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