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Shell - pushing the frontiers of technology Finding oil and gas information online Electromagnetic surveys - will they hit the mainstream? Synthetic seismic - and November / December 2008 Issue 15 how it can help Associate Member ™ www.ipres.com 0008 • Field Development Resource Management & Reporting System Well Planning Production forecasting & aggregation Built on our extensive experience on challenging consultancy projects around the world, we have developed our state-of-the-art software tools that are used in relevant projects or sold on a stand-alone basis. Contents Leader Shell - at the forefront of technology Washing oil out of rock with soap (surfactants), drilling wells the same diameter from surface to total depth, and getting light fractions of heavy oil to the surface and leaving the rest behind – these are just some of the technologies under development at Shell’s research and development labs in Rijswijk, Netherlands. We spoke to Jan van der Eijk, group chief technology officer of Shell, and Matthias Bichsel, EVP, Development and Technology, to find November/December 2008 Issue 15 out more 2 Digital Earth – helps you find online oil and gas information Digital Energy Journal Digital Earth, a company founded by two ex-IHS Energy executives and a number of early 213 Marsh Wall, London, E14 9FJ, UK internet pioneers, has a bold business plan – creating an online portal for oil and gas www.digitalenergyjournal.com information which is easy to search, a basic version of which will be openly available to the Tel +44 (0)207 510 4935 general public 10 Fax +44 (0)207 510 2344 Editor Karl Jeffery Exploration and drilling [email protected] Sperry Drilling – MWD at 230 degrees C Technical editor Sperry Drilling Services, a brand of Halliburton’s Drilling and Keith Forward Evaluation Division, has started a two year project in [email protected] collaboration with TOTAL to develop measurement while Subscriptions drilling (MWD) tools which can record and transmit data at temperatures of up to 230 degrees C, running for 14 days Karl Jeffery continuously [email protected] 14 Advertising and sponsorship Electromagnetic surveys - going mainstream? Alec Egan Electromagnetic survey techniques can do a great deal to support seismic in helping find oil Tel +44 (0)203 510 6548 and gas. We asked Chris Gulberg of electromagnetic survey specialist EMGS how business is [email protected] growing 15 Which acreage should you pursue? Digital Energy Journal is a magazine for people Oil companies might be better thinking in terms of which play to enter, or which acreage to pursue, rather than specifically which prospect to drill. UK company Exprodat has developed in the upstream oil and gas industry who would software to help them do that. By Gareth Smith, managing director of Exprodat like to keep up to date with the latest industry 17 IT and communications technology, services, New 3D reservoir modelling and well path planning software – on sale for opinion, practise and lessons learned. first time 3D interpretation and well path planning software, developed by TerraSpark Geosciences® Each issue of Digital Energy Journal print maga- through its consortia funded by Anadarko, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ENI, zine is mailed to 2,000 oil and gas executives, ExxonMobil, Shell and Paradigm Geophysical, is now available for sale for the first time under with a further 500-1000 copies distributed at the name Insight EartTM 19 trade shows, as well as being downloaded ap- prox 2,000 times as pdf. IPRES – a suite of risk management tools Norwegian software company IPRES has bundled its risk and resource management software tools into a single suite 21 Subscriptions: £195 a year for 6 issues. To sub- scribe, please contact Karl Jeffery on jeffery@d- Opportunities with synthetic seismic for reducing seismic imaging risk e-j.com. Alternatively you can subscribe online Faster algorithms mean that it gets much easier to generate synthetic seismic data, which is a at www.d-e-j.com model of what you think seismic will look like.This can lead to enormous improvements in what can be done with seismic data. We interviewed Tierra Geophysical’s chief scientist Dr. Christof Stork 24 Front cover: Shell’s 250 ton outdoor drill rig, used to test well Oil and gas production construction techniques, new Scanning plant by laser drilling techniques Wouldn’t it be great if you could be sure that the new piece of equipment being delivered and smart well will fit your existing plant exactly, so you know you won’t have to do rework on site, or send it technologies in back, which can all involve increases in cost and disruptions to schedule? US company field conditions, as Quantapoint can help 32 well as for training staff on new Global Talent – a new model for recruitment technologies. (see Global Energy Talent, based in India and the UK, is a new talent management consultancy for page 6). the energy industry, which aims to go a lot further than traditional consultancies in developing long term relationships with people, employers and colleges, and use the latest IT Printed by Printo, spol. s tools to help industry professionals connect 36 r.o., 708 00 Ostrava-Poruba, Czech Republic. www.printo.cz November/December 2008 - digital energy journal 1 Leader - Shell Shell - at the forefront of technology Washing oil out of rock with soap (surfactants), drilling wells the same diameter from surface to total depth, and getting light fractions of heavy oil to the surface and leaving the rest behind – these are just some of the technologies under development at Shell’s research and development labs in Rijswijk, Netherlands. We spoke to Jan van der Eijk, group chief technology officer of Shell, and Matthias Bichsel, EVP, Development and Technology, to find out more. Shell's research lab in Rijswijk, Netherlands, A good example are the experiments Biographies was where the polycrystalline diamond com- were we expose rock and fluid samples to pact (PDC) drillbit was developed, along high pressure and high temperature steam to Dr Matthias Bichsel with swellable elastomer seals and the first simulate the conditions when exploiting a is executive expandable tubulars – both technologies are heavy oil reservoir through steam injection. vice presi- now used in oilfields all over the world. This allows us for example to study the ef- dent, develop- Shell has long taken a lead in technolo- fect the steam has on rock porosity and fluid ment and gy development – part of the company was mobility. technology originally founded after it built the first ded- Jan van der Eijk, chief technology offi- with Shell. He icated oil tanker in 1892, and was the first to cer of Shell, distils the most influential de- is responsible do 2D and 3D seismic, and the first to trans- velopments happening in science today to for delivering port LNG. ‘bio, info, and nano’ – and by ‘info’, he reserves and So it’s not surprising that there are means improved connectivity and high per- production plenty of new exciting technologies under- formance computing. from new up- way. And in today's energy era, technology In exploration and production, one of stream proj- is becoming more and more important. the biggest areas is improving oil recovery, ects, and pro- Shell proudly quotes figures from the he says - from the current average of 30-40 viding tech- Matthias Bichsel, executive UK's Financial Times, saying that the com- per cent to 60 per cent and above. nology appli- vice president, development and pany spends more on research and develop- On the gas side, Shell wants to do more cations and technology ment than other oil majors - $1.2bn last year, to provide gas services directly to consumers research compared to $0.9bn at Petrobras, the num- – so it offers the full chain, from field to the through ber two; $0.8bn at ExxonMobil and Total; house. Shell’s upstream technology organisation. $0.75bn at Schlumberger; and $0.47bn at BP. “We want to create a value stream, in- He has a Phd in earth sciences from the Chevron, StatoilHydro, ENI and Cono- stead of just developing a reservoir,” says University of Basel, Switzerland, and coPhillips spent less, according to the data. Matthias Bichsel, EVP, production develop- worked for Shell on exploration in The $1.2bn spent on research and develop- ment and technology. “Not many companies Bangladesh, Oman, Canada, Indonesia ment doesn’t include all the investment in can offer that.” and the Netherlands, also taking a role as demonstration projects or funding in some Shell sees its expertise and ownership managing director for Shell Deepwater commercial energy projects such as wind of technology as an important differentiator, Services in Houston in 1999, and execu- As well as gradually building its in- and it wants to leverage what it calls the tive vice president exploration from 2002 house research capability, Shell is working ‘technology plays’ – oil and gas fields which to 2006. more and more with other organisations, can only be accessed with advanced technol- such as start-up companies, engineering ogy. “All our development has a strong tech- Dr Jan van der Eijk companies and universities, to develop new nology component,” says Dr Bichsel. was appointed technologies. “Shell’s strategy is to grow by differen- Shell Group Important areas of oil and gas research tiation, which we seek mainly in technolo- chief technol- include finding ways to treat contaminated gy,” says Dr van der Eijk. “We want to have ogy officer in gas, managing heavy oil, improving drilling, something to offer that no-one else can of- May 2006. He enhanced oil recovery and improving smart fer.