
days.
A platform location offshore
or pad drilling with limited slots
available can be deciding factors.
Often the operator can
develop a field with fewer wells
by following the reservoir
horizontally through the ground,
rather than drilling a number of
straws into it at spaced intervals.
Rotary steerables
A technology that helped pave
the way for severe doglegs is the
rotary steerable system (RSS),
developed originally by Baker
Hughes in conjunction with a »

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 53

 spotlight: downhole
SHALE PLAY: AutoTrak Curve rotary steerable system in the reservoir.
» major international oil company
for directional drilling.
RSS permits a drilling engineer
at the surface to steer the bit by
sending communications to the
BHA, usually through pressure
fluctuations in the mud column
or variations in the drill string
rotation.
Essentially, RSS allows the
driller to adjust the trajectory on
the fly.
Anthony Brown, director of
drilling services at Baker Hughes,
says the RSS makes it possible
“to control very precisely the
placement of that well within a
narrow window vertically as well
as horizontally”.
Baker Hughes commercialised
the industry’s first RSS — dubbed
AutoTrak — in 1997.
“We’ve introduced a number
of versions of that technology
to target-specific markets,”
Brown says, citing as an example
the widespread application of
extended reach in the shale plays
across the US.
For these relatively shallow
wells, Baker Hughes rolled out its
AutoTrak Curve rotary steerable
system, which provides faster
build rates.
Offered first in 2012, this
system can accommodate a
higher curve rate, making it
possible to drill from vertical to
horizontal earlier, typically in
54 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
one run, he notes.
Larry Barwick, Weatherford’s
North America regional rotary
steerable product line manager,
has participated in the industry’s
move to directional and then
extended reach drilling since the
1980s.
“To drill vertically with a rotary
steerable system, kick off from
vertical, achieve high dogleg
rates and land a well within
a known target within a few
feet and then drill a lateral over
10,000 feet is exciting,” Barwick
says.
The advent of RSS — a drilling
technology now offered by
each of the four main oilfield
service companies — clearly
revolutionised the way the
industry drills its wells.
What an RSS does is replace a
conventional mud motor, which
requires sliding the drillipipe
along the wellbore without
rotation to achieve direction
control, with a means of directing
the drilling with continuous
rotation from the surface.
It also made it possible in
many cases to drill longer
sections without having to pull
out of the hole to change BHA
components.
The previous protocol often
called for drilling vertically,
pulling out of hole, drilling
the curved section, pulling out
again, and drilling the horizontal
section, each with different
BHAs.
In many of the field
developments dependent on
deviated drilling during the 1980s
and 1990s, directional drillers
used variable gauge stabilisers
to control the inclination,
recalls Andrew Child, vice
president and general manager
“We’ve of K&M Technology Group, a
Schlumberger company.
introduced a While using this technology,
number of many became skilled at
predicting walk rates so they
versions of that would align the well’s azimuth
technology to at the end of the build section
such that the gradual change in
target-specific azimuth, or walk, as they drilled
the long tangent section would
markets.” allow the well to drift into the
Anthony Brown, predetermined well target and
thus avoid the need to suffer the
Baker Hughes BHA changes and reduced rates
of penetration associated with
slide drilling with motors.
“When rotary steerables
were introduced, that changed
everything,” Child says.
Halliburton’s Tilley, who likens
rotary steerable to “robotic
steering”, notes: “Sliding without
rotation is more difficult because
of friction and tortuosity in the
well. So one of the key things
to extending drilling capability
is rotary steerables. Rotary
steerables rotate all the time.

Graphic: Baker Hughes
That greatly reduces the friction
and enables you to drill a lot
further. It improves wellbore
quality and increased greatly the
extended reach capability of the
industry.”
RSS comes in two main
flavours — push the bit and point
the bit. A push-the-bit system,
employed by Schlumberger’s
PowerDrive X6 rotary steerable
system, pushes against one side
of the borehole to achieve the
dogleg and provide steerability,
while the point-the-bit system
— used by Halliburton’s GeoPilot
RSS, Schlumberger’s PowerDrive
Xceed and PowerDrive Archer
systems and Weatherford’s
Revolution — aims the bit where
the driller wants to create a hole.
Baker Hughes’ AutoTrak system
combines both push and point
principles, depending on the
location within a given wellpath
trajectory.
As Neil Bird, Weatherford’s RSS
service line manager for global
operations, observes: “There’s
a lot of variety in the rotary
steerables market regarding the
tools on offer.”
His company opted to pursue
point-the-bit technology
because “all the evidence and
theory points to point the bit as
drilling a smoother wellbore”,
which reduces tortuosity, or
“microdoglegs”.
Key BHA
components
For readers less well versed in the drilling
industry’s black arts, Jennifer Pallanich offers
this quick guide to the lower part of the drillstring
– the multi-faceted oilfield workhorse otherwise
known as the bottom hole assembly.
P
otentially hundreds of
feet long, the bottom
hole assembly (BHA)
runs from the drill bit
to the drill pipe and comprises
various application-dependent
tools, among them rotary
steerable systems, motors, drill
collars, stabilisers, reamers, hole
openers, and of course the bit
itself (see diagram).
BHA configurations — whether
“slick” (without stabilisers), “short
lock” (packed with stabilisers
for straight hole), “long lock” (or
fulcrum, for increased deviation)
or “pendulum” type (for reduced
deviation) — differ according to
the location, type and angle of the
well being drilled.
Configuring the BHA for vertical
and straight wellbores comes
down to the use of drill collars and
drill pipe.
The simplest assembly relies
on drill collars — thick-walled
hollow tubes — to provide all the
necessary weight on bit.
An alternative design employs
heavyweight drill pipe as a
transition between the collars and
standard drill pipe, with the drill
collars again providing the weight
on bit.
Another design uses the drill
collars for directional control with
heavy weight drill pipe supplying
the weight on bit.
For high angle wells, weight on
bit can be achieved with the drill
pipe in compression.
Stabilisers are used to minimise
bit “walk” as well as the bending
motions or vibrations that can
cause tool damage.
They prevent the lower
assembly from wobbling and help
equalise the load on the bit.They
can also prevent the drill collars
»
spotlight: downhole
from coming into contact with
the wellbore wall.
Stabilisers can be placed in
many different locations along
the BHA. Since they help achieve
wellbore angle, they are frequently
to be found in assemblies
employed for directional drilling.
Stabilisers with cutting
elements — known as reamers
— help maintain the wellbore
gauge. With a reamer focused on
this task, the drill bit can focus
more on the drilling and less on
maintaining the wellbore gauge.
An under-reamer enlarges the
wellbore, using expandable or
roller-cone or drag type cutters.
Rotary steerable systems
(RSS) make it possible to use
continuous rotation from the
surface to drill directionally,
eliminating the need to slide
a steerable motor during
directional activities.
Downhole mud motors, often
deployed in directional drilling,
use the hydraulic horsepower of
the drilling fluid to run the drill
bit.
Measurement while drilling
(MWD) tools evaluate properties
such as pressure, temperature and
wellbore trajectory while drilling
operations are in progress.
Logging-while-drilling (LWD)
tools, which acquire resistivity,
porosity, sonic velocity, gamma
ray, or other data about the
formation, are particularly useful
in highly deviated wells and other
situations that preclude wireline
operations.
All of the tools described here STANDARD LINEUP: Typical
array of bottom hole assembly
have a hollow centre, allowing
components. This one, from
drilling fluids to be pumped Weatherford, includes the
downhole and cuttings, or rock company’s RipTide under-
fragments, to be circulated up to reamer tool.
the surface. Graphic: Weatherford
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 55
 spotlight: downhole

FORMATION DETAILS: Downloading data from Schlumberger’s

NeoScope sourceless logging-while-drilling formation evaluation tool.
Photo: Schlumberger
Photo: Halliburton

Photo: Weatherford
GATHERING SAMPLES: The GeoTap IDS fluid identification and
sampling sensor eliminates the need for wireline operations to obtain
multiple fluid samples. TRIP IN: Weatherford employees trip in the RipTide under-reamer tool.

» There are different applications
where push-the-bit and point-
the-bit systems have advantages
and disadvantages. For this
reason, Schlumberger says, it
offers both kinds of systems.
The defining differentiator
of the service company’s
rotary steerable systems is
that everything exposed to the
wellbore rotates at drillstring
rpm.
This is of particular
significance in ERD wells as
overcoming friction generated
by an extremely long high-
angle well is one of the biggest
challenges. When all of the parts
rotate, this reduces friction to a
minimum.
According to Schlumberger, the
key criteria for RSS in ERD wells
are:
• Steerability at extreme
inclination and measured
depth to be able to make small
trajectory changes without
causing unwanted tortuosity.
• Minimising any resulting
friction.
• Maximising reliability to
avoid needing to trip.
If RSS made drilling more
precise in terms of location, it
also offered other benefits. The
continuously rotating drill string
made it easier to carry cuttings
back to the surface. The more
precise weight transfer made it
possible to drill a more complex
hole. Perhaps best of all, the
stable steering reduces wellbore
tortuosity.
Williams, who has been with
Schlumberger for 25 years,
believes rotary steerable “came
of age” with extended reach
drilling.
“Rotary steerable is commonly
used today, but it started out
as a niche technology because
of this steering problem. That
was a huge hurdle we had to
overcome.”
All the earliest forms of
RSS, regardless of vendor, had
reliability issues — it was, after
all, game changing technology
— but these have been largely
overcome, says Williams.
Drilling very long sections in
ERD wells without tripping was a
particular challenge, and took the
industry some time to resolve.
“Extended reach drilling wells
are not a thing you enter into
lightly,” he adds.
“If things go wrong, they go
wrong in a hurry. The tolerance
for error is zero. You make a
mistake, typically it means re-
drilling the well.”
With that kind of repercussion
in mind, he notes, experience is
critical.
“Even with all the technology
we have today, it still comes
down to people and experience.
Schlumberger Drilling &
Measurements has helped drill
over 100 wells of five kilometres
or more.”
Extended reach drilling
requires fit-for-purpose
drillstrings selected to provide
an appropriate compromise
for torque and drag, internal
pressure loss, induced equivalent
circulating density, bucking
resistance, and swab/surge
pressures.
Compared with vertical drilling,
where the BHA supplies all the
weight on bit, in an extended reach
well, the BHA and the drillstring
are in — and remain in —
compression for much of the lower
part of the well.As Child points
out, this means it’s necessary to
use a smaller BHA and accept that
much of the drillpipe will be run in
compression.
“It’s pretty fundamental, but it
took a while for the industry to get
comfortable with it,” he adds.
The build, hold, and drop
requirements of S-shaped wells
used to be managed by changing
the BHA centralisation.
A reduced diameter “control”
stabiliser — that is, the stabiliser
behind the near-bit stabiliser —

56 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


Envelope Plot of TVD Against Departure
Departure, ft
0 5,000
TVD, ft
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
35,000
40,000
Photo: Weatherford
45,000
HOLE DEViAtiOn: Diagram showing the true vertical depth (TVD) and lateral departure (step out) of the bottom hole location of all wells drilled
by the operators who participate in BP’s annual deviated wells survey. The black line depicts the boundary beyond which no wells are known to
have been drilled. As can be seen, no extreme reach wells have been drilled outside of the 30,000 feet and 15,000 feet TVD window.
would allow the BHA to sag in the
middle and cause the assembly to
build an angle.
By packing the BHA — all
full gauge or near full gauge
stabilisation — the assembly would
hold angle and drill in a straight
line.
By removing the stabilisation
altogether near the bit, which is
known as a pendulum assembly,
and drilling with low weight on
bit, it was possible to drop angle.
Adjustable gauge stabilisers
provided some ability to change
the BHA characteristics without
pulling it out of the hole, but it
was not until rotary steerable
assemblies arrived that it became
possible to drill these trajectories
consistently with one BHA.
“You’re talking about a BHA
that can be 150 feet long of
actual components for a RSS/
Penta Combo,” says Bird, whose
directional drilling experience
goes back to 1990 in Europe and the
Middle East.
10,000 15,000 20,000
Though the BHA has seen a
number of additions over the
years, Child says: “There’s a
much better understanding now
regarding what causes failures”.
Role model
What the industry understands,
it can address. Modelling is one
of the industry’s go-to methods
for determining how tools will
behave downhole in a range of
conditions, such as torque and
drag and vibration.
Of prime interest in extended
reach wells is the weight of the
equipment being sent downhole.
The kit will naturally obey the
forces of nature, and the weight
of the long drill strings that are
associated with big ERD wells
will be supported by the borehole
wall.
When these long strings
are moved, friction results in
torsional and/or axial resistance.
These resistive forces are
known as torque and drag.
sPoTlighT: DownholE
25,000 30,000 35,000 40,000 45,000
Source: BP
The longer or heavier the drill
string, the higher the associated
induced torque and drag.
The K&M Technology Group’s
signature Torque And Drag (TAD)
software analyses proposed well
designs and drilling systems to
determine variables such as hook
load and overpull capacity.
The software computes
how strong the top drive and
drillstring must be for the
“When rotary planned drilling operation, and
determines the hydraulic loads
steerables were both inside and outside the
introduced, string, or how much pressure is
needed at the surface to achieve
that changed the needed flow rate to clean the
everything.” hole.
“There are things we can
Andrew Child, do with drillstring selection
or trajectory selection that
K&M Technology allows us to overcome a lot of
Group the problems,” notes Child,
a mechanical engineer who
served as the drilling chief for
Hess before joining the K&M
Technology Group four years ago. »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 57
 spotlight: downhole
“At 11 km, to
have 10 bits per
second is very
difficult, and
that really is
the holy grail.
If you can get
to that, then
you can do
most things.”
Mike Williams,
Schlumberger
» For example, an ERD well may
suffer from prohibitively high
torque or drag if a standard single
drill pipe size is used.
However, such a well can
often become viable by running
a “tapered” drill string, where
smaller, lighter pipe is used at
the bottom, and heavier, stronger
pipe is used at the top.
Usually, the smaller, lighter
pipe is subjected to lower loads
and does not need to be as strong
as the pipe near the surface.
By using the tapered design,
he says, the lighter pipe induces
lower torque and drag loads so
the shallower drill pipe and rig
equipment do not need to be as
strong as they would if the same
size pipe was used throughout.
It often also reduces equivalent
circulating density loading,
which also is frequently a
limiting factor when trying to
extend the reach of a well.
Alternatively, for torque and
drag reduction, consideration
58 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
could be given to thin-walled
high-strength or aluminium
drill pipe, Child notes, adding
that aluminum would need to
be thicker, in cross section, to
make up for its reduced material
strength.
The thicker walls, he says, can
be a drawback in wellbores where
hydraulic pressures are high and
thus the cross sectional area for
flow down the pipe or back up
the annulus is at a premium.
“The advice we give our clients
is design everything as a system
with the BHA being one of the
more complicated parts of the
system,” Child says.
“The BHA is only a small part of
what we need to worry about. But
if an ERD well is to be successful,
everything needs to be designed
as a total system.”
Hernando Jerez, Halliburton’s
global solution champion for
drilling optimisation, says the
focus for designing BHAs for
extended reach drilling must be
on balance, which will reduce the
side force against the wellbore,
minimising stress and fatigue in
all BHA components.
One of Halliburton’s
proprietary software packages,
MaxBHA, simulates static and
dynamic conditions of the
proposed BHA in a downhole
environment and projects what
objectives and trajectory can be
achieved.
“We are tuning the BHA to
deliver not only the doglegs that
we are looking for but also to
minimise vibration,” Jerez says.
Halliburton’s Olivier Germain,
drilling and production director
for the service company’s
Landmark Software & Services
division, says the finite element
analysis that predicts the shape
of the well along with potential
points of compression on the drill
string involve “a lot of complex
mechanical calculations” by the
company’s proprietary WellPlan
software.
Other bits of software model
friction reduction devices,
cuttings cleaning, hydraulics, and
mud properties, to name a few
well planning elements.
“When we develop these
models, we have to validate
them,” explains Landmark S&S
product manager for drilling and
production technologies, Gustavo
Urdaneta.
The work does not stop with
computer modeling. “You can
comprehensively model a BHA
as much as you like, but you need
real time information once you
start drilling,” says Weatherford’s
Neil Bird. That has correlated
to a push for real-time sensors
that will allow drillers to respond
to information about what is
happening downhole.
Big data
“Extended reach wells have
driven us along the path of
measuring while drilling
because the tools can’t get there

otherwise,” says Brown, an
engineer whose 15 years with
Baker Hughes have taken him
from Russia to the Middle East to
Australia and the US.
“We used to drill these wells
geometrically. Now more often
than not these wells are being
placed geologically,” he says.
When placing wells
geologically, formation
evaluation tools penetrate about
30 inches to 60 inches around the
wellbore and examine formation
porosity and bed boundaries, he
says. “We’re looking at deeper
reading technology, which allows
us to penetrate deeper into the
formations.”
These sensors, Brown notes,
read around the bit, but sensors
that can read ahead of the drill
bit would be very valuable.
It is not possible to run
wireline on coiled tubing in
extended reach wells, Williams
notes, because there is not a
coiled tubing drum big enough to
handle a total depth of
11 kilometres.
As such, “LWD is the only way
you’re going to get formation
evaluation information once
you’re at any depth, particularly
at these inclinations”.
Jerez, who has spent most
of his two decades in the
industry working in Mexico and
Venezuela, notes the quality of
LWD tools has improved over the
years, as has the quality of data,
which he believes is now similar
to or better than what once could
have been obtained through
wireline.
LWD challenges
What makes the downhole LWD
measurements tricky is that
these tools must operate in the
drilling environment.
Tilley, who started his oil
career as a field engineer for
Sperry 25 years ago, says the
technology for downhole tools
sensors and drilling sensors has
Photo: Weatherford
SACRIFICIAL TAG: The
RipTide drilling reamer can
be activated by dropping
small but highly durable RFID
tags into the drillpipe ID to
transmit instructions to an
electronic reader located on
the tool’s controller.
improved substantially over
the years. “Those sensors have
helped improve drilling and also
formation evaluation.”
One such tool, Tilley says, is
Halliburton’s GeoTap formation
pressure tester. With that
information, it’s possible to infer
the formation strength and use
that information to balance the
hydraulic pressure.
Optimising the pressures and
mud weights will help prevent
damage to the formation, he adds.
NeoScope, one of
Schlumberger’s tools, offers
sourceless formation evaluation
while drilling.
A density neutron tool, it uses
a pulsed-neutron generator to
obtain neutron-gamma density,
neutron porosity, elemental
capture spectroscopy and
thermal neutron capture cross-
section measurements.
This sourceless density
neutron is critical, Williams says,
because it is not possible to fish
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: downhole
a lost radioactive source in an
extended reach well.
He adds that achieving the
measurements without a
radioactive source is sound,
environmentally.
Two-way street
The more a driller can do
downhole, the more the driller
wants to do downhole.
That desire translates to a
dizzying amount of sensing,
monitoring and evaluating in the
wellbore, the formation and the
tools.
With a BHA stretching out to
150 feet long, there can be quite a
lag between when the bit moves
through a location and when
a tool at the end of the string
arrives at the same location.
At the same time, sensors
may take 50 or so sets of data
along each foot of the wellbore.
All of those measurements add
up to a tremendous amount of
information being generated
each second.
“We are working on
technologies that will allow us
to process this data downhole,
and when it arrives on surface
it’s in a much more user-
friendly interactive display that
a customer can make sense of
there and then,” Brown says.
“We’re in the R&D phase, so
maybe two or three years, you’ll
see the technologies that will
give us these capabilities, these
insights, into the formation that
we maybe don’t have today.”
Halliburton, too, is looking
for more easy-to-use interfaces.
Germain, a driller who has spent
the last decade working with
drilling software, says “there’s
a lot to look at” in all types of
drilling.
“With the large number of
new engineers in the industry
today, there’s a pressing need to
develop this generation as soon
as possible into professionals
who can work autonomously and
are skilled at working with the
industry’s advanced technology.”
His concerns are about
lack of experience, not lack
of intelligence. As such, the
Landmark software teams are
working to make user interfaces
easier to use with data presented
in a more meaningful manner.
“We have completely
revamped the user interface so »
59
 spotlight: downhole

0
“We are tuning
750
750 DLS 4-
4
4-6 0
-6 /100 ft
Geo-Pilot R EDL
the BHA to
1500
15
1500
DLS 2-
2 30/100
2-3 /10
100
0 ft
ft
Rotary Steerable System deliver not
Conventional only the
2250
22
2250 Surfac
Sur
Surface
face
face Casing
Casi
Casi
as ng Rotary Steerable System doglegs that
h ((ft)
ft)
ft

300
3 000
30000
700 Sail
Sail Angl
A
Angle
ng e
ngl
we are looking
Depth
pth
al Dept
ept

for but also

D

3750
375
7 0

to minimise
T e Vertical
Verttical

750 Sail
Sa l A
Sai Angle
ng e
ngl
ca
ica

vibration.”
4500
4
450 0
True
Tru

Hernando Jerez,
Tr

5250
525
2 0

Int
Intermediate
nterm
ntermedi
ermediate
ed
edi ate Ca
Casin
Casing
sing
sing
Halliburton
6000
6000

DIFFERENT ANGLES:
6750
675
7 0
Produc
Pro
Production
ductio
duction
tion Line
L
Liner
ine
nerr Halliburton says its Geo-Pilot
Graphic: Halliburton

EDL (Enhanced Dog Leg)

7500
7
750
5 0 system is ideal for drilling well
trajectories in extended reach
drilling applications, where
0 125
1250
250
2 2 0
25
250
2500 375
3750
7 0 5
500
5000
0 625
6250
2 0 7500 8750 10000
10000 11250
100 112
12
250
50 12500
125
2500 13750
2 137
37
750
50 15000
15
150
5000 16250
162
62
250
5 175
17500
7500
7 consistent doglegs are required
Departure (ft) to drill the surface hole in
shallow, soft formations.

» it looks almost like a game, so you can get to that, then you can
that everything is in your face, do most things,” Williams says.
everything is visible, you don’t Current rates using mud pulse
have to try to find menus and tend to be 1/2 bit per second to
options. It’s all there,” Germain three bits per second, which,
explains. when compressed, may get to 10
“The whole idea is to limit the bits per second “on a good day”.
amount of time the engineer has There is, however, a physical
to spend in training so they can limit on how much the physical
understand the tool and do their data rate can be compressed.
work.” The industry is collecting vast
amounts of data — sometimes as
Lightning fast many as 50 sets of data every foot.
Drillers want the data in real “We’re talking about the
time, and that data needs to highest density of data in the
travel perhaps 11 kilometres or oilfield at the worst possible
more. condition,” Williams observes.
The communications methods While the industry has made
being used in extended reach strides in data compression
wells need to be able to handle and mud pulse data, he believes
high data transmission rates. another transmission method
Three bits per second is the could be a better answer,
industry standard, while it is especially with talk of taking
possible in normal wells to reach wells out 15 or 20 kilometres.
rates of 12 or 24 bits per second. “Might we get to 15 kilometres
“At 11 kilometres, to have 10 with mud pulse? Might we get to
bits per second is very difficult, 20 kilometres?” he asks. “If you
and that really is the holy grail. If truly want to drill 20-kilometer
extended reach wells, you’re
going to need wired drill pipe.”
IntelliServ, a Schlumberger and
NOV joint venture, is developing
wired drill pipe that aims to
provide high-speed, high-volume,
high-definition, bi-directional
broadband data transmission and
enable measurement, evaluation
and monitoring downhole
conditions in real time.
According to Williams, such a
solution could send hundreds of
bits of data per second. “Wired
drill pipe is in its infancy,” he
points out, adding: “Within the
next five years it will appear in
more and more wells, extended
reach drilling wells in particular.”
Smooth vibrations
A critical focus is vibration
mitigation, which can damage
the tools and wellbore and
is indicative of inefficient
operations.
“Most vibrations are damped
out by the high contact with the
wellbore,” notes Williams. “Stick/
slip is the biggest issue in ERD
wells and controlling that comes
down to good BHA design and
the right drilling parameters to
minimise it. Other vibration is
not an issue that we see.”
“Vibration is energy we lost
in the wellbore,” according to
Jerez. That energy, he adds, is best
expended in the hole-making
effort.
Torsional issues can wreak
havoc on a wellbore. The three
most common problems are
stick-slip, whirl and bit bounce.
Jerez says of stick-slip: “The
BHA is not rotating uniformly.
Sometimes the BHA gets stuck or
reduces the RPM, and later when
we are putting more energy into
the drill string, the drillstring
accelerates... and can damage the
tools.”
In a bid to prevent these
problems, the service companies
offer sensors that measure the
torsion.

60 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


PREVENTING PROBLEMS: Landmark’s DecisionSpace Well
Engineering application. Key torque/drag and hydraulic modelling
enhances understanding of the potential problems a drill string could
face while drilling extended reach wells.
POINT THE BIT: The Revolution rotary steerable tool from Weatherford.
Bird says a whirl sensor and
torsional dynamic indicator are
standard on all Weatherford
downhole tools to indicate in real
time the mode and severity of
stick-slip problems. “Vibration
modes are coupled, so one can
contribute to another,” he notes.
There are ways to reduce
vibration downhole. Placing a
motor atop the rotary steerable
delivers better RPM downhole,
according to Jerez.
Through tools like Geo-Pilot
GXT RSS, he adds, the bit spins
faster but the drillstring rotates
more slowly — a boon for
extended reach drillers because
“we are decoupling the drilling
bit from the drill string, and we
are reducing the vibration”.
Cleaning up
Cuttings tend to accumulate on
the low side of the hole, so when
tripping it is necessary to spend
time cleaning cuttings out or to
have an assembly that will allow
the residual cuttings on the low
side of the hole to pass around
the BHA as it is dragged through
them, Child says.
A good flow-by area — or gap
between the collars and the
wellbore — of 25% or 30% “gives
much more tolerance for tripping
through an unclean hole”.
Tool reliability and flow-by
area are significant, Child notes,
because they reduce the number
spotlight: downhole
ON LOCATION: While in
the locked-closed position,
the RipTide drilling reamer
is placed above the
measurement-while-drilling/
logging-while-drilling (MWD/
LWD) tools of the BHA.
Graphic: Halliburton
Photo: Weatherford
Photo: Weatherford
of trips required, and where a way into various upstream oil
trip is made through a residual and gas applications, including
cuttings bed, the high flow by downhole tool activation.
area could make the difference About five years ago, Marathon
between tripping “on elevators” Oil licensed certain RFID patents
or needing to backream out. to Weatherford so the service
Backreaming is slow, costly and company could develop and
generally seen to be the operation commercialise RFID-activated
most likely to be associated with equipment.
stuck pipe. So anything that can Marathon, looking to
be done to avoid backreaming “Vibration prevent unnecessary trips in
normally adds value. deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells,
One way of obtaining modes are carried out development work
information about cuttings
cleaning downhole — without
coupled, so one internally and in collaboration
with Weatherford as well
having to wait to see what shows can contribute as several boutique design
up on the shaker at the surface
or watching for high torque at
to another.” houses, including Aberdeen-
based Petrowell, acquired by
the surface — is a pressure while Neil Bird, Weatherford last year.
drilling sensor that measures RFID activation holds promise
equivalent circulation density.
Weatherford for an industry that for the
“By those measurements last century has relied mostly
you can tell if you’re effectively on mechanical actuation for
cleaning your hole or not,” line manager for RFID drilling downhole tools.
explains Halliburton’s Urdaneta, systems, is not a new one, but Usually, Valverde notes,
who started his career as an LWD it is fairly new to the drilling mechanically actuated tools
field engineer before moving into environment — radio frequency can only be activated once or
software. identification (RFID). twice — once a pin is sheared to
“In extended reach drilling This wireless technology initiate an activity, it cannot be
wells it is common to get stuck relies on radio-frequency unsheared.
because you are not effectively electromagnetic fields to send This, of course, limits the
cleaning your hole.” data from a tagged item to a number of times a tool can be
Getting stuck can force the receiver. activated once it’s downhole.
decision to cement the well and “It turns dumb iron into “That’s kind of what we were
drill a sidetrack. intelligent tools. I think that’s a limited to as an industry,” says
very exciting path for upstream Valverde. “And what Marathon
Repeat performance drilling,” he says. was looking for was a way to
The technology that particularly First employed decades ago for do this to tools where they
excites Eddie Valverde, inventory control, the ubiquitous would have multiple activation
Weatherford’s global product RFID chip inevitably found its deactivation options without »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 61
 spotlight: downhole
8,500” Hole Drill Trip

0 ft 0 0 ft Tension Torque
0 0

2,000 2,000 2,000

4,000 4,000 4,000

6,000 6,000 6,000

8,000 8,000 8,000

10,000 10,000 10,000

12,000 12,000 12,000

14,000 14,000 14,000

16,000 16,000 16,000

Graphic: Schlumberger

17,963 ft

“In the US, a

0 50 100 150 0 5 10 20
Drilling properties
FF: 0.25 Advanced MPD: psi
Unwrapped 0

lot of high-tech
0 WOB: 30 kip 10 Inc. Cut Weight: 21.67 ppg
ROP: 30.00 m/hr Mud Weight: 10.0 ppg
2,000
RPM: 120 Rheology: Rheology
gpm

BHAs are
4,000 Shoe Flow Rate: 450
Plot View
6,000 Shoe String Max WOB
Driller’s 17,963 ft Lock Plot
Depth:
Axes

piece-mealed.”
8,000 Snapshot
String Gauge
Gauge Depth: 0 ft
10,000 Calculation time for 100ft
2,000 6,000 10,000 14,000 intervals: 668ms

TORQUE BEHAVIOUR: Schematic showing how the string tension and string torque vary at surface for a given Eddie Valverde,
well design as the depth increases and the weight on bit is varied. Note the counterintuitive behaviour in the
torque as the string enters the drop section of the S-shaped well. Weatherford

» limited count without tripping “It’s a high-vibration Now, he says, bits are built reduces the chance of differential
out of the hole.” environment, and we started to last and drill different sticking while connections are
The advent of RFID-activated adding electronics to it, and formations. being made.
tools, he notes, “is helping us stay things got ugly,” Valverde For extended reach drilling,
on bottom longer by making it says. “Putting them into the Bird believes different bits work Wish lists
possible to activate tools multiple environment we were expecting better with different types of A military specification once
times”. to put them in was our biggest rotary steerable systems. covered chips that would work
Activating a tool using RFID hurdle.” Weatherford, which uses a at high temperatures, Child
technology takes a few steps. The To make it work, the developers point-the-bit system, relies on notes, but that spec is no longer
field engineer turns the tool on, turned their efforts to finding longer-gauge bits. “The longer- in existence, making it difficult
confirms it is functional, and trips a design that could handle the gauge bit has inherent stability at to source chips capable of
it into the hole. vibration rates and still permit the bottom of the BHA,” he says. operating at high temperatures.
When the customer asks for the communication with the RFID A longer gauge bit also will “Everybody’s facing the same
tool to be activated or deactivated, tags. oscillate less in the wellbore, challenge.”
a “sacrificial” RFID tag — as it The answer lay in a gel polymer he says, which translates into a In the world of software, some
happens, tags made for tracking coating for the motherboard that smoother wellbore profile. requests have been made for an
livestock and Iron Man athletes absorbs vibration. Steve Rosenberg, region updated or refined approach to
— is programmed for the chosen Valverde says the polymer product line manager at calculate torque and drag as well
task and pumped downhole. “keeps the brain of the tool Weatherford, views drilling as buckling, Urdaneta notes. And
These tags, which are small completely isolated from contact with casing and drilling with Germain says there is a need for an
enough to flow through the mud with other surfaces. That was a liner as potential solutions in update to the means of assessing
and reach the under-reamer, do big step forward for us”. drilling extended reach wells, casing wear.
not, however, return intact to the particularly in areas exhibiting As always, there is a desire to
surface. Piece work wellbore instability issues where automate, safely, what can be
Downhole, the RFID antenna A number of components have conventional drilling and casing automated. Brown believes it will
pulsates, waiting for tags to pass earned a place in the BHA to installation methods have be at least five to 10 years before
by. As the tag passes through, the improve extended reach drilling previously failed to achieve the it is possible to have completely
antenna receives the command results. “In the US, a lot of high- operator’s well construction de-manned extended reach
and sends it onward to the tech BHAs are piece-mealed” objectives. drilling operations.
motherboard for processing. using best-in-class components, Drilling with casing and The R&D effort under way at
The motherboard receives the Valverde notes. drilling with liner are not exactly Baker Hughes in this area, he says,
commands and initiates the The BHA component that new concepts, he notes. They includes firmware and software
desired action. makes first contact with have been around the industry systems that will take information
Weatherford’s RipTide under- the earth — the bit — has since the roaring 1920s, even if from the downhole tools and
reamer, commercial now for also changed over the years. the nomenclature of today was geology and allow the tool to make
about 18 months, is equipped Barwick notes that in the late not then in use. adjustments that are necessary.
with an RFID antenna, a battery 1990s directional drilling field Drilling with liner, which It would “automatically control
pack, printed circuit board, an engineers would “hope we requires a connection only every itself to achieve the end target”,
accelerometer that records wouldn’t hit a formation that 90 feet to every 100 feet, means he adds. “That’s quite a way off
the vibration and a pressure would knock our PDC bit out... We it is possible to drill up to 100 but progress towards this goal is
transducer. were constantly tripping for bits.” feet between connections, which accelerating.”

62 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013


Perforating under pressure
Jennifer Pallanich talks to engineers at Halliburton’s
Advanced Perforating Flow Laboratory in north Texas
about the capabilities of a new facility created to study high
pressures in reservoirs.
T
here was a time when
20,000 psi was thought
to be the upper limit
for high pressures in oil
and gas wells.
However, the industry is
finding increasingly higher
pressures in reservoirs and must
be prepared to work with and
understand the ramifications
of perforating in reservoirs
reaching pressures of 35,000 psi
and higher.
Inarguably, the star of
the Advanced Perforating
Flow Laboratory (APFL) on
Halliburton’s Jet Research Center
(JRC) campus is a 50,000 psi
test vessel built from more than
30,000 lbs of steel.
“Our customers are going
to more extreme conditions,”
says James Barker, technology
manager of research and testing
at the JRC.
He says the conditions offered
by the facility “are as real-world
as you can get in a lab”.
Most clients are seeing
pressures of 30,000 to 35,000 psi,
he says, but since the service
company was planning to invest
so much in creating the APFL, it
made sense to think ahead.
“We wanted to build for the
future. That’s why we built to
50,000 psi,” Barker says. “It’s
coming.”
The behemoth is the only
known 50,000-psi pressure test
chamber serving the oil industry
for perforation flow testing, he
adds.
The facility has two other
pressure test vessels that are
rated to 25,000 psi. Each required
23,000 lbs of steel.
One can handle temperatures
to 204°C (400°F), while the other
can rotate up to 180 degrees for
carrying out gravity-related
sanding studies for horizontal
wells.
A fourth pressure cell is an
existing unit rated to 10,000 psi
that has been used at the JRC
facility and slated to move to the
APFL in the near future.
“We can configure special tests
pretty easily,” Barker says. Recent
requests have included those
associated with multistring
casings, effects of wellbore
fluids during perforating and
perforation performance at
elevated temperature.
The APFL in Alvarado, Texas,
is intended to simulate extreme
real-world reservoir conditions
and help devise optimised
perforating programmes.
To do so, the engineers at the
lab place core samples in the
pressure cells to mimic downhole
conditions.
Perforations are done to
the core, and the engineers
examine the results to more
fully understand the formation’s
response.
Using the results, Barker
says, the “charge designers can
tune their charges to increase
performance as a function of rock
type and downhole conditions”.
The facility includes four testing
cells, an integrated command and
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
spotlight: downhole
testing
HEAVY PRESSURE: The cap of
the 50,000 psi wellbore vessel
is lowered into place to begin
commissioning operation.
control centre, a core preparation
laboratory, and a core analysis
laboratory for post-test evaluation.
The post-test evaluation
equipment includes a dedicated
CT scanner.
The test cells are underground
and were designed to include
additional safety measures such as
shields, extra wall thickness and
blast-proof closure hatches.
“What’s been lost but is
coming back is the value of
the ability to conduct a high-
fidelity experiment,” Barker
says. “Modelling doesn’t pick up
everything.”
63
spotlight: downhole

testing

ROAD TO RECOVERY: Core

flooding at high temperature and
pressure helps determine recovery
factors for EOR evaluations.

LEVELS CHECK: Core samples

are cleaned in a Dean-Stark
apparatus to determine water
content.

ON YOUR MARK: Whole core

is marked with orientation and
depth on each core piece.
Photos: Schlumberger

WATER PROPERTIES: Analytical

techniques determine brine
chemistry in the water laboratory.

64 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

 spotlight: downhole

Creating a
tiny reservoir
People looking at the Houston Reservoir Laboratory might have varying
impressions of a facility Schlumberger opened in November 2011. Mark Andersen,
head of Schlumberger’s core physics domain, sees in it the potential for creating
a “tiny reservoir” to study the real thing. Jennifer Pallanich checks out the
facility’s testing abilities.

C
onventional core
analysis carried out
at Schlumberger’s
Houston Reservoir
Laboratory includes routine
and special core analysis and
enhanced oil recovery studies.
“Routine core analysis is
the first step in the process,
whether you’re looking at cores
or sidewall,” says Schlumberger’s
Mark Andersen, who wrote
Petroleum Research in North Sea
Chalk and spent 18 years working
for Amoco, most of that in its core
analysis research department.
He later joined Schlumberger
and in 2011 left his post as
executive editor of the service
company’s Oilfield Review to
return to his core analysis roots
by joining the team at the new
laboratory.
“Our clients spend a lot of
money to bring this rock to the
surface and you sure want to look
at it any way you can.”
The first set of evaluations
is aimed at learning three
main characteristics about
the rock: its level of porosity,
or storage space; the level of
saturation, or what percentage
Photos: Schlumberger
things that give them insights
into a rock, like feel it, smell
it, taste it and put acid on it,”
Andersen says.
Other tests are much more
involved, requiring the rock be
prepared in special ways for
experiments that may run days
or weeks or months.
The facility’s special core
analysis laboratory can carry out
complex tests aimed at learning
about a rock’s capillary pressure,
relative permeability, and
electrical properties.
Using the rock and the fluid
samples, Andersen says, “we can
create a tiny reservoir here in the
lab”.
An EOR laboratory works
with miscible gas flooding and
chemical EOR methods to help
provide a better understanding
of how to increase recovery from
the reservoirs.
A water laboratory measures
basic water properties and ionic
species in brines to predict
potential problems with scale
and corrosion, compatibility
between the formation and
produced waters, and how to
treat fracture flowback water for
understand unconventional rock
samples.
One example involves an
infrared spectroscopy service to
provide information about both
mineralogy and kerogen, or total
organic content, simultaneously
on small samples of the formation.
The method, also used to
“Geologists detect art fraud, is based on
diffuse reflectance IR Fourier
love to do transform spectroscopy (DRIFTS),
simple things and Schlumberger is using it in
addition to the traditional X-ray
that give them approach.
insights into a “It’s new, and it’s generating
interest in the industry,”
rock, like feel it, Andersen says. “Although the
apparatus is off the shelf, our
smell it, taste researchers have developed
it and put acid a method of preparation and
analysis and use a minerals
on it.” database that together makes it
Mark Andersen, quantitative.”
Barely a year after opening its
Schlumberger doors, the Reservoir Laboratory
has a backlog and is working on
He notes many of the tests the expansion plans.
oil and gas industry relies on for “We have a few empty labs left
information about rock samples that are going to be kitted out
have been around for seven or in the next quarter,” Andersen
more decades. says. “We are expanding lab
“Many basic techniques in space for our chemical EOR

of hydrocarbons it holds; and
its level of permeability, or how
well the hydrocarbons can flow
through the rock. It also involves
describing the core.
“Geologists love to do simple
reuse.
“We’ve tried to get anything
we need to characterise basic
and ionic properties of brines for
the oil industry under one roof,”
Anderson says.
the industry are quite old, but
the equipment has evolved over
time,” he says.
The facility is applying
equipment from other industries
in an effort to find new ways to
evaluations and adding more
high-speed centrifuges because
of demand. We are adding to our
local petrology capabilities with a
state-of-the-art scanning electron
microscope.”

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 65

 &
Bits
Bytes
Long distance calling
The latest production well on BP’s Magnus platform will establish
a new UK North Sea benchmark for extended reach drilling.
B
ack in the days when it was still unashamedly “British”,
BP established extended reach drilling (ERD) record after
record as wells from its onshore Wytch Farm oilfield
pushed further out under the sea from the Dorset coast.
The company had inherited Wytch Farm from the then state-owned
British Gas in 1984 and in turn bequeathed its operatorship to
Perenco UK at the end of 2011.
But BP retained its liking for drilling over long
distances. At Magnus, the 30-year old North Sea platform
now being spruced up under a renewal programme
aiming to synchronise the company’s production
facilities with their extended reservoir potentials, a new
producer now being drilled is expected to become the UK
sector’s longest ERD well yet.
At a total well depth of five miles, “this won’t
be any old well”, BP North Sea regional
president Trevor Garlick told an Industry
66 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
PHOTO: BP
Technology Facilitator (ITF) showcase in Aberdeen. “Delivery of it will
be technically challenging,” he added, requiring real-time monitoring
of trends to inform decision making; the incorporation of offset ERD
well lessons learned; use of friction reduction technology, and
increased focus on drill string components to minimise risk of failure.
“There are of course a number of more general challenges in
drilling — nobody knows that better than BP,” Garlick continued.
“And we continue to implement new standards in light of our
experience in 2010. In particular we believe the industry and
technology supply chain needs to make progress in managed
pressure drilling; reliable cement evaluation; and subsea BOP
reliability. There are many other areas too and it’s a continuous
process, but drilling more efficient and less expensive wells will be
vital to the North Sea’s future.”
BP North Sea regional
president Trevor Garlick.
 Prize
guys
A sysTeM that enables
a concentrated chemical
descaling solution to be
precisely placed across
a downhole safety valve
QUOTE, landed the annual
UNQUOTE innovation award of the
European chapter of the
Intervention & Coiled
“A step change in Tubing Association methods, “with perhaps
reservoir recovery.”
Dynamic duo
(ICoTA). Oilenco’s Soak the biggest being the
Cameron chief Sleeve and Syringe significant cost savings to
executive Jack technology, well received inventory of equipment
in control B Moore, on
the anticipated
by North Sea operators
since its development
required to carry out the
intervention compared to
A fly-by-wire (FBW) system for remotely operated future subsea in 2011, pipped other others”.
vehicle control in any water depth, allowing the ROV product and shortlisted candidates According to ICoTA
to hold station indefinitely and navigate to real-world service offerings from Schlumberger, Expro, chairman Callum Munro,
coordinates automatically, has resulted from Gulf of of OneSubsea, Ziebel and Welltec. pictured presenting
Mexico trials conducted jointly by Sonardyne and the new 60:40 Oilenco managing the award to Ackroyd
Oceaneering in over 3000 metres of water. joint venture with director Warren Ackroyd (on left of picture) in
The trials, involving a Sonardyne Sprint system, says SS&S offers many Aberdeen, the benefits of
Schlumberger.
was installed on an Oceaneering Maxximum ROV advantages over this innovation “lie in its
(pictured) and integrated with a Ranger 2 ultra-short existing technology simplicity and ease of
baseline (USBL) system for acoustic aiding of the
“Would you like to and other scale removal application”.
inertial navigation system (INS). It demonstrated that fly in an airplane
continuous hovering of the ROV in mid-water beyond maintained
Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) range was possible, as well by unhappy
as automatic navigation to waypoints. employees?” Shell
“Autonomous flight control is an increasingly field telecoms
important feature for ROVs,’ says Oceaneering’s advisor Don
ROV technology manager Mark Philip, adding: “The Happel on the
integration of the Sprint inertial navigation system need to work on
further enhances this capability by providing hands- crew lifestyle
free hovering and navigation throughout the entire issues to ensure
water column.” According to Mark Carter, Sonardyne’s retention of
INS business development manager, fly-by-wire ROV personnel for
control using real-world coordinates “significantly whom the rig is
improves operational efficiency compared to relative-
“home” half the
only positioning methods” and will “ultimately save
year.
ROV and vessel time”.

Slugging it out Quick break

upgrAded slug cApTuring technology and a
buried pipe model feature in the latest release of the
LedaFlow transient multiphase flow simulator as
Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies strives to improve
the accuracy of its underlying models. According to
KOGT, LedaFlow 1.2 enhances the ability to predict
hydrodynamic slugs and allows for a much better
understanding of how to reduce flow disruptions.
Adding a buried pipe model also builds on LedaFlow’s
independent temperature predictions for each phase
and shows significant differences can exist between the
gas temperature and the average temperature, which
can impact corrosion rate estimates for flowlines,
risers and pipelines. By improving on the level of detail
available from existing one dimension multiphase flow
simulators, KOGT sees opportunities to specify more
cost-effective solutions when choosing new pipe and
minimise the risk of failures later in the pipe’s life.
in West Africa
HAving cleAned up on several Asian campaigns last
year, Peak Well Systems’ Torque Action Debris Breaker
recently turned its attention to downhole duties in a
West African oilfield.
“Technology is a In order to allow the plugging of a water producing
vital part of the zone, the corkscrew design tool (pictured) was called in
solution for many to remove hard scale deposits ranging in length from
of the global one metre to five metres at multiple obstruction points
in 27/8 inch tubing at 52 degrees deviation. Peak says the
challenges facing
powerful tool facilitates much faster intervention when
us today.”
compared with prolonged campaigns using a standard
Rune Torhaug broach system. It quotes a grateful operating company
(pictured), new representative as saying the tool “exceeded our
managing director expectations, particularly when you consider that our
of DNV Research & wireline crew used 0.92 inch slickline and a 1½ inch
Innovation. toolstring to clear all the restrictions in less than a day”.

UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 67

 projects

A tale of two
troubled jack-ups
Repair work on
Denmark’s Siri
jack-up production
platform is
progressing, but
the omens for the
North Sea’s other
troubled MOPUstor
structure, on
Norway’s Yme
field, are not good.
David Morgan
reports.

C
onstruction methods
hitherto untried in an
offshore environment
are being employed by
operator Dong Energy to patch
up its Danish North Sea Siri
platform.
Installed in 60 metres of
water in 1998, the Siri platform
marked the first application of
GustoMSC’s then innovative
MOPUstor mobile offshore
production and storage design
comprising a three-legged
jack-up with process facilities.
It stands alongside a wellhead
PHOTOS: Dong Energy

caisson, with both structures

slotted into a 300,000 barrels oil
equivalent capacity steel storage
tank on the seabed.
The MOPUstor design
targeted in particular fields
with no direct access to pipeline

68 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013

SIRI SOLUTION: A 114-tonne clamp casting for the Siri platform (inset) leaves Sheffield Forgemasters’ Vulcan SFM facility.
infrastructure in water depths
and environments considered
unsuitable for deployment of
floating production, storage and
offloading vessels.
During a routine inspection
in 2009, grouting cracks were
discovered in the lower part of
the structure supporting the
installation’s 900-tonne wellhead
caisson. According to Dong,
they were found in the sponson
protruding from the storage tank.
Temporary measures aimed at
securing the installation until
permanent repairs could be
carried out included bringing in
purpose-designed lifting gear
to support the load and placing
gravel in the connection between
the platform legs and the tank to
reduce platform flexibility.
A strict new monitoring and
inspection regime was also
instituted and it was agreed that
the platform should be demanned
and production shut down if
the median wave exceeded six
metres.
Work of a more challenging
kind is now advancing under the
operator’s Siri caisson permanent
repair project, an initiative
so involved that it almost
constitutes a redevelopment of
the field.
Subsea 7, handling this work
on a call-off basis under its
engineering and construction
frame agreement with Dong, put
a price tag of about $220 million
on its involvement when the
preliminaries began in 2011 Dong
estimated the overall project cost
to be Dkr2 billion ($384 million)
at that time.
Belts and braces
Under phase one of the project,
pre-tensioned steel cable stays of
a kind more commonly associa-
tion with bridge building will
be mounted between Siri’s three
legs to stiffen the entire structure
and reduce movement.
Various topside modifications
have been completed and are
continuing, including the
strengthening of structural
elements and the installation of
a new floor beneath the platform
deck to accommodate winches
and facilitate the installation of
cables and clamps.
The expectation is that the
cables will be installed before the
2013/14 North Sea winter season.
In November 2012, Subsea 7
diving support vessel Seven
Havila assisted with the
installation of the first of the
friction clamps that will hold
these cables, at the lower end of
Siri’s west leg.
Sheffield Forgemasters,
one of the oil industry’s go-to
companies when it comes to
high integrity steel castings and
forgings of extreme size and
shape, delivered an impressive
114-tonne clamp casting for this
job.
The six-metre long and
2.8-metre radius casting
was made by Vulcan SFM,
the Forgemasters subsidiary
specialising in bespoke products
for the offshore oil and gas
markets, for Wilton Engineering,
fabricator of the final Siri caisson
assembly.
Forgemasters is also providing
35 flange and spacer castings
for the second phase of Siri’s
repair, which will involve the
introduction of large tubular
members to secure the wellhead
caisson to the platform’s legs and
seabed piles.
The horizontal members will
take up horizontal movement in
the bottom part of the caisson,
while the angled members
connected to the piles will carry
the weight of the caisson and the
DECK HAND: A new floor slung
wellhead area. beneath Siri’s deck serves as a
Ultimately, the caisson itself staging post for clamp and cable
will be severed just above the installation. »
UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013 69
 projects
» sponson to completely separate
it from the damaged sponson
structure.
This second phase is scheduled
for completion in 2014 before the
2014/15 winter season sets in.
Dong says it is not yet clear
what caused the sponson’s cracks.
Investigations are ongoing.
“Despite the repair work being
as challenging as it is complex,
we are able to produce parallel
to the ongoing work, without
compromising the safety of
our people on board Siri,” says
Flemming Horn Nielsen, vice
president and country manager
for Dong Energy’s Danish oil and
gas activities.
“The continued production
is possible because of our
competencies within risk
identification and engineering.”
Mark 2 misery
Meanwhile, the only other
MOPUstor in existence* — on
Talisman Energy’s Yme field
redevelopment in 92 metres of
water off Norway — looks to be
heading for the history books
Peruvian tower poised for production
CELL MATE: Gearing up
for first production is the
innovative CX-15 Shallow
Water Buoyant Tower
installed last year at BPZ
Energy’s Corvina field in 53
metres of water off Peru.
Designed by GMC and
Horton Wison Deepwater
and built at the Wison
Offshore & Marine yard
in Nantong, China, the
relocatable drilling and
70 UPSTREAM TECHNOLOGY Q1 2013
EARLY BIRD: Phase one topside modification work under way on the
Siri platform
before it has even produced a
single barrel of oil.
Provided by SBM Offshore on a
lease-operate basis and originally
due onstream at the end of 2011,
the Yme installation also suffered
cracks, this time in the grouting
around its legs.
Industry insiders suggest the
problem may have stemmed from
unforeseen additional loads on
production platform is a
variation on the cell spar
technology theme targeting
marginal fields in water
depths up to 213 metres.
The hull is composed
of four ring-stiffened and
connected cylindrical
cells — each 8.4 metres in
diameter and just over 60
meters long — with a single,
integral suction pile.
Key drivers behind the
the legs — the platform’s main
structural element — following a
belated decision to winterise the
topsides.
Though SBM argued that
the unit could be repaired and
remained “a safe operating
environment for all project teams”,
operator Talisman last July took
the decision to de-mobilise and
evacuate the platform.
design were dispensing
with the services of a
separate heavy lift vessel
at location — transport
vessel Osprey did most of
the installation work, with
the hull and topside floated
off in sequence — and
eliminating the need for
separate drilling units.
A rig is currently
being installed on the
4000-tonne CX-15 facility,
In late December, with
the platform having been
unattended for six months, SBM
confirmed it was effectively
writing off the facility after
taking an impairment charge of
$400 million and making a $200
million provision for possible
decommissioning costs.
At the time of writing, the
Norwegian regulatory authorities
had yet to issue a ruling on
whether the unit should be
scrapped, but Talisman was
known to be checking out
potential alternative production
options for Yme.
The sale of the GustoMSC
design and engineering unit
in The Netherlands to venture
capital firm Parcom Capital
for about $185 million was
completed in November, with
parent group SBM having decided
to concentrate on its core FPSO
business from now on.
*A production unit from the
same design stable was employed
by Petronas in the Caspian Sea
off Turkmenistan but without
storage capability.
Photos: Wison
which will have a total of 24
slots available.
The tower’s topside was
designed by Audubon
Engineering and GMC to
handle 12,200 barrels per
day of crude, with gas
compression capacity of
12.8 million cubic feet per
day. The facility also has a
produced water handling
and injection capacity of
3500 bpd.
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