The Digital OilField
Free
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
London
The Geological Society, London
Roughly speaking oil prices are down by $100/barrel from their peak of mid-2008. Putting to one side the observation that most economists did not have prices as high as $60/barrel anywhere on their projections for 2008 three years ago, how are oil & gas companies going to respond to ‘low’ oil prices?
Most companies will choose (do we mean ‘hope for’?!) a price in the range $60-80/barrel as a planning basis for the next 3 years and that this will mean:
- significant reductions in exploration budgets
- strong downward pressure on costs, together with
- ‘squeezing every last drop from the lemon’, that is making the most of currently producing or soon-to-be-developed fields.
A major contribution to 2. and 3. above will be made by the so-called Digital Oil Field technologies which involve using sophisticated data acquisition, processing, control and visualisation techniques to monitor and manage fields using real time information. These technologies offer enormous potential for operators to:
- ‘shape’ production profiles, with individual wells starting-up faster and achieving field-wide optimisation,
- identify unexploited reserves, improving recovery factors,
- cut both Capex (less wells) and Operating Costs, and
- remove staff from unsafe environments.
It was with all this in mind that we decided on the
Digital Oil Field as the theme for the third Forum on the morning of 22nd April, once again at the Geological Society in London. We were lucky enough to secure a lead-off talk from BP - as previously mentioned, one of the leading lights in the application of these new ideas - and David Latin gave a very clear account of the ‘how to’, the production benefits and the operating cost reductions of BP's Field of the Future® Program. He was followed by extremely insightful presentations from PGS, Facilium and Welltec.
For a more detailed review please click here.
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David Bamford is 63. He is a non-executive director at Tullow Oil plc and has various roles with Parkmead Group plc, PARAS Ltd and New Eyes Exploration Ltd, and runs his own consultancy. He writes regular articles for OilVoice and ROGTEC and is a co-founder of Finding Petroleum.
He retired from BP in 2003, after a 23 year career spent initially in research & technology, then the geophysics function, business unit leadership, and finally BP's global exploration programme.
Finding Petroleum
Finding Petroleum was established to help the oil and gas industry network, and stay up to date on the latest technological developments. It does this via hosting regular events, distributing their colour magazine - Digital Energy Journal, and with an online social network of nearly 700 members.
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BP is a global producer of oil and gas with operations in over 70 countries. BP has a larger economic footprint in the U.S. than in any other nation, and it has invested more than $100 billion here since 2005. BP employs about 14,000 people across the U.S. and supports more than 106,000 additional jobs through all its business activities.
For more information on BP in America, visit www.bp.com/us.
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Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) offers a broad range of products including; seismic and electromagnetic services, data acquisition, processing, reservoir analysis/interpretation and multi-client library data. They help oil companies to find oil and gas reserves worldwide, offshore and onshore.
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Mr. Hallundbæk founded Welltec in 1994 – materializing a vision that since has transformed the way the oil and gas sector operates by introducing technology which enhances the recovery rate and least lowers the environmental risk and impact compared to traditional technology.
With great success Mr. Hallundbæk has developed the business from a minor subcontractor into a direct contractor to the world’s leading oil and gas companies.
Mr. Hallundbæk still plays an active role in the development of new technology and has authored many SPE papers.
The environment is highly prioritized by Mr. Hallundbæk, which is why he from the start has designed all Welltec’s technologies around principles that safeguard the environment.
Mr. Hallundbæk holds an MSc in Engineering, Naval Architecture from the Technical University of Denmark.
Welltec
Welltec® is a global technology company that develops and provides efficient hi-tech solutions for the energy industry. The company's cutting-edge products and services are designed to optimize well performance and well integrity in all environments. Through advanced engineering and lightweight design, Welltec's solutions have been helping clients reduce environmental emissions and carbon footprints in a safe and sustainable way for more than 25 years.
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Facilium is an independent specialist company that enables oil and gas companies to increase the value of their offshore assets through the innovative use of e-field technologies.
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SAIC is a Fortune 500 scientific, engineering, and technology applications company that uses its deep domain knowledge to solve problems of vital importance to the nation and the world, in national security, energy and the environment, critical infrastructure, and health. They do this with the constant and deliberate commitment to ethical performance and integrity that has marked SAIC since its founding.
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