Q\IL INDUSTRY CENTEN-NlrAL;

One Hundred Years of Progress in Petroleum Production Engineering

HARRY H. POWER THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS Downloaded from http://onepetro.org/JPT/article-pdf/11/01/11/2236915/spe-1192-g.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 MEMBER AIME AUSTIN, TEX.

Comparison of petroleum production engineering prac­ ence by geologists and producers until its revival 20 years tices in the United States throughout the past century later by 1. C. White. Oil found in non-anticlinal areas shows: (1) the profession has been represented ipso facto served to discredit the first proposed theory. Hence, few ge­ from the beginning, and (2) recogniti~n as a separate and ologists were employed by the producers prior to 1900. distinct engineering profession has occurred only during In the preface of Carll's publication (1880) J. P. Les­ the last half of the 100-year history. ley remarks significantly: "They (the producers) bring a The coal-oil industry was already of sizeable extent in handful of sand to the geologist and expect him to declare 1859, and industrial and domestic needs were well estab­ ... what rock it comes from, how much oil that rock prob­ lished for illuminating oils and lubricants. ably holds, and how fast the oil from it will probably flow Although commercial incentives are credited with the or be pumped". Continuing on this subject, Carll com­ initiation of the petroleum industry, "Colonel" E. L. Drake ments: "He (the geologist) is left to grope in the dark ... has been recognized for his application of salt-well drilling forced to calculate and work out deductions as best he techniques to the recovery of oil. Development, first con­ can from data ... culled from a mass of contradictions fined to Pennsylvania, s!,read to at least four other states and unsatisfactory statements ..." With reference to well before the close of 1860. The demand for coml)etent labor, records he comments on the lack of interest in the advance­ trained "on the job" increased as migration proceeded to ment of science and states that of the wells driIIed there new areas of flush production. were no special records kept "of one in a hundred, and but a few of those that have been preserved can be ob­ tained in a shape to be of any use to the Survey." Early Exploration Eventually a special assistant was authorized "whose sole When embryo development at Bradford was found as a duty should be to secure some carefully kept and com­ direct continuation of the Clarion County oil trend, transit plete well records for our use". lines served as "conclusive proof that all the lands through Thus, the seeds of petroleum production engineering which that line passed were 'on the oil belt!'''. This pro­ were planted, which, nourished by the combined efforts of cedure was criticized severely by John F. Carll, often rec­ industry and technology, have blossomed as the greatly ad­ vanced recovery methods of today. ognized as the first petroleum production engineer in the United States. His vision of the real importance of geol­ Development ogy and reservoir performance predicted present day theories and techniques with remarkable clarity. Early Practices Of importance to ex!,loration, however, were the oil, gas The spring-pole, devised by the early Chinese drillers, and water seepages; and asphaltic, paraffinic and bitumi­ was used widely in the saIt-brine industry as early as 1806 and led to the cable tool system made famous by Drake. nous deposits closely associated with the oil and gas areas His derrick of pine poles, river-boat steam engine, locally developed initially. forged rig irons and manually operated bull wheels were In addition to topographic features and surface indica­ component parts of an outfit designed to complete the dis­ tions, "creekology" prevailed for a short time, followed covery well to a depth of 69.5 ft. by a general resort to sorcery and divining rods. The early operators knew little about casing. Wells were However, early drilling activities served to provide con­ drilled "wet" with no attempts to shut out surface waters. siderable knowledge of geologic structures for the accumu­ Three and one-quarter in. cast-iron casing was first intro­ lation of oil and natural gas. The anticlinal theory, as first duced in 1865. With a seed bag at its lower end it extended below the water strata, permitting the insertion and with­ developed by T. Sterry Hunt in 1861, was not given cred- drawal of the tubing at will without the admission of water. Later, water shut-off was effected by the use of such Manuscript received in Society of Petroleum Engineers office Dec. 1. 1958. materials as chopped rope, cottonseed hulls and lead wool. SPE 1192-G JANUARY, 1959 11 These procedures led to the development of mechanical Early oil production from pumping wells was stored in packers of burlap or rubber as they are known today. buried tanks made of wooden planks. Hand opera,ted pitcher The dump bailer, used originally for the placement of pumps were used to pump the oil from the underground cement in wells, led to the use of cement shoes, cementing tanks'into wooden barrels used in transportation. Evapora­ plugs, mechanical mixing, pressure squeezing and multi­ ion losses and dissipation of gas and reservoir energy by stage procedures. Special cements, aided by quick-setting unregulated production were usual. and retarding agents have been developed to meet all con­ At the turn of the present century increased responsi­ ditions imposed in modern drilling practice. bility was placed on trained engineers for the solution of Oil well "blasting" or shooting, very effective in 1865, the difficult production problems. As early as 1908, engi­ became a widespread practice in early production engi­ neers in California made studies of underground conditions neering. in efforts to protect oil sands from water intrusion and otherwise improve production technology. With the organi­ Progress in Drilling zation of the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1910, progress in The rotary method, introduced early in the present cen­ production engineering accelerated rapidly. tury, has effectively displaced cable tools as a more efficient The use of advanced engineering practices spread grad­ means for drilling oil wells. Used first by Capt. Anthony ually to oil producing regions in California, Texas, Okla­ F. Lucas in the search for oil at Spindle top in 1901, the homa and elsewhere, with higher recoveries achieved. Of method had been used previously for drilling artesian water special significance was the recognition of the importance wells as early as 1882. of natural gas in oil recovery. Maximum efficiency was Drilling depths have increased from 69.5 ft in 1859 to sought by harnessing and controlling the forces under­ Downloaded from http://onepetro.org/JPT/article-pdf/11/01/11/2236915/spe-1192-g.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 22,919 ft as reported recently for the Phillips EE-1 well ground to extend greatly the productive life of many fields near Ft. Stockton, Tex. Uncertainties of deeper drilling and likewise to increase their ultimate recovery. with respect to stresses, strength of materials, conditions of pressure and temperature, state of the reservoir fluids and Reservoir Engineering nature and compaction of the reservoir rocks have been The increased interest in underground problems, gen­ discussed at various times in the past. Predictions have erally classified under the popular title of "reservoir engi­ been made with respect to the physical and economic limi­ neering," during the past 25 years has led to the applica­ tations imposed by such unprecedented engineering enter­ tion of scientific principles which rival in profundity the prise. advancements in engineering generally. Rapid advance­ In 1936 K. C. Heald wrote, "Equipment is available that ments have been made in geological, electrical, radioactive is strong enough to permit rotary drilling to a depth of and other types of logging. The principles of hydrodynamics, 15,000 ft and cable tool drilling to even greater depths". thermodynamics and chemistry have been used to solve res­ At that time casing had been set to depths of 10,301 ft ervoir problems involving steady-state and unsteady-state and 10,815 ft in Texas and California. Despite the skeptics flow. Advanced mathematical concepts have not only served this prediction was soon justified. as principal tools of oetroleum production research, but are Exploration to depths of 50,000 ft by the year 1975 in being used in the solution of unusually complicated reser­ search of a future oil supply is not considered fantastic, voir problems involving multi-phase flow of oil, gas and but only a question of timing. The need for detailed ge­ water in heterogeneous porous media. The prediction of ological and engineering examination and economy are em­ reservoir and inter-reservoir performance has thereby dem­ phasized when the 28 bbl per foot of hole drilled in 1937- onstrated conclusively the vital ties existing between tech­ 41 are compared with the drastically decreased amount of nology and management. 13 bbl achieved in 1956. Advances in Production Engineering Casing must be designed to withstand a tensile strength Rapid strides in the application of various production of up to 210,000 psi. Plastic materials, steel valves, well­ methods have been made during the past 30 years. From head connections, derricks, hoisting equipment, pumps, bits the wooden sucker rod pumping of early days to the mod­ and power units must be designed accordingly. Drilling ern methods of flow and artificial lift involves a history of muds al}d cements add their quota to the physical and op­ scientific accomplishment which rivals that found in de­ erational problems expected under reservoir pressures and 0 velopment and reservoir exploitation. The well-known prob­ temperatures of up to 23,250 psi and 875 F, respectively. lems of oil production, including formation fracturing, have Technical and mechanical operations need to be so per­ been solved repeatedly by the experienced petroleum pro­ fected that deeper drilling will be performed at tolerable duction engineer. Looking towards the future, his purpose costs. is to perfect new methods for the economical production of Yet the formidable barriers continue to fall before the oil and gas. Such concepts as "sonic pumping" and "auto­ onslaught of modern drilling technology. The turbo-drill matic custody transfer" portend the great advancements and the electro-drill in their modern forms, the low fre­ predicted for production practice of the not far distant quency percussion hard rock drill, the vibratory drill and future. the high-speed low-torque drilling device are some of the Thus, the diverse features characteristic of mechanical, methods under close scrutiny to do a more efficient and chemical and petroleum production engineering have all economical job than the rotary drill of the present. More merged in a profession usually designated in the last-men­ intensive technical training in drilling activities to meet the tioned category. new challenges ahead is obvious. Improved Recovery Exploitation With respect to increased recovery by fluid injection, Carll believed "that some system might be devised by which Carll not only suggested a method for estimating the water could be let down through certain shafts and the oil amounts of oil in place and the capacity to produce from forced towards certain other shafts .... and thus the rocks a porous sandstone, but defined a "pool" and proposed be completely voided of oil and left full of water". He also through a "pop-bottle" analogy a mechanism for flow in outlined in some detail the reservoir and other requirements oil and gas reservoirs. of a successful water flood.

12 JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY Throughout the early history of water floods in Pennsyl­ the technique and practice of finding and producing pe­ vania and the ever-increasing application of water injec­ troleum". Medals have been awarded to 15 distinguished tion, gas injection, miscible fluid injection, application of engineers and geologists whose names undoubtedly will be heat underground and combination processes, recoveries inscribed on the same roll with Col. E. L. Drake, T. Sterry have been increased continuously to percentages beyond Hunt, John F. Carll, I. C. White, J. F. Lesley and others the imagination of the original operators in the Bradford in the Petroleum Hall of Fame. The John F. Carll Award area. was established in 1957 and has been presented twice by the SPE. Conservation Supplementing these activities of AIME have been those The losses sustained in the completion and exploitation of the American Petroleum Institute, the American As­ of oil and gas wells since 1859 has led to the modern con­ sociation of Petroleum Geologists and the American Chem­ trol of high reservoir pressures and the abandonment of ical Society. such practices as "blowing a well into oil" and the wanton From the date of first instruction in petroleum engi­ dissipation of gas above ground. neering at the U. of Pittsburgh in 1912, the profession has The prevention of waste, the development of optimum been represented at key institutions of higher learning in rates as a yardstick for the restriction and proration of the United States, with an ever-increasing extension to for­ production, "unit operation" and associated benefits have eign technical schools and universities. The changes in cur­ been fields for active professional participation of petro­ ricular content from descriptive to quantitative approaches leum production engineers during the past 30 years. during the past 20 years have been well described in the

literature. The characterizing features of the profession Downloaded from http://onepetro.org/JPT/article-pdf/11/01/11/2236915/spe-1192-g.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021 Professional Societies have been delineated. The evolution of petroleum production engineering dur­ The role of the American Institute of Mining, Metallur­ ing the past century indicates that the techmcal complexi­ gical, and Petroleum Engineers constitutes a keystone in ties of the future wilI be recognized and solved with dis­ petroleum production engineering history. Started in 1913 patch. *** as Capt. Anthony F .• Lucas' AIME Committee on Petro­ leum and Gas, the present Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME grew to the Petroleum Div., then to the Petro­ HARRY H. POWER is a professor leum Branch before achieving the status of a constituent and graduate advisor for the Dept. society of AIME. From the original committee of 13 of Petroleum Engineering at the U. headed by Capt. Lucas, the Society of Petroleum Engineers of Texas. He holds degrees from now has grown to a membership of more than 13,000 and Washington State College, U. of is the largest society in AIME. Pittsburgh and the U. of California. Principally through the organizational efforts and pub­ His engineering apprenticeship was lications of the early petroleum engineering groups in served with Cities Service Oil Co. AIME, the aims and activities of the profession have been and later he became chief produc­ conceived, developed and disseminated to oil areas world­ tion engineer with Gulf Oil Corp. wide. in Oklahoma. In 1936 he was made In 1936 the Institute established the Anthony F. Lucas chairman and professor of petroleum engineering at the Gold Medal "for distinguished achievement in improving U. of Texas.

JANUARY, 1959 13