First Gas from Ultra-Deepwater Gulf of Mexico Pipeline

                           Williams , through its general partner ownership of Williams Partners announced with DCP Midstream Partners, LP that the new extended Discovery natural gas gathering pipeline system is now flowing natural gas. The Keathley Canyon ConnectorTM deepwater gas gathering pipeline system and the South Timbalier Block 283 junction platform are serving producers in the central ultra-deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

The 20-inch, 209 mile Keathley Canyon Connector, which is capable of gathering more than 400 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) of natural gas, originates in the southeast portion of the Keathley Canyon protraction area and terminates into Discovery’s 30-inch diameter mainline at Discovery’s new junction platform. The pipeline was constructed in depths of up to 7,200 feet of water approximately 300 miles south-southwest of New Orleans.

“Building a pipeline in challenging terrain at this depth is incredibly complex, and I applaud our project team for their commitment to completing the project in a safe, environmentally responsible and timely manner,” said Rory Miller senior vice president of Williams’ Atlantic-Gulf operating area. “True to our vision of developing smart, large-scale solutions to move gas to market, we’ve built a highly reliable and cost-effective connection from deepwater production to our onshore Larose gas processing plant and Paradis fractionator.”

5 Reasons Oil Prices Are Dropping

As oil prices continue to fall, analysts and producers are trying to wrap their heads around the reasons and identify a floor price. Even though crude benchmarks like Brent and WTI keep dropping, the cost of finding oil continues to rise. What are some of the key drivers that have created this paradox? 

1. The U.S. Oil Boom

America’s oil boom is well documented. Shale oil production has grown by roughly 4 million barrels per day (mbpd) since 2008. Imports from OPEC have been cut in half and for the first time in 30 years, the U.S. has stopped importing crude from Nigeria.  

2. Libya is Back

Because of internal strife, analysts have until recently assumed that Libya’s output would hover around 150,000-250,000 thousand barrels per day. It turns out that Libya has sorted out their disruptions much quicker than anticipated, producing 810,000 barrels per day in September. Libyan officials told the Wall Street Journal last week that they expect to produce a million barrels per day by the end of the month and 1.2 million barrels a day by early next year. 

3. OPEC Infighting 

There have been numerous reports

Gas Explosion in Taiwan

TAIPEI—Deadly explosions caused by a gas leak overnight killed at least 25 people and injured 257 in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, according to government officials.

Underground explosions in Taiwan's second-largest city triggered fires that ripped off manhole covers on roads and cratered large boulevards, local television footage showed. Roads exploded with flames, overturning cars and collapsing houses. Many streets are still littered with rubble and impassible by ambulances.

Economic Minister Chang Chia-juch said Friday that officials are still unable to determine what caused the blast, though an initial investigation indicated the leak could have occurred in an underground pipeline that transports propene, a highly flammable, nearly odorless petrochemical used for polyesters. Kaohsiung is one of Taiwan's centers of petrochemical production.

In a Friday video conference broadcast on local television, Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu asked President Ma Ying-jeou to review the city's underground petrochemical pipeline system to avoid future accidents.The situation now has been contained, the government's Emergency Operations Center said, and the fire department had cut the pipeline's gas supply shortly after the explosions.

The chance of further explosions is "extremely slim at the moment because all gas supply has been turned off," said Kaohsiung city spokesman Ting Yun-kung.

The center added that 111 of the injured were already discharged from hospitals, while at least two people are still missing. A photojournalist for Apple Daily, a popular Hong Kong newspaper, was injured near an explosion site while covering the incident, the paper said.

Some people said tearfully on local TV that their families or friends are likely buried in collapsed houses, though reports are unconfirmed. Four police and firefighters are among the dead, the center said. Earlier it had reported 270 injured.

The Kaohsiung government has set up its own emergency center. The Ministry of National Defense said it has deployed more than 1,600 military personnel to assist in the rescue operations.

Mr. Chang didn't identify the company that operates the pipeline in the area and said the investigation is ongoing. A number of petrochemical companies scrambled Friday to distance from the blast.

The government said the fire department was notified by residents of possible gas leaks at 8:46 p.m. local time Thursday. Residents said that they had smelled gas and seen smoke emerging from drains shortly before the explosion. Officials still aren't certain what caused the smell. Firefighters were dispatched to the scene immediately to assess the situation, according to a government official.

Multiple blasts began around midnight, affecting an area of two to three square kilometers, or less than two square miles. One video clip posted on YouTube shows what looks like a narrow residential street suddenly exploding down its length.

AT THE END OF THE EARTH: THE LONGEST, DEEPEST OIL WELL IN THE WORLD

On Sakhalin Island, in Russia's far east, temperatures can fall to 35 degrees below zero. Many islanders herd reindeer. And in January, oil crews drilled the world's longest and deepest extended-reach well, 7.7 miles down into the ground and 7.1 miles out under the ocean. Seven of the 10 longest oil wells on Earth have been drilled there since Exxon Mobil launched its Sakhalin-1 project in 2003. Crews expect to keep breaking their previous records in the coming months.


The seven-story oil rig at Sakhalin, nicknamed Yastreb (the Hawk), is the industry's most powerful, with four 7,500-psi mud pumps, 14,000 barrels of liquidmud storage and six generators. It has two walls to help it withstand the cold and earthquakes, which are frequent. The Yastreb's drill torque is approximately 91,000 foot-pounds (a pickup truck operates with about 200).


Extended-reach drills travel both outward and down. To control the position and angle of the wellbore, drilling engineers use magnetometers and inclinometers; the information the tools gather is sent back by pressure pulses in the drilling fluid, which the engineers then analyze at the surface. The team - about 800, mostly Russians — pre-maps each expedition using 3D seismic imagery to create visual models of the conditions in the rock and the locations of the oil reservoir. They can reach their target with an accuracy of just a few feet. It's as if they were standing in the middle of Central Park and drilled down to a specific doorway of the New York Stock Exchange.

Saudi Aramco’s R&D Center Develops Series of New Technologies

The Qurayyah facility 

Saudi Aramco’s Exploration and Petroleum Engineering Advanced Research Center (EXPEC ARC) made significant progress in developing a series of new technologies in 2013, including the Smart Water Flood, Reservoir Nano agents, Prosperity and DETECT Coherency Technology. 

The Smart Water Flood is the first home grown recovery technology that can provide substantial additional oil recovery through simple tuning of the ionic composition of the seawater treated at Qurayyah facility for injecting into producing fields to maintain reservoir pressure. 

“The execution of a multi-well field pilot is being planned at North Uthmaniyah,” the company said, “and Saudi Aramco is conducting fundamental in-house research to better understand the fine details of recovery from the atomic/molecular scale to the reservoir scale.”

Meanwhile, the idea behind reservoir nano agents is an industry-first concept that focuses on in situ reservoir illumination and intervention based on advances in nanotechnology. The technology targets smart nano engineered particles and devices that can traverse the reservoir to support formation evaluation, reservoir monitoring, and oil recovery. 

“In 2013, the realization of stable magnetic nano particle successfully completed the proof of concept in the lab, making way for a demonstration in a shallow multi-well field trail,” Saudi Aramco said in its annual report.

EXPEC ARC has also developed an easy-to-use application titled “Prosperity” which enables the explorationist (as opposed to a reservoir quality specialist) to routinely predict reservoir quality in a variety of sandstones. This tool provides an interface that allows the user to make rigorous predictions of reservoir quality, but with a minimum of required inputs. 

“The application also utilizes a sophisticated diagenesis model, leveraged with our Geology Technology Team’s extensive reservoir quality database, to make reservoir quality estimates at the location of interest,” Saudi Aramco said.

Meanwhile, the DETECT Coherency Technology considerably enhances the value of 3D seismic data, reduces interpretation cycle time for prospect generation, and improves success rates for drilling in both exploration and field development. 

“The application of DETECT technology has not only resulted in better definition of subsurface images, but has also contributed significantly to the identification of fractures and channels — key components for our unconventional gas exploration efforts,” Saudi Aramco said.

Lundin Petroleum completes Gohta appraisal well

Lundin Petroleum AB (Lundin Petroleum), through its wholly owned subsidiary Lundin Norway AS (Lundin Norway), is pleased to announce that drilling of appraisal well 7120/1-4S in the western part of the Gohta discovery in PL492 has been successfully completed. The well was drilled 5.3 km northwest of the original Gohta discovery well.

The main objectives of well 7120/1-4 S, which was operated by Lundin Norway, were to confirm the extent and reservoir properties of the Permian carbonates and to establish the oil-water and gas-oil contacts in the western parts of the structure.

The well encountered 10 metres of Upper Permian limestone conglomerate with good reservoir properties overlying fractured limestones of limited reservoir quality. The conglomeratic interval contained gas condensate and the limestone contained traces of oil but appears to be tight. The depth interval of the oil traces in the appraisal well corresponds with the oil column in the 7120/1-3 discovery well.

High-Pressure BOP Equipment Becoming a Reality

A prototype of the new deep-water 20,000 psi single-cavity blowout preventer (BOP) ram developed by GE Oil and Gas undergoing pressure testing at the company’s laboratory in Houston. The completed BOP stack is expected to weigh 1 million to 1.2 million lbs.

The offshore industry has taken another step toward opening up new deepwater frontiers to exploration, with the first order for a 20,000 psi blowout preventer (BOP) by Maersk Drilling from GE Oil and Gas. The BOP is expected to be delivered in the first half of 2018 and is part of a multi-year collaboration between Maersk and BP to design a new generation of offshore drilling rigs for deepwater basins dubbed “20K rigs.”

The ultimate goal is to enable the development of high-pressure and high-temperature reservoirs with pressures up to 20,000 psi and temperatures as high as 350ºF. The technical limit of the highest rated BOPs in operation today is 15,000 psi and 250ºF. BP believes that with 20,000 psi BOPs and other technologies in development, it will be able to develop fields adding an additional 10 billion to 20 billion BOE across its portfolio.

“GE’s new deepwater BOP system is a key part of Maersk and BP’s strategy to safely expand offshore field development into previously unexplored areas,” said Claus Hemmingsen, CEO of Maersk Drilling. "With its redesigned components, GE’s new BOP technology addresses the needs of drilling companies for BOPs that efficiently operate at extremely high pressures.”

GE is designing, testing, and building the 20,000 psi BOP and risers at the company’s Houston Technology Center in Texas. However, the company said it is drawing on expertise from its global base experts. The new BOP will be rated for depths down to 12,500 ft and features upgraded rams designed for the higher pressures and extreme temperatures. It will also come installed with GE’s latest BOP control system and newly unveiled BOP monitoring and advisement software.

“The 20,000 psi drilling system being developed will include a number of new real-time monitoring and condition-based maintenance technologies aimed at improving uptime by reducing unplanned maintenance,” said Andrew Way, president and CEO of the drilling and surface business at GE Oil & Gas. “From higher performance mechanicals to real-time monitoring and condition-based maintenance systems, this next-generation system can make accessible new offshore drilling frontiers.” 

Source: JPT