#17 digital energy journal - march 2009

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March 2009 Issue 17

Exploration:- searching for oil withsupercomputers- a new way to grid thesubsurface

Fracturing:- using tiltmeters andmicroseismics tomonitor your frac

Associate Member Production:- when your IT department gets in the way- wi-fi in North American oilfields


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Vision for Energy> Strategic consulting> Seismic imaging> Velocity analysis> Structural interpretation> Stratigraphic delineation> Formation evaluation> Reservoir modeling> Pore pressure prediction> Well planning and drilling

WHATYOUSEEISWHATYOUGET

Vision is Certainty

Leading science, breakthrough innovation and exceptional people.Providing customers with the intelligence to minimise risk and optimisesubsurface asset management. Paradigm. Unconicted, unsurpassed. www. pdgm .com


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Contents

Reducing risk in new exploration through modellingSMT has launched a new software module, called 1D Forward Modelling (1DFM), which enablesgeoscientists to use data from existing wells when doing seismic interpretation

WesternGecos land seismic systemWesternGeco has launched UniQ, a new integrated land seismic system whichcan record up to150,000 live channels at a 2 millisecond sample interval

Big improvements in gravity survey technologyBig improvements in gravity survey technology means that it is being used to determine thebest prospects to drill, not just to get a quick overview of the potential of a region

JewelSuite high definition modelling of the subsurfaceNetherlands oil and gas software company JOA has developed a tool which, it claims, make itmuch easier to model the subsurface, because (unlike on traditional subsurface modellingtools) there is no need to try to make the grid blocks align with faults

EarthStudy 360 Detailed Seismic Analysis at Subsurface Image PointsParadigm has created a new method of imaging and analyzing seismic data with emphasison extracting detailed images and information from geologic targets and their associatedlocal reflecting surfaces

Visualising everything at onceDynamic Graphics has developed a tool which can visualise multiple datasets from an oil fieldsimultaneously in 3D and 4D from an overall view of the basin to a view of the individual wellsand reservoirs and you can see how it changed over time as well. It can be used by everyoneassociated with a project

Disk data storage for seismic - $1000 per terabyteLandmark offers incentive for operators to finally give up tape with a new online, disk-basedstorage system for technical data

Making hard drives tough enoughData storage company EScon Ltd was asked to develop a hard drive data storage systemtough enough to use on seismic vessels

March 2009 Issue 17

March 2009 - digital energy journal

Digital Energy Journal is a magazine for oil andgas company IT professionals, geoscientists,

engineers, procurement managers, commercialmanagers and regulators, to help you keep upto date with developments with digitaltechnology in the oil and gas industry.

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EditorKarl Jeffery [email protected]

Technical editorKeith [email protected]

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Monitoring fractures with tiltmeters and microseismicsHalliburton has boosted its well stimulation and optimisation service through its recentacquisition of Pinnacle Technologies, the leading and most experienced provider of real timetiltmeter and microseismic mapping and reservoir monitoring services

Using the best drilling sensorsJames Burks, product line manager with National Oilwell Varcos M/D Totco division, believesthat his companys drilling rig sensors are better than others on the market

Fitting digital energy around your IT departmentYour IT department can often be at cross purposes with your digital energy strategy, says DrDutch Holland. Here are some ideas how to resolve the problem 21

Drilling, completions and production

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Front cover:UsingDynamic Graphicssoftware todisplay wells, productionand reservoir informationin the sameimage. See page 12.

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Leader Repsols Kaleidoscope Project finding oil under salt using microchipsSpanish oil and gas company Repsol has developed a supercomputer, using the microchipsoriginally developed for the Sony Playstation, to help look for oil and gas beneath salt in theGulf of Mexico and Brazil

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Schlumberger Wireless and WiMAX communications in North Americanoilfields Through an exclusive agreement with ERF Wireless, Schlumberger is offering 1.5Mbps wirelessdata communications for oilfields in North America, which will eventually be available forentire basins

Communications

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Spanish oil and gas company Repsol has puttogether a supercomputer with the help of microchips developed for the Sony Playsta-tion which is looking for oil and gas be-neath salt domes in the Gulf of Mexico andBrazil, among other places.

The computer has a processing power of 120 teraflops - equivalent to 600 Playsta-tion 3s, or 10,000 Pentium 4 PCs.

The Kaleidoscope supercomputer is

analysing the seismic data using the ReverseTime Migration (RTM) algorithm, whichneeds more than one order of magnitude incomputing power than coeval algorithms,according to Repsols director of geophysicsFrancisco Ortigosa.

The results of the data processing havealready been put to good use. We alreadyhave prospects that will be drilled this year as a result of the supercomputing, Mr Or-tigosa says.

"We hope there will be a lot more oil

discoveries because of the Kaleidoscope project this is why were making all thiseffort," he says. "We are really on the livingedge. We are going very much beyond whatanybody imagined before.

RTM techniques have been knownabout for a long time, but could not be useddue to the cost of the computing power need-ed to run them. The chief impediment to thelarge-scale, routine deployment of RTM has

been a lack of sufficient computer power,he says.

It has always been possible to put to-gether an enormous computer by linking to-gether PCs, but (until now) the limitation has

been the enormous electricity consumptionit would have.

"Anyone could get a petaflop by link-ing lots of computers together, but it wouldneed so much power, its not really feasible,"he says. "It would need megawatts of pow-er.

But Repsols supercomputer with thenew microchips covers just 8 racks, cover-ing 21 square feet of floor space; the power consumption is 750 watts per square foot(15.7 Kw in total).

The RTM seismic algorithm is good for understanding complex fractures from 3Dseismic data, and understanding seismic da-ta for reservoirs beneath salt. It also providesdata which can be used to make better cal-culations of other parameters such as pore

pressure. In future, it will also be used tomake a better removal of statics (noise) fromland seismic data.

The algorithms needed to be re-codedto run on the new chip, also to ensure thatthe amount of computing power needed torun them was minimised. Mr Ortigosa callsthis 'lean computing'.

The Kaleidoscope project began in2006, following the launch on the market of

both IBM PowerXCell 8i processors andnew Linux PC technology, in 2005.

Full data processing work began in No-vember 2008; and Repsol already has jobslined up for 2009 which will keep the com-

puter occupied for the whole year.

CollaborationThe Kaleidoscope project brings together the

expertise of a number of different companiesand organisations.

The supercomputer itself is operated inHouston by a company called CyrusOne,which runs a large data centre and supercom-

puters for other companies.

The project team includes Houstonseismic imaging company FusionGeo(formed by the Nov 3 2008 merger between

Fusion Geophysical LLC and 3DGeo, acompany founded by Stanford University professor Biondo Biondi), and the BarcelonaSupercomputer Center (BSC), which alsohosts Europes third largest computer,MareNostrum.

The original research was made with3D Geo, together with Stanford UniversitysStanford Exploration Project (SEP), an in-dustry funded academic consortium aimingto improve the earth structures that can beconstructed from seismic data.

The original development and testingof the code was carried out on the Mare Nos-trum supercomputer in Barcelona, the 9thlargest supercomputer in the world, which islocated inside a former chapel and has a peak

performance of 94.21 teraflops."The Kaleidoscope project brings to-

gether oil companies, service companies,and computing companies," Mr Ortigosasays. "If we want to innovate first of all weneed diversity.

It was also important that none of thecompanies in the group were competitors in

any way, which would have impeded freecommunication between them, he says.

Seismic algorithmsUnderstanding a reservoir beneath salt usingseismic is very complex because you cant

"We already have projects that will be drilled this year as a result of supercomputing" -Repsols director of geophysics FranciscoOrtigosa

Spanish oil and gas company Repsol has developed a supercomputer, using the microchips originally

developed for the Sony Playstation, to help look for oil and gas beneath salt in the Gulf of Mexico andBrazil.

Repsols Kaleidoscope Project findingoil under salt using new microchips

Leader

Repsol's Kaleidoscope Supercomputer at Cyrus One (Image courtesy of CyrusOne)

digital energy journal - March 2009


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Leader send a seismic ray through the middle of thesalt you have to bounce it around the edgeof the salt to get it into the oil reservoir andout again.

Its a bit like doing a complex shot insnooker when you have to bounce the white

ball around a pack of red balls to reach the black.

Just like for snooker balls, sending seis-mic rays around complex paths is possible,

but much, much more difficult. Normal seismic algorithms (the means

of understanding the path a seismic ray hastaken from the ray which emerges at the sur-face) are fine for a ray which just goes down,hits a reflector which is roughly horizontaland bounces up to the surface again.

But these algorithms dont work well if they are hitting a reflector which has an an-gle of more than 60 degrees from the hori-

zontal.So a new seismic algorithm has been

developed called Reverse Time Migration(RTM). Simply put, RTM is about modellingthe seismic wave both forwards and back-

wards - you model how you think the seis-mic wave has travelled from the source intothe subsurface, you model how you think theseismic wave have travelled from the sub-surface back to the surface, and then usecomputer modelling techniques to work outwhat the wave might have done in the sub-surface.

MicrochipThe processor (microchip) being used is thesame one included in the Playstation 3,called 'Cell' and designed by IBM, with thehelp of Sony and Toshiba. "This chip is ful-filling all the requirements," Mr Ortigosasays.

Each cell has 8 synergistic processingelements (SPEs). For a chip to be able to dothe require amount of processing, it neededto be a multicore processor, which could do

many calculations at once. Its impossiblefor any single chip to reach this amount of

power, he says.Another chip will be released in 2 years

time with 32 SPEs on it - so it can do four

times the processing, Mr Ortigosa says. "In-stead of having 120 teraflops we will havehalf a petaflop."

The cell chip uses Linux programming,and all normal Linux tools can be used withit.

The computer code needed to be rewrit-

ten for the new chips. It is very difficult to port codes which are written for Intel or AND chips and import them into Cell, hesays. Although it is easier to port codeswritten for Power PC computing.

The Stena Drillmax is the drillship Repsol usesto drill possible oil locations identified withKaleidoscope's imaging technology.

Reducing risk in new exploration

through modellingSMT has launched a new software module, called 1D Forward Modelling (1DFM), which enablesgeoscientists to use data from existing wells when doing seismic interpretation.

SMT has launched a new software module,called 1D Forward Modelling, which enablesgeoscientists to use data from existing wellswhen doing seismic interpretation.

A major assumption behind 1D ForwardModelling (1DFM) is that rock propertiesgenerally change only in small ways acrossshort distances (eg 100m scale).

So, when trying to understand the sub-surface of a new region, you are probably bet-ter off starting with the known properties of aneighbouring region (ie the well you have al-ready drilled) and making small adjustmentsto it, until you have synthetic seismic data thatclosely matches the actual seismic datarecorded in the new region you are lookingat.

For example, you might have an ideathat the rock properties in the area of interest

are very similar to the rock in a well that hasalready been drilled but that reservoir isfilled with water instead of oil.

You can create synthetic seismic of thewell you have already drilled, with all prop-erties the same (except for the reservoir you

Changes in sonic or density porosities are modeled using Wyllies time averaging equation and a simple volumetric average of the densities. Users can vary the mineral content and themixture of fluids in the pore spaces

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paring the synthetic seismic with the actualseismic, and try to get your model closer towhat is actually observed through a number of iterations.

It is called 1D Forward Modelling be-cause you are starting with one (1) dimension-

al data (log data in one wellbore) and createother possible geologic models from that data.The software is being sold as a module

extension to KINGDOM, SMTs flagship in-terpretation software.

The first company to recently purchase1D Forward Modeling is Seismic Ventures, aTexas based seismic data processing compa-ny.

Seismic Micro Technology (SMT)claims to be the global market share leader

for Windows based geoscientific interpreta-tion tools. The companys KINGDOM soft-ware suite can be used for a full range of dif-ferent geophysical and geological interpreta-tion tasks, all running from the same database.

are looking at, which is changed from oilfilled to water filled) so you can test this idea.

Or alternatively, you can make smallchanges to the rock properties in the well, de-velop synthetic seismic, and then go throughyour seismic data of the whole region to seeif the seismic data for any point matches your synthetic seismic which might suggest thatthe rock properties at that point match the re-vised rock properties of your well.

Using SMTs 1DFM, the process can becarried out iteratively make small tweaks tothe model and create new synthetic seismic,and then build up an idea of the subsurface of the new region which gets better and better.

The tool is particularly good for tryingto understand seismic AVO (amplitude vs off-set) responses; you can develop syntheticseismic based on your model, and comparethat to the actual AVO data recorded in the

field.Properties which typically might be al-

tered include the Poisson ratio (ratio of rock strains in different directions); porosities;

pressure and shear wave sound velocity; hy-drocarbon/water ratio in the rock (based onGassmanns equations).

You can also see what happens if rock properties from one layer are repeated in an-other rock layer at another level (by cuttingand pasting log data from one depth to anoth-er), which reveals if the thickness of a rock

layer changes.The input data you need from the wellincludes compressional (P) and shear (S)wave sonic data, and rock density data.

The software will draw a synthetic seis-mogram with a normal offset (what youwould get if the sound wave went verticallydown and up).

We take the new seismic survey andmatch that to the synthetic and hopefullytheres a nice perfect match, says MikePaine, lead product manager for 1D ForwardModelling at SMT.

Otherwise, I go back and edit the datavalues for these three well logs until I can cre-ate synthetics that match the real seismic fielddata.

I can say I have tight sand at the well what would porous sand look like? - andthen make synthetic seismic, he says.

Using 1DFM, geoscientists can also geta feel of the sensitivity of the geology to theseismic data (how much the seismic datawould change if the rock properties were tochange) and hence an idea of how accurate

the estimations of rock property are likely to be.

Ultimately you can eliminate possibili-ties, or work out a range, within which theright answer must lie.

You can keep tweaking the model, com-

Reliable shear velocities are imperative for the calculation of offset traces to be used for AVOmodeling. If a dipole (shear wave sonic) log is not available then the shear velocities must bederived from a normal sonic log or a log that can be converted to a usable sonic log. 1DForward Modeling accomplishes this by a simple workflow as illustrated in the above screenshot.

Fluid substitutions provide a valuable tool for modeling various fluid scenarios that might explain an observed amplitude variation with offset. The technique of substitution used here isthrough the application of the low-frequency Gassmann equations. As shown in the dialogboxes, users can vary the mineral composition, fluid mixture, as well as the specific physical and chemical components of the fluid.


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accepted in the industry. Most [of our cus-tomers] are on their 2nd or 3rd survey, saysDr. Davies.High resolution data that can be acquired atlow cost, andwhen mounted in a plane, canfly over difficult terrain that would hinder oth-er exploration, means Gravity Gradiometry is

becoming a useful tool for independents andmajors alike.

Exploration data


Big improvements in gravity surveytechnologyBig improvements in gravity survey technology means that it is being used to determine the bestprospects to drill, not just to get a quick overview of the potential of a region.

Gravity surveys are an essential part of explo-rationists tool kit. Being able to measure thegravitation signal from the earth helps deter-mine the rocks density and thereby creatinga picture of the subsurface geology. But con-ventional airborne gravity surveys have their limitations, says industry specialist ARKeX.With low signal bandwidth and a low signalto noise ratio, conventional gravity surveysare good at mapping geology on a regional or

basin scale, but not down to prospect (poten-tial drilling target) level.

ARKeX is utilizing a new technologycalled Gravity Gradiometry to obtain ultrahigh resolution data with a high bandwidthand a high signal to noise ratio. The resultinginformation is then used to map the geologydown to prospect level and show features thatwould be invisible to conventional gravitysurveys.

One of the problems with conventionalairborne gravity surveys is that it is very dif-

ficult to correct for the acceleration of theaeroplane in the gravity reading. A conven-tional gravity surveying device (explainedsimply) is a weight hanging on a spring thegreater the gravitational pull, the more thestring stretches. The sensor needs to be verysensitive to detect the precise changes in grav-ity, which indicates the density of the rock be-neath.

Unfortunately, acceleration of the planein different directions will also impact howmuch the spring is stretching. In order to cor-rect for that, you need to know how much,and in which direction, the plane is accelerat-ing. This is done using GPS (global position-ing satellite) but it is not a precise correctionso the final data contains a lot of noise and alot of the detail is lost.

Gravity Gradiometry, by contrast, does-nt measure gravity, but the gravity gradient.That is the rate of change of gravity over aunit distance. Again, explained simply, it usestwo separate weights on two separate springs,one above the other. They move in time withthe aeroplane (or ship) so any acceleration ex-

perienced by the weights is common to both.If however, there is a change in gravity (dueto a rock structure beneath), the distance be-tween the weights will change and this is whatis measured. This is the gravity gradient. Be-cause gravity gradiometry can record minute

gravitational changes, it can map structuralrock density in such high resolution, featuresthat conventional gravity shows as noise can

be seen as distinct features.Gravity gradiometry technology will

shortly be improved even further, with a newdevice called the EGG (Exploration GravityGradiometer), which uses superconductivity.This will be even more sensitive and be ableto map an even wider range of geologies.

Its phenomenally sensitive, says Dr.Mark Davies, Chief Scientist with ARKeX,one of the leading companies in the field.The EGG will be able to measure rock struc-tures with small density contrasts, whichwould be impossible with todays technolo-gy.

Gravity Gradiometry has already beenused extensively in North America, Africaand the Middle East. In these areas it has

proved to be extremely useful across manyexploration settings. In a mountainous Thrust

Belt region of Muskwa Kechikia, British Co-lumbia (notoriously difficult and expensive tosurvey with seismic technology), gravity gra-diometry successful showed why a Major oilcompany drilled a dry well in the region andwhere the main structure could have beenfound. It has also been used to map salt bod-ies in West Africa, again extremely difficultusing seismic.

The technology is starting to become

Gravity gradiometry has become"phenomenally sensitive" - Dr. Mark Davies,Chief Scientist with ARKeX

The mountainous region of Muskwa Kechikia, British Columbia, Canada. It would be very hard to do a normal land seismic survey here - doing a gravity survey from an aeroplane is anattractive option


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JewelSuite high definitionmodelling of the subsurfaceNetherlands oil and gas software company JOA has developed a toolwhich, it claims, make it much easier to model the subsurface,because (unlike on traditional subsurface modelling tools) there is noneed to try to make the grid blocks align with faults.

Most subsurface modellingtechniques divide the subsur-face up into a number of cells

by aligning pillars with fault planes. This is known as pil-lar gridding and has beenaround now for some 10years.

However on the JOAsoftware, all of the pillars(vertical lines) can be ab-solutely vertical. No smooth-ing or simplifications of shape are required to be madeto the model, to make it fit toa grid. The company claimsthat it is the most "accurategeological software toolavailable in the market."

With the JOA software,

the grid is orthogonal - itdoesn't matter if the fault or unconformitysurfaces are complexly arranged. The pil-lars always remain vertical in the Jewel Suitemodel in effect it is like putting a cookiecutter though the sub surface, says JonathanJenkins from JOA.

On the JOA system, there is no need tofit whole cells around corners; this is differ-ent to most traditional gridding software,where users often change diagonal fault linesinto stair steps to fit in cells. This unneces-sarily reduces the fidelity of the simulationmodel, he says.

Models can be built much more quicklywith the JOA system, the company claims. Inone case, "we took a model someone took 6months to build in other software and rebuiltit in 5 days and we kept the faults geologi-cally accurate, says Mr Jenkins.

The JOA models can also be updatedmuch more easily. If you decide a faultshould be in a different place, you can updatethe model with a single operation, says Mr Jenkins.

Normal gridding software can be finefor relatively simple fields, but the JOA soft-ware should prove particularly useful in com-

plex faults with many faults, Mr Jenkins says.The JOA software is available at, the

company promises, half the price of a simi-

larly configured Petrel licence from Schlum- berger.

The tool can be used on its own or eas-ily integrated into other software such asSMTs Kingdom Suite. It is completelyscalable: we have built huge comprehensivemodels for some of the biggest oil and gasfields of the world, he says.

Problems with traditional griddingUsers of traditional pillar gridding tech-niques can have a lot of problems when try-ing to create grids around faults, as figure 2illustrates.

When dealing with complex faultgeometries, you can end up with squashedcells that are harmful to the stability of sim-ulator calculations and require extensivemanual clean-up.

We are often surprised by the ingenu-ity and tenacity of modellers building rather complex models with frankly, inferior tools,he says. It is a very tedious process how-ever, and once you feel the power of an or-

thogonal grid and the integrated solutionsaround it, most never want to go back.

Often assumptions or fudges are madeto try to make the pillars fit around the faults.

Sometimes, as a remedy, pillars are on-ly lined up with one fault accepting that pil-

Figure 1 illustrates how the same data looks like with atraditional pillar grid program (above) and with the JOAsoftware Jewel Suite (below).


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The JewelGrid can connect to a widerange of subsurface simulation techniques,for instance finite element models used toanalyse and predict movements as triggered

by the production of oil and gas.JOA has recently demonstrated at a big

industry exhibition a JewelSuite set-up thatcombines high-performance cluster hard-ware with smart software solutions, reduc-ing the simulation time for field-wide Geo-mechanics by orders of magnitude.

lars are travelling along the other fault plane - Fig 2. Example (b); this way one suc-ceeds in capturing geometry in pillar grids

but it becomes nearly impossible to calcu-late reliable flow properties between cells oneither side of the fault.

These twin issues are responsible for too many sub surface having faults verti-calised something done 20 years ago andnowadays unacceptable to modelling small-er and more complex reservoirs.

Modellers are a clever bunch and toreduce months of mindless editing, they willsometimes not model the faults interpretedon seismic, says Mr Jenkins.

The other trick is to create pancakegeocellular models. By making models real-ly thin one can avoid geometry problems,

he says.This approach barely covers singlereservoir units, Mr Jenkins continues. Itignores stacked reservoirs, deeper layers and

About JOA

JOA is based in Delft, Netherlands, and provides support from offices in Houston,Moscow, Jakarta, Aberdeen and Sta-vanger.

The reservoir engineering solutionsare built in Albuquerque (New Mexico)

where all new code is also exhaustivelytested.

The company was founded in 1999,originally building bespoke software for Shell. See www.jewelsuite.com

the overburden. So what about flow of hy-drocarbons or water between different reser-voirs? Or what of the potential of modellingthe full field? With so many approximationsaccuracy is lost or too roughly measured, thisis unacceptable.

Connecting to simulatorsSimplifying your finished grid model, so youcan use it in reservoir simulators, is easilydone, as figure 3 (below) indicates.

Figure 3- It is fairly easy to simplify your detailed geological model (left) to a simpler model youcan use for reservoir simulation (right).

Figure 2 - modelling complex fault geometries can lead to squashed cells that need manual clean-up

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EarthStudy 360 Detailed Seismic Analysisat Subsurface Image Points

Oil and gas software company Paradigmhas launched a new offering to assist geo-scientists in analyzing the subsurface mak-ing use of the seismic method. The offeringis being made available to a select group of oil companies seeking to optimize their re-turn on investment from a general class of seismic acquisitions that are characterized

by the richness of their azimuth recordings.

Branded as Paradigm EarthStudy360 , the collective solution incorporatessoftware and people with a strategic serv-ice element designed to allow participatingoil companies to generate and interpret de-tailed images of the subsurface that revealcontinuous surfaces, small and large-scalediscontinuities, illumination directions, andsubsurface reflectivity data that can be usedto understand reservoir properties andreservoir heterogeneity.

The new system is designed for appli-

cation to both legacy and modern seismicacquisitions that sample the subsurfacemore fully in azimuth. Legacy acquisitionsinclude many onshore 3D seismic acquisi-tions, while modern seismic acquisitions in-clude the rich and dense onshore seismicacquisitions and the wide azimuth acquisi-tions carried out in offshore environmentsto illuminate data beneath highly irregular structures like salt bodies. The new systemis also ideal for application to ocean bottomrecorded seismic data.

What is unique about EarthStudy 360is that it decomposes and images the seis-mic data into full and continuous azimuthaldata sampled locally at subsurface reflect-ing surfaces. This decomposition and

preservation of in-situ azimuthal data,contrasts strongly with traditional seismicimaging procedures that average (sum) da-ta over the azimuth component, compro-mising seismic resolution and often elimi-nating useful information contained in thedirectional data.

The decomposition of subsurface

seismic data into full azimuth data is car-ried out with a rich, bottom-up, explodingdiffractor ray tracing procedure that sam-

ples the data in all angles and all directions,without imposing assumptions about theorientation of subsurface reflectors, says

Duane Dopkin, senior vice president of technology with Paradigm. Carrying outthis rich ray tracing with billions of rays at

selected image points within oil company project time frames, is what makes this ex-citing technology both innovative and prac-tical.

EarthStudy 360 was first launched atthe annual SEG exhibition in Las Vegas, in

November of 2008. Like the transitionfrom 2D to 3D data, the transition from sin-gle or limited azimuth data to full azimuthdata requires more than one product to takeadvantage of the implementation. Earth-Study 360 is not a point product solution;rather a system of technologies that

process, image, characterize, and interpretfull azimuth-data says Mr. Dopkin.

Benefits of ApplicationEarthStudy 360 has application to a broadrange of exploration and development im-aging problems that can benefit from fullazimuth decomposition and imaging. It isengineered for application to full volumeimaging, target-oriented imaging, and evenimaging along planned or actual well paths.

EarthStudy 360 was designed to ad-

dress a broad range of exploration and de-velopment objectives that can exploit thefull benefit of directional seismic acquisi-tion and imaging.

It is ideally suited for wide azimuthacquisitions that seek an improved illumi-

nation beneath complex structures such as basalt sheets and salt structures that distortseismic images.

It is also ideally suited for understand-ing the orientation and density of fracturesthat serve as permeability conduits in frac-tured shales or carbonates. The system hasspecial AVAA (amplitude versus angle ver-sus azimuth) methods to specifically en-hance the signatures of these fractures.

EarthStudy 360 can also be applied tomature fields where reservoir compartmen-talization is often subtle and difficult to de-tect. Here EarthStudy 360s capacity to de-tect local differences in seismic amplitudeand waveform can have a significant impacton the drilling program.

It is also applicable to the explorationand development of unconventional hydro-carbons, such as heavy oils, that are con-fined to the shallow subsurface. Here,EarthStudys capacity to sample the near subsurface with high angles can have ahuge benefit in these heavy oil plays.

Preserving the AzimuthAttempts to preserve useful informationcontained in azimuthal data with traditional

imaging procedures usually involve parti-tioning of the input acquisition data into alimited number of surface azimuth sec-tors and then processing, imaging, and in-terpreting the sectors independently.

Although this procedure has been ap-

Paradigm has created a new method of imaging and analyzing seismic data with emphasis on

extracting detailed images and information from geologic targets and their associated local reflectingsurfaces.


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plied with limited success, it still averagesazimuth data over the range of the sector

and, more importantly, this sectoring is based on surface orientation (azimuth)rather than the in-situ orientation of the lo-cal geology and the local reflecting surface.Additionally, the sectoring approach createsa burden for geoscientists that have to dealwith the practicalities of dealing with mul-tiple datasets.

EarthStudy 360s rich ray tracing pro-cedure enables the decomposition of seis-mic data into two types of full azimuth datagathers directional and reflection. No sec-

toring of the input data is required. By na-ture of their full azimuth, both types of da-ta gathers carry full 3D representations of data, potentially sampled at every grid

point. More importantly, geoscientists notonly have new data types to analyze, buthave fundamentally new ways to interactwith the full seismic wavefield.

View all directionsImagine being able to lower a camera intothe subsurface of the earth and record a

continuous animation that captures the sur-roundings in all directions and all angles.

By combining (or mapping) a rich bot-tom-up ray tracing procedure with the fullyrecorded seismic wavefield, EarthStudy360 simulates this procedure and creates awealth of seismic reflection (acoustic am-

plitude) and directional (dip and azimuth)data that can be selectively sampled, cre-atively combined, dynamically visualized,and further processed to secure images of the subsurface that can reveal details re-garding the presence of micro factures, ori-entation of faults and fractures, the influ-

ence of anisotropy, the directions of con-tributing illumination, the elastic propertiesof target reservoirs, and the extent (bound-ary) of those reservoirs.

We are still on the learning curvewith respect to the application of Earth-Study 360s new seismic data deliver-ables, stated Mr. Dopkin. We believe thetechnology and procedure has a huge po-tential to change the way geoscientists useand interpret the directional sampling of seismic data.



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Exploration data


Visualising everything at onceDynamic Graphics has developed a tool which can visualise multiple datasets from an oil field simultaneouslyin 3D and 4D from an overall view of the basin to a view of the individual wells and reservoirs and you cansee how it changed over time as well. It can be used by everyone associated with a project.

Dynamic Graphics of Alameda, Californiahas developed a 4D (3D + time) reservoir vi-sualisation software module which enablesyou to visualise all of your data together for your production operations, and see how ithas changed over time.

It gathers all of the data from differentdepartments into a format which everyone inthe company can use without (for example)

paying for more expensive licenses for reser-voir modelling software, and having to learnhow to use it.

This means that, for the first time, theengineering department can work with sub-surface data from seismic, which had previ-ously been restricted to people in the geo-science department.

This means that it can function as a com-munication tool for both technical staff, fromdifferent disciplines, and non technical staff.

Geologists dont have to know how torun Eclipse. Individual disciplines can accessthe output from other groups together withtheir own data, says Jane Wheelwright from

Dynamic Graphics. It brings together thedifferent disciplines and the different pack-ages into a common environment.

In one company, engineers used timelapse seismic data with predictive simulationmodels to figure out that the water injectionwasnt working. They managed to stabilisea field before the pressure caused problems.Most engineers aren't familiar with the seis-mic from their own fields.

Like Google Earth, you can see entireoceans or countries at once, and then zoom into see the subsurface of specific wells andfields, with all the data you have.

You can see a 3D view of the informa-tion, or see cross sections. You can visualisethe flow of oil, gas and water through the sub-surface.

It is possible to connect other informa-tion to the visualisation eg if you click on awell, the system can show you a photographof cores from it. We have to combine all thedata at our disposal, she says.

There is no limit to what can be includ-ed in the image it can include seismic data

volumes, well and rig locations, well logs, 3Dstructural models, information about coast-lines, field boundaries, satellite images, digi-tal electronic models of platforms, geologicmaps, LiDAR data.

DGI is still developing new ways to in-

corporate data. We want to, for example, ex-tend the number of drilling formats, she says.

The tool can show what is happeningover time so you can see both the new wellswhich have been drilled, and how the reser-voir is draining (as worked out from timelapse seismic data). Time sensitive data caninclude reservoir simulations, time lapse seis-mic, production data (eg from WITSMLfeeds) and information about which well wasdrilled when.

The company has already used the soft-

ware for carbon capture and storage visuali-sations, enabling anybody who is interested

to see how the carbon dioxide will be pumpedunderground and what will happen to it after that. For carbon capture, there will be a realneed to communicate with different people,

both technical and non technical she says.You can show what is happening without re-sorting to a spreadsheets and lists if figures.

The tool can also be used to make pre-sentations to management, rather than usePowerPoint.

Above and below: Dynamic Graphics has a software tool which can be used to visualisedifferent data sets from an oilfield simultaneously - including reservoir information, wells, well logs, flowlines and platforms


15/2813

Exploration data


Landmark, a brand of HalliburtonsDrilling and Evaluation Division, haslaunched PetroStor TM a new data storage so-lution which promises to finally enable re-liable data storage for the same price astape and provide real-time access to seis-

mic files and archived project data, saysMarc Spieler, director of Technology Op-erations with Landmark.

The PetroStor technology lowersarchival storage costs to around $1000 per terabyte by combining fast, high capacityhard drives with data management softwarefrom NetApp and data compression appli-ance from Storwize.

Although a terabyte of hard drive stor-age can be purchased for as little as $140,many companies still expect to pay $3,000

to $10,000 per terabyte for data storage ondisk, Mr Spieler says.The PetroStor solution is designed for

oil and gas customers who find themselvesfacing an increasing amount of seismic da-ta, as well as a growing need to access proj-ect data archives as they explore prospectsin more complex formations and re-exam-ine mature assets.

A big advantage of storing seismic da-ta on disk drives is that seismic interpreterscan be given direct access to it, says Mr Spieler.

Today, if an interpreter wants to look at the pre-stack data, a lot of times thatson a tape somewhere, he says. This canmean days or weeks of waiting while thetape is located and transported.

Interpreters may choose to just makedo with the information they have rather than waiting for the tape to be available making the resulting analysis less accuratethan it could be.

With PetroStor users can get bothseismic files and archived data from net-

work drives via their computer desktops,as easily as from their computer hard drive.

Landmark offers a number of servicesto complement the PetroStor solution, de-signed to help companies make their datamore accessible, including support in mi-

grating their existing data from tape todisk, indexing files and incorporatingmetadata.

Tape vs diskUsers have always preferred the accessibil-ity of disk drive storage, but it has beencost prohibitive in the past, because it typ-ically costs 4 to 5 times as much as tape,Mr Spieler says.

A lot of customers have tens of thou-sands of tapes which they store in variouslocations, he says. When it comes to ac-cessing the data, it can take days or weeks

because someone has to manually find thetape and load the data.

There is a further issue of tapes decay-ing over time, and often, archived data isin an outdated format adding the extra stepof transcription to ensure the data is pro-tected.

Similar issues can also occur withhard drives, of course, but it is much easier

migrating data from one disk technology toanother when you can do it with buttons ona keyboard.

Landmarks solution also gets aroundthe problem of people wanting to have their own copy of the data when data is stored

Disk data storage forseismic - $1000 per

terabyteLandmark offers incentive for operators to finally give up tape with anew online, disk-based storage system for technical data.

Landmark's PetroStor - store your data for thesame price as tape


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Exploration data


Seismic surveys are typically undertaken inextreme conditions, either on board a sur-vey vessel at sub zero temperatures or fromthe back of a truck in the searing heat of thedessert.

This places demands on the data stor-age system for temperature regulation, ro-

bustness and the ability to withstand salt,sea and sand ingress.

Historically, tape has been used to

move large amounts of information fromfield to data centre but this has many inher-ent problems, not least of which is volumewith collection rates of 20Tb per day notnow being uncommon. Magnetic tape is al-so very vulnerable to transit damage andhead alignment differences.

Meanwhile, disk storage solutionshave continued to evolve to the single re-movable drive modules which are prevalenttoday. These however have their own prob-lems including drive handling, transporta-tion damage and the accidental interchangeof data sets.

With survey costs usually running intomany thousands of dollars and often beingunrepeatable, it is essential that data must

be accurately stored and preserved duringtransit.

Escons oil and gas industry customer was looking for a new disk storage solutionfor seismic data and it soon became clear that an appropriate product was not readilyavailable. A more robust bespoke designfor the specific requirements of the geolog-

ical surveying industry and their conditionshad therefore to be devised.

The company wanted a system withthe following features:

12 removable disks in a single drivemodule weighing less than the 20kg regu-

latory health and safety requirement for maximum weight of an object one personcan move.

To be able to insert and remove thedisk drive module over 5000 times withoutit breaking.

A high performance fibre channel hostinterface

An advanced electronic managementsystem to ensure the correct insertion and

removal of the disks.Suitable cooling to keep the driveswithin their safe operating curve, whilst en-suring sand and salt are kept out.

A flight case suitable to protect themodule during transit.

The most difficult of the challengeswas the requirement to be able to insert andremove the drive module over 5000 timesat very high data rates. Conventional SCSIand SATA connectors achieved no morethan 4% of the requirement (200 inser-tions).

EScon, together with design partners,selected a spring probe connector to elimi-nate the friction suffered by the male/fe-male pairing whilst maintaining an opera-tional drive data rate of 3Gbits/s.

This also had the added advantage of providing a flat surface on the removabledrive, leaving no protruding connectionswhich may be damaged during transit.

To ensure the integrity of the data,support for standard and advanced RAIDlevels 5 and 6 together with Triple Parity

RAID was provided.RAID stands for Redundant Array of

Independent Disks and it basically involvescombining two or more drives together toimprove the performance and the fault tol-erance.

Combining two or more drives togeth-er also offers improved reliability and larg-er data volume sizes. A RAID distributesthe data across several disks and the oper-ating system considers this array as a sin-gle disk.

Twelve drives have in fact been combined into one single removable drive mod-ule which also incorporates shock mountsfor safer transportation in the reinforcedflight case.

It could not be assumed that the fieldcrew operators of the device would be prod-uct or even computer conversant. To en-sure correct operation an advanced power management system has been provided witha LCD screen directing step by step operat-ing procedures.

This also utilises a loopback signalcheck routine to confirm that all the disksare correctly inserted before allowing thesystem to be fully powered. The inclusionof a simple recording of the systems usage

provides a warning when the device needs

replacement.The relatively easy part of the brief

was the provision of a high performancecooling system, redundant hot-swappable

power supplies and fan modules.

The data storage system developed by Esconfor the oil and gas industry

Making hard drives tough enoughData storage company EScon Ltd was asked to develop a hard drive data storage system tough enoughto use on seismic vessels.

on a networked drive and accessible online,all users can have convenient access.

Data managementAs with a typical disk solution, data on thePetroStor solution is protected in the eventof disk failure by the same enterprise-leveldata protection used in standard NetAppfilers; maintenance to replace the faileddisk is simple, non-disruptive, and pro-vides the users seamless access to their da-

ta.The data is compressed as it is stored

on the disk drive, and decompressed as it isretrieved it all happens in real time and istransparent to the user. In Landmarks expe-rience most seismic and petrotechnical datacan be compressed between 30 and 50 per-cent.

Because PetroStor compresses and de-compresses data in front of the filer, userswill see read and write times decrease since

there is comparably less data being writtento and read from the disks. This will alsodecrease the resource utilization on the fil-er when being accessed by multiple users.

What all this means for the users, isthat the PetroStor solutions functions will

be transparent to them theyre not goingto know where their data is sitting, they justwill know that they have access to it whenand where they need it.


17/28

Fracturing

15March 2009 - digital energy journal

Monitoring fractures with tiltmeters andmicroseismicsHalliburton has boosted its well stimulation and optimisation service through its recent acquisition of

Pinnacle Technologies, the leading and most experienced provider of real time tiltmeter and microseismicmapping and reservoir monitoring services.

This past October, Halliburton closed its ac-quisition of the assets of Pinnacle Technolo-gies an established expert in fracture diag-nostic and reservoir monitoring technologies

allowing the company to create a continu-ous well stimulation monitoring and opti-mization solution.

The complete offering now combinescomprehensive wireline-based logging and

perforating services, stimulation perform-ance treatment (fracturing) and a fracturemapping service in an integrated solutionthat is also a flagship workflow of Hallibur-tons Digital Asset, a collaborative Hallibur-ton offering allowing operators to model,measure and optimize their asset.

Were calling it Integrated StimulationOptimisation, says Jonathan Lewis, vice

president, Halliburton Wireline and Perfo-rating.

Well stimulation is our largest single

franchise. It is a market which is becomingincreasingly sophisticated, says Dr Lewis.By combining the experience and expertiseof Halliburton and Pinnacle we are now ableto bring new capabilities to customers world-wide that will help them optimize their re-turn on investment.

FracturingHydraulic fracturing, explained simply,works by forcing high pressure liquid into awell to crack the rock around the well borein the production zone. This makes it easier for oil and gas to flow into the well so you

produce oil and gas more quickly. Fracturescan be thousands of feet long.

Techniques to monitor these fracturesare particularly useful in tight gas and shalefields, where the efficiency of the fracturingis very important to the overall success of the field.

Most ultra-tight gas fields would be un-able to produce without fracturing - it onlyreally became possible to produce some of these reservoirs in 1998, when thinner frac-

turing fluids began to be used. In most cas-es tight gas fields will barely deliver a puff of gas on their own, says Kevin Fisher,

president of Pinnacle.Fracturing operations have been car-

ried out since 1949. However, for many

years there has been very little understand-ing about how and where exactly the wellwas being fractured it was just assumed to

be a long horizontal crack from the well boreinto the reservoir.

Pinnacle takes the credit for first dis-covering that many fractures were very dif-ferent and more complex than how they werethought to be, when it embarked on a proj-

ect in 2000 to try to map fractures in shalereservoirs.

It discovered that, rather than being asingle straight crack, they were often a largenumber of extremely complex cracks grow-ing in multiple orientations.

This discovery led to the developmentof new methods for fracturing shale rocks,which led to a big increase in production.

TiltmetersA tiltmeter is something like a spirit level

(used to keep pictures hanging straight inyour home) a tube with a bubble in it. Pin-nacles tiltmeters use electrodes to monitor the movement of the bubble, which are sosensitive they can detect a movement of 1molecule left or right. This is equivalent to ananoradian or a change in tilt of 1 part per

billion - the change in tilt you would have if you had a rod as long as the distance fromthe US East to West Coast, and you lifted oneend of it a quarter of an inch.

Pinnacles first tiltmeters, developed in1992, could map fractures at a depth of around 5,000 feet deep. Now it has tiltmetersthat are more sensitive and can monitor frac-tures at depths of 16,000 feet. Pinnacleclaims to have a 100 percent market share of tiltmeters for monitoring oil field fracturing.

Typically, between 15 and 100 tilt-meters will be placed on the ground aroundthe well.

At a basic level, tiltmeters can provideinformation about the direction in which therock has been fractured. According to Mr Fisher, the readings from tiltmeters can give

an immediate indication of the size, length,dip, quantity and direction of fractures, with-out any complex computer processing.

Just looking at a raw surface tiltmeter vector map, I can tell you the orientation of the fracture its very intuitive to get from

raw data to the final answer, he says.The data can also be used to make more

complex calculations to determine what kindof fracture would have caused the change intilt which was detected at the surface. Wecan determine how complex the fracture is did we just get one long skinny frac or amultiplicity of fractures in several orienta-tions, he says.

We want to find out, are we achievingon site the desired goal fracture height,length and direction and is it in the payzone, he says.

MicroseismicsMicroseismics are geophones (think micro-

phones) in the well bore, which can calcu-late the location of any sound source fromthe difference in time taken for the sound toreach the different microphones, taking intoaccount the sound velocity of the rock, and

triangulating.The microphones are located on the

tubing in the well, with 300 to 1000 feet be-tween the top and the bottom one. They are3-component geophones meaning that thesensors point in different directions.

The readings from tiltmeters can give you animmediate indication of the size, length, dip,quantity and direction of fractures, without

any complex computer processing - KevinFisher, president of Pinnacle


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Fracturing There is a lot of noise as the fracturing

fluid breaks the rock up, which is recordedon the geophones.

The data from microseismics can be vi-sualised as dots on a map around the well,showing where rocks have been forced apart.

Microseismic is more complex [thantiltmeters] you have to know the velocityof sound in each layer that the sound is trav-elling through, says Mr Fisher. You haveto run sonic logs and use other data and serv-ices to develop a velocity model. In somecases you must refine the velocity model asthe frac progresses.

Using the dataThe data from the fracture mapping cansometimes lead to immediate changes inhow the fracture is being carried out.

For example operations can be imme-

diately halted if the fracture starts affectingrock outside the reservoir.

Many times during a fracturing jobwere trying to give the operator that realtime look at where the fracture is going tostay out of undesirable fluid contact, saysMr Fisher.

While theyre watching the pumpingand volumes we can give them a bit of intel-ligence, he says. For instance, we can in-form the operator if a fracture is going a bitdownwards, and can make recommendations

to stop the downward growth. In this case,the fracture engineer has a very useful toolto come up with a better treatment.

You may have a fault a few hundredfeet away from the well bore you mightwant to do all you can do to stay out of thefault.

Over the longer term, the informationcan be used when planning the next stage of the fracturing job.

Most of our mapped wells have 3-5frac stages, often we map 15 or 20 times ina horizontal well, he says.

Various tools are available to changethe fracture so that the rock cracks in a dif-ferent way including using liquids with dif-ferent physical properties, different pres-sures, blocking off the well in different

places, and using more of less proppant(small balls of solid material sent into thewell bore with the fracturing liquid, whichideally stays behind and keeps the rock cracks forced open).

Knowing where the frac grew in the previous stage helps you plan what you wantto do on the next stage, he says. You might

be able to eliminate a frac stage if the previ-ous stage already contacted the next inter-val. If the fractures didnt grow as tall as ex-

pected you might have to frac another stage.

Over yet longer timescales, the fracturemapping information can be used when mak-

ing a decision about how far away the nextwell will be drilled and what orientation youwant to place that well, taking into consider-ation how far the fractures from the first wellextend.

Information managementManaging tiltmeter and microseismic data,and presenting it to the right people at theright time, can be complex.

Ideally, the new information should becombined with all available data about the

reservoir, in a continually updated computer model of what is thought to be happening inthe subsurface (an earth model).

This earth model can include informa-tion about the rock types and reservoirs, withdata from a range of different sensors andlogs.

The earth model can be used to help plan the next fracturing operation, workingout the best way to get the desired fracturesand taking into consideration how the rock is expected to respond to different stresses.

During the fracture, data can be gener-

ated from tiltmeters and microseismics and plugged back into a frac model, that outputthen updates the earth model.

To do all this takes a sophisticated un-derlying infrastructure for data managementand communications, which Halliburton has

developed through its Landmark software.Landmark recently launched R5000, asynchronous release of technologies for theDecisionSpace environment, which can beused to run all oilfield operations, witheverything running from a common databaseand data communications architecture.

Were leveraging that common back- bone infrastructure, which makes it mucheasier for our customers to get rapid accessto the data as we are acquiring it, and alsointegrate it into a common visualization anddatabase, says Dr Lewis.

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Well stimulation is Halliburton's "largest single franchise" - Jonathan Lewis, vice president, Halliburton Wireline and Perforating


19/28


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Using the best drilling sensorsJames Burks, product line manager with National Oilwell Varcos M/D Totco division, believes that hiscompanys drilling rig sensors are better than others on the market. He explains why.

Few drillers would underestimate the impor-tance of the reliable, consistent information

provided by rig sensors.They provide measurements ranging

from loads and pressures to distance and ve-locity.

Determining the best suited sensor for a particular job is just as important as its ac-tual performance.

While sensors have been designed andmanufactured for many years in a variety of industries, the oilfield presents unique chal-lenges with its often hostile drilling environ-

ments.Working closely with NASA, NOV

M/D Totco has created sensors that haveflown on the space shuttles. The companyhas also supplied sensors to major defenseaerospace companies as well as all of theU.S. armed forces.

Manufacturing sensors in itself is notuncommon within the oil and gas industry.However, constructing ones that meet the en-vironmental challenges and operational re-quirements in the increasingly demanding

and difficult drilling business, and doing sowith precision, is difficult.One of the worlds largest drillship

fleets had been using another manufacturershookload pins to hold the loads for thedrillpipe. After attempting all possible alter-natives, company personnel still could notobtain accurate readings, which fluctuatedcontinuously, especially with extreme tem-

perature changes. NOV M/D Totco was approached to de-

sign replacement sensors and, after a 1-1/2year trial period, the companys sensors have

been replaced with the new design through-out its entire drillship fleet.

A Norwegian company was experienc-ing widespread problems with malfunction-ing sensors. It also approached NOV M/DTotco for a new design, which now suppliesthe company with pressure and force sensorsat a rate of about 1,000 devices per year.

Practically speaking, when reviewingexisting sensors or designing new types for first-time applications, it may be helpful to

break them down into four broad sensor

groups: compression cells, tension links,load pins and rotating pinions.

Compression cellsMost compression cells produced in the in-dustry are single output cells, with some de-

signs having a second bridge for redundancy purposes alone, in the event one bridge failsto ensure continued rig operations.

NOV M/D Totco has developed a triple bridge compression cell that has three bridges placed and bonded inside the loadcell, with three separate 4-20 mA outputs uti-lizing three onboard signal conditioners.

The first two bridges are used for re-dundancy and the third bridge sends a signalto a third party instrument or equipment to

provide accurate hookload data. NOV M/D Totco outfitted rigs having

systems to control the brakes and other drilling activities are directly tied to thesetriple bridge compression cells. By moni-toring all three bridges simultaneously, arigs software can compare the outputsamong the three signals.

As a result, the automated rig system isable to monitor the true hookload coming outof these bridges to enhance the performanceof the overall drilling operation.

Anchors for hookload

Generally speaking, there are two types of anchors for managing the hookload on a rig.One is a pancake-style cell called a

compression anchor and the other is a ten-sion-link style anchor.

For years, hydraulics have been used tocontrol both of these anchor types.

The pancake style is a flat hydrauliccell with a diaphragm inside. When a loadcompresses the anchor, a hydraulic output iscreated.

The tension link style anchor is usedwhen the load is being pulled.

NOV M/D Totco manufactures both thetension and compression types of sensors, sothe company can provide far better resolu-tion of the hookload to enhance drilling per-formance.

Moreover, it has gained a competitiveadvantage in the marketplace by replacingthe previous hydraulics with electronics for system control.

Hydraulics can provide operational in-accuracies when extreme conditions exist,such as weather, compression of air, hy-

draulic fluid level variations and vibrationsof the hydraulic hose.

In contrast, electronics improve overallaccuracy, which is invaluable to the driller who is interested in accurate hookload meas-urements, the variance being the weight on

bitone of the main parameters used whendrilling a wellbore.

Load pinsA load pin is usually made of soft steel andis placed between two structures to which aforce is applied.

This type of dummy pin can be instru-mented and a sensor produced to detect theload that is being applied to the joint.

NOV M/D Totco has used internalgauging to greatly improve load pin designcompared to those previously manufacturedwithin the industry.

Typically, the strain gauge is placed onthe outside of the steel where it is exposedto the environment.

In contrast, NOV M/D Totco machinesa half-inch hole through the center of the ma-terial, which can be accomplished by chang-ing the materials strength (usually 17-4 PH).Then, concentration grooves are machinedinto it to better direct the stress on the gaugesto improve repeatability. Finally, the hole isseal welded on both ends.

Consequently, few failures have result-ed because of the environment, particularlyfrom water. Water is the primary environ-mental factor impacting most externallygauged pins.

As an example, two-million pound capacity load pins have been used in theArkansas River navigational system, whichhave been holding the gates for more thanfifteen years.

Rotating pinions NOV M/D Totco also has developed a wayto actually measure the torque placed ondrive pinions in jack up rigs.

While the pinion is rotating, a signal is

National Oilwell Varcos drilling rig sensors


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sent to the control system to alert personnelregarding the amount of torque being put onthe jacking system.

In the past, companies typically had to buy devices costing approximately $70,000to attach to the pinion and measure itstorque. NOV M/D Totcos pinion actuallymeasures the force that is twisting it, whichis the true torque that is being applied ontoits gears.

Thus, the process of measuring in itself actually becomes incorporated into the pin-ion design. The instrumented pinion is de-signed and built to fit in the same space andhousing. A connector is then added to whicha cable can be attached.

After the existing pinion is removed,the NOV M/D Totco pinion is installed andconnected to the cable. As it turns, a uniquemicro switch transmits accurate millivolt

signals to a display.Torque signals are now available to the

operator for better control without the usual

interference that occurs with low level sig-nal transfer through slip rings. This elimi-nates the need for having to monitor motor amps and manually check each pinion for ac-curacy, which reduces the speed and safetyof the drilling operation.

Moreover, real-time data is providedwith the brakes on or off.

Strain gauge sensorAnother unique aspect of the NOV M/D Tot-co sensors is the 4-20mA strain gauge sen-sor applications, which have an onboard sig-nal conditioner.

This digital board has both a processor and temperature sensor, which offsets anyunfavorable temperature effects. As the tem-

perature changes, so does the bridge.The board uses a look-up table and ac-

tually offsets the milliamp signal to remove

any variance caused by temperaturean in-novation that has been proven effective inthe field.

Quality controlPrecise instrumentation incorporated into itssensors requires NOV M/D Totco to adhereto stringent quality control in the manufac-turing process.

As such, NOV M/D Totco has a certi-fied test facility, with all of its products man-ufactured to ASTM E-374 (ASTMs elec-tronic certification body) standards, all of which are traceable to NIST. The certifica-tion system electronically captures all meas-urement outputs from a sensor and referencecell, which is calibrated simultaneously tofour decimal places in less than fifteen mil-liseconds.

This information is fed into the SQL(Structured Query Language) server data-

base, so if a sensor comes back for re-cali- bration or re-testing, its specific serial number can be tracked in the system. Any re-cal-

ibrated sensor will have a running history of each testing and its respective performance.

Making it easier to share well logs Norwich based UK oil and gas softwarecompany Geologix has developed a new on-

line service. www.wellxp.com, to enablecompanies to share well log data with au-thorized people connected to the project.

Well XP can receive data from Ge-ologixs GEO software, which is used bywell site geologists on their laptop comput-ers, to gather well log information from serv-ice companies, and provide initial interpre-tation (eg to describe rock types encounteredat different depths).

For example, a company might have

Schlumberger doing drilling (and capturingmeasurement while drilling (MWD) data),

and Baker Hughes doing mud logging. Allof this data can be pulled together at the wellsite into the GEO software.

The data communication from GEO tothe well site acquisition systems can be madeusing WITSML (Well Information Transfer Standard Mark-up Language), the data com-munications protocol developed by stan-dards body Energistics.

It means that well log reports no longer have to be faxed or emailed as a pdf; and ge-

ologists dont need to worry about storingthe data on their laptops or portable hard

drives.Data can be exported out of Well XP in-to subsurface data management softwaresuch as Schlumbergers Petrel.

The company is seeing a lot of growthin Asia at the moment, says managing direc-tor Samit Sengupta. It has offices in Jakarta,Indonesia and Houston, Texas.

It is also building its web tools whichenable companies to share more informationto authorized users online.

Petris develops managed pressure toolwww.petris.comOil and gas software company Petris Tech-nology has started offering risk managementsoftware for drilling, in partnership withsoftware company Warrior, which has devel-oped risk analysis software.

Petris will link its data management

and project engineering tools for drilling to-gether with Warriors software.

The software has functionality to iden-tify and rank the biggest risk factors whendrilling, and develop a risk management

plan. It can also analyse probabilities.

Users can evaluate what certainchanges will make to the overall risk profile,time and cost of the drilling project.

The tool should be particularly usefulfor customers using Petris drilling software,says Eric Deliac, senior vice president East-ern Hemisphere, with Petris. Theres a risk

of drillbits getting stuck, explosions andthings you weren't expecting.

A lot more underbalanced drilling istaking place at the moment, and this has alot more complex risks attached to it, hesays.

Warrior TechnologyServices is aspecialist inthe oil and gasindustry, setup by drilling

engineers, andits software isalready used

by manydrilling com-

panies.

Eric Deliac, senior vice president EasternHemisphere, with Petris


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Production

21March 2009 - digital energy journal

cluding the asset manager, are not equippedto absorb R&D risks. So, placing R&D riskson asset managers will accomplish littlemore than killing DE innovation on thelaunching pad.

Disconnect from your current ITThe first step in creating a viable DE cultureis to stage a cultural disconnect at senior management levels from the current embed-

ded IT culture.First, bring incorrect IT assumptions

to the surface by writing them down in ex- plicit language in order to challenge eachand explain how the DE culture will work differently. Then create the new DE culturefrom a blank sheet of paper.

But what about the flip side? What if the organization has actually been workingin a positive mode toward a DE culture?

If so, the IT assumptions its manage-ment has are that IT will supply the means

for advancing productivity; business expec-tations for IT projects will consistently bemet; IT projects will be on-target, on-timeand on-budget; IT Implementations will bemanageable and doable; and communication

between business and IT will be completeand understandable.

Right direction is criticalProperly creating a new DE culture is criti-cal not just to get the right puzzle pieces inthe right places. It is also the template for ad-dressing problems and guiding workers in

performing their jobs within the new organi-zational culture.

Yet, many organizational cultures arenot necessarily pointed in the right directionin the first place, which is what often makesthe collision of IT and DE not unlike a trainwreck.

The reason for the wreck is not difficultto ascertain even for laymen.

DE is typically seen by most workersas if it were a television commercial for tech-nology: Deliver new productivity to your

company and solve all your problems withour new software. No special work or skillsrequired.

The truth is that the DE culture will re-quire an engineering mindset especially for implementation and business readiness.

As a result, management typicallylooks at DE they want to introduce at anygiven time and invariably concludes the

technology will be fully and enthusiasticallyutilized, after some good psychology-basedcommunication of course, beginning at 8 amthe next day.

Imagine the surprise at every companythat thinks this way when they discover thismindset is simply inaccurate.

In brief, a companys non-DE culturemay work quite well for all manner of tasksand business objectives but, at best, may bean awkward fit for the new DE working en-vironment.

The solution, as for most business prob-lems, is to shift into the proactive mode and

proceed forcefully in order to develop andshape the companys new DE culture, onewhich is a glove-fit for its people and

processes.This solution for the companys DE

future begins and carries through on a pos-itive, yet challenging, note.

At the outset, management draws upexpectations to be met at three different lev-els within the organization: executive, sen-ior management and technical professional.

Executive levelAt the executive level leadership factors arethe driving force.

To maximize DEs value in the workplace, new technology should be deployed

Fitting digital energy around your ITdepartmentYour IT department can often be at cross purposes with your digital energy strategy, says Dr Dutch

Holland. Here are some ideas how to resolve the problem.

Within any organization a Digital Energy(DE) culture does not magically appear,seamlessly integrating people with technolo-gy. Realistically, the organisational wheelmust first be reshaped to make it roll moreeasily.

Why? Every organisations culture ismade up of several subcultures based on the

past and ongoing assumptions.One involves how the people work with

and think about information technology (IT).The working relationship with IT dates back many years, or even decades, for most com-

panies. Many assumptions about IT mayhave been created and reflexively accepted,without ever being challenged as wrong.

The cumulative effect of this unchal-lenged IT thinking might have been general-ly benign except for its recent collision withDE.

What happened is that managers havetended to view DE through the same lens at

they view IT.This is somewhat akin to watching amovie with an exciting action hero who un-expectedly meets an unhappy ending.

But, the oil industry has the opportuni-ty of a lifetime because it can write a muchmore upbeat ending to real-life DE at com-

panies throughout the world.Overall, the objective is to have DE be-

come more than simply the introduction of new technology into an oilfield company.When done properly, the goal is to use the

power of digital technology to transform theway the company does business into one thattakes the business to a new level of excel-lence, accomplishment and profitability.

Just as a farmer must prepare his fieldfor planting, DE advocates must diligently

prepare the organisations IT culture be-fore DEs promise can be realised.

People don't want riskRemember that risks are always associatedwith introducing new technology within anorganisation, as is any new way of doing

business.Typically these risks are absorbed at the

top level of management because they usu-ally issue the go-ahead on new technologyafter the case is made at lower levels.

However, lower level managers, in-

Often the term 'culture' has a negative effect on employees - Digital Energy workingenvironment is better - Dutch Holland, CEO,Holland & Davis


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by executives communicating explicitly toworkers throughout the company.

In a crystal-clear, non-fuzzy way, exec-utives should put forth what is comingthrough the pipeline not just floating thenew DE out in the workplace and allowingemployees to adopt or ignore it.

Simultaneously, as with a coach for asports team, these same executives must beoffering clear direction, while pushing and

prodding. Remember, DE is engineered intoa company, not sweet talked into it.

And to further help ensure that every-one gets the point, a system must be put in

place to align objectives with accountability,stressing that DEs success or lack thereof has real consequences. Failure will be penal-ized and successful implementation leadingto full use of the system will be rewarded.

Senior managementSenior management has its plate full of re-sponsibilities, too, in creating the new DEculture.

The senior management level must in-sist on a systems engineering to approach to

business readiness. In fact, they have to dealwith two different stakeholders: businessunits and corporate.

On an everyday basis, this means whencorporate strategy hinges on DE leveraging,senior management cannot set corporate

aside just to make the highest current profitsfor their business units.They must be on the same track as up-

per management in the respect of keepingDE implementation momentum alive insteadof resorting to the simplistic out with theold and in with the new.

Technical professionalsTechnical professionals, who comprise thethird level, have to begin living in the pres-ent and the future at the same time.

On the one hand, they have to continue being very exacting and professional in their technically-oriented work.

While this should be expected under any circumstances, these traits are particu-larly important when the organisation is

bringing new DE on board because thesequalities validate their input.

On the futuristic side, they must recog-nize that the days of doing a considerableamount of manual work and functioning onrelatively slow time cycles are over.

The environment now, hence the future,

is real-time and 24/7 instantaneous decision-making. And, finally, as if these other re-sponsibilities were not enough, they mustshare knowledge and work collaborativelyin helping ensure successful DE implemen-tations.

About the authorFor more than a decade Dutch Hollandhas been the pioneer in applying a systemsengineering approach to change manage-

ment in the digital oilfield (EngineeringOrganizational Change{patent pending}and Systems Engineering Approach toBusiness Readiness). Dutch Holland,PhD, is CEO of Houston, TX-based Hol-land & Davis LLC ( www.hdinc.com )

Specific actions Now comes what most people look for when presented with a challenge, in this case, cre-ating the new DE culture.

Yes, there is a game plan to achieve theobjective, so that guesswork does not haveto be brought into play.

Steps required for changing to a DEculture are, most importantly, reward-based.In other words, the new DE culture that is

being created must be clearly communicatedto workers while explaining that successfulimplementation will be rewarded in variousways, ranging from bonuses to promotions.

With that in mind, specific actions re-quired for DE culture change are:

Identify the culture or new work envi-ronment that everyone will be expected towork toward, so that the organization can op-timally leverage all the attributes that DE of-

fers. This must be communicated at all threelevels, not just on an arbitrary or spot basis.

Establish the opportunities for employ-ees to best comprehend how they are alignedwithin the new DE culture, through meanssuch as benchmarking and essentially hav-ing them diagnose their niche within the or-ganization

Help ensure that the transition to a newDE culture is guided by a systems engineer-ing approach. Pinpoint and communicate thespecific changes that must be made in how

the company presently functions and mapthe route to implementation of the new DEculture.

Inform employees that the organiza-tions transition to a DE culture is project-

based (again removing any broad brushthinking), which will hold managers ac-countable for how effectively the change ismade.

Inject some extras into the rewardsystem to let everyone know that, just as re-al consequences are in place to penalize fail-ure, there are enhanced sweeteners for DEculture implementation success.

Although this analysis has discussedDE in terms of culture, its best to presentthe change to workers at the organization byusing words such as DE working environ-ment and DE workplace. Often culturehas a negative effect on employees.

Production


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T: +44 (0) 207 368 9300F: +44 (0) 207 368 9301E:[email protected] Dont forget to quote priority booking codeDEJADto receive the best possible discounts!

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PEOPLE:Effectively incorporate change andknowledge management into your integratedoperations for effective collaboration and optimisedoperations

PROCESSES:Improve decision making and boostoperational efficiency by effectively linking eachcomponent of your digital oilfield

TECHNOLOGY:Lower your OPEX and improveyour long term recovery rates by implementingadvanced strategies to digital oilfield technology anddata management

Knowledge Workshop:21st May 2009Advance Knowledge Management and its impact onenhanced Integrated OperationsTom Young, Chair Knoco Ltdand former founding member of theBP Knowledge Management Teamand PrincipleCoach of theBP Virtual Teamworking Project

Speakers include:

I-field Consultant,ChevronI-field Consultant,PIPCTechnology Director (IT&S),BPChief Information Systems Officer,OMV PakistanIT Consultant,Marathon OilPrinciple, Production Technologist,BG GROUPHead Subsea Surveillance,ShellKnowledge Management Director,RepsolChair,Knoco LtdFounding member,BP KnowledgeManagement TeamManager Geodata Trading,OLFCEO,PPDM AssociationResearch Scientist,SINTEFDirector,SillimaniteHead,Gurteen KnowledgeManaging Director,TroikaSupport Services Manager,Joint

Operations SAC & KGOC, Chevron

Dates:19th 20th May 2009Postconference workshops:21st May 2009Venue:Marcliffe, Aberdeen UK

Transforming E&P through integrating People, Processes & Technolog

Yesterday itwas about the future of

digital oilfields, today it is aboutenhancing their efficiency


26/28

Communications


Schlumberger Wireless and WiMAXcommunications in North American oilfields

Schlumberger has made an agreement withERF Wireless to be an exclusive reseller of its wireless data communication services for the oil and gas industry in North America.

This means that it will be offering the oiland gas industry 1.5Mbps data communica-tions using Wireless and WiMAX, in NorthAmerican oilfields, thus, enabling real-timedata collaboration between remote and fieldoperations. Oil operators are aspiring to im-

prove safety, environmental performancesand production while reducing costs. Mind-sets are therefore changing from a conven-tional operations mode to that of real-time op-erations to support those expectations. Thisrequires a complex combination of people,

processes, and technology to remotely moni-tor and analyze drilling data, update modelsin real time, collaborate among teams, and

provide expert consulting.ERF Wireless already claims to have the

largest wireless communications network

covering North American oil and gas opera-tions, and the service is growing quickly, so itmay soon cover entire basins.

The data communications is non-con-tended, which means that every single indi-vidual site is guaranteed to get the full1.5Mbps; there is also no limitation on theamount of data that can be transferred. Thisis something you do not normally get

#17 digital energy journal - march 2009

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