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Dictionary of Oil and Gas Production Clifford Jones Whittles Publishing Published by Whittles Publishing, Dunbeath, Caithness KW6 6EG, Scotland, UK www.whittlespublishing.com © 2012 J.C. Jones ISBN 978-184995-047-3 Distributed in the US by CRC Press Cover photo: Øyvind Hagen/Statoil All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the publishers. The publisher and authors have used their best efforts in preparing this book, but assume no responsibility for any injury and/or damage to persons or property from the use or implementation of any methods, instructions, ideas or materials contained within this book. All operations should be undertaken in accordance with existing legislation and recognized trade practice. Whilst the information and advice in this book is believed to be true and accurate at the time of going to press, the authors and publisher accept no legal responsibility or liability for errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed and bound in England Contents Preface ………………………………………………… v Foreword ……………………………..………………… vii Dictionary of Oil and Gas Production …........………… 1 Postscript ………………………………………….… 281 Endnotes ……………………………………….….… 283 iii Dedicated to: Dr. Hyun-key Kim Hogarth A woman of erudition and humanity Preface This is the third in my series of dictionaries, following those on Energy and Fuels (co-authored by Nigel Russell) and Fire Protection Engineering. It is a satisfying experience for the compiler of a specialist dictionary to organise the information and to link the entries to provide a balanced coverage of value to a wide range of readers. Oil and natural gas are in historical terms quite recent: the inevitable benchmark date is the drilling of the Drake Well in Titusville PA in 1859. That was just a few years before King George V, grandfather of the present Queen, was born, so although the beginning of the oil industry is not within living memory it is within the range of oral tradition. Most of us know something about our families a couple of generations ago and the circumstances of their lives1. Two to three generations – a short enough interval in the sweep of history – have seen oil and gas develop from a new industry to one upon which every living soul is dependent and which has a very strong effect indeed on politics and world finance. Over thirty-five years ago I heard the journalist John Pilger say on the BBC: ‘A man can live without oil: he cannot live without food’. If for ‘A man’ we substitute ‘The world’s population’ (probably not a misrepresentation of what Pilger was saying) that statement might need reconsidering today. Who can deny that oil and natural gas have brought incalculable benefits to the world? In the pre-industrial era the same would have been said of agriculture and, as with any asset, abuse entails loss. The term ‘superannuation’ is now just about synonymous with ‘post-retirement income’, but the concept of superannuation goes deeper than that. In times long before the discovery of oil and gas when people depended on ‘the land’ for their livelihood a field was ‘superannuated’ when it was in need of lying fallow for one or more seasons to allow nutriment replenishment and prevent erosion. The dust bowls of the 1930s are a sad reminder of the effects of neglecting to apply ‘superannuation’ in that sense. I have gone into this detail of difficulties in the agricultural milieu because, over months of close study and evaluation of oil production in the 20th and early 21st Centuries, I have developed a deep conscious- v Dictionary of Oil and Gas Production ness that social responsibility has prevailed. I believe that any informed individual making a similar study could not but reach the same conclusion. This impression, encouraging though it is, is not in any way intended to be the thrust of this volume. It is simply that it has arisen in my own mind so often over the research and writing periods that I want to include it in this preface. Notwithstanding its being a ‘dictionary’, this volume does contain much close engineering reasoning and indeed some related calculations. I hope that students, professionals in the oil and gas industry and policymakers will benefit from it. I shall be delighted to receive feedback from readers. As always, my thanks go to Whittles Publishing. J.C. Jones, Aberdeen vi Foreword It is a pleasure to be able to write a foreword for another of Clifford Jones’ dictionaries, though the name dictionary does not fully describe the little gems of information and explanation which accompany each listing. Each profession has its own combination of jargon and ‘things everybody knows’ which can be very hard for the newcomer to pick up. This mini-encyclopaedia will, we are sure, be a great help. However, the oil and gas industry is particularly diverse, ranging from drilling to end use of fuels, so that even people in one part of the business will not be aware of some items in other areas. This book will also be of great help to experienced people wishing to broaden their knowledge or anticipating a move within the industry – an increasingly likely event in today’s flexible labour market and global pattern of industry. It is truly impressive how much information has been condensed into these pages: geological terms, information about oil and gas fields, equip- ment and even in many cases methods of calculation explained with an example. We may both claim some years of professional experience in different areas of the oil and gas industry, and were therefore pleased to find many things we did know, but slightly surprised at the amount we did not. We shall certainly make use of it in the future. Prof Vida N. Sharifi, CEng FInstE Dr Martin J. Pitt, CEng FIChemE Chemical & Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, UK vii A Abqaiq, crude oil stabilisation at This location in Saudi Arabia is the scene of the world’s largest plant for crude oil stabilisation, with a capacity of 7 million barrels a day. Off-gas from the stabilisation process is refined for use and ethane is totally separated from it. There is also hydrogen sulphide removal from the oil which, in the stabilised and sweetened state in which it emerges from the process, is taken to one of three refineries. Two of these are in Saudi Arabia and the other, a Bapco facility, is in Bahrain. Aceh In North Sumatra, Indonesia. There is abundant natural gas in the region but activity was, in the early 2000s, strongly affected by war there. It was also affected by the tsunamis in 2004. Gas from one block offshore Aceh supplies part of the requirement of the Arun LNG plant. The block is oper- ated by Mobil and has a pay of 335 m. There is a condensate refinery in Aceh, although this takes only a fraction of the total condensate, most of which is sold at a spot price. Across the industry, spot price sale of conden- sate has become prevalent only relatively recently and regional, e.g. Texan, rather than national or international spot prices apply. The author has no details of the basis of spot prices for condensate to hand, but one would expect intuititively that the density of the condensate either as produced or after stabilisation would be the determining factor, more probably the latter. (See also Gajah Baru Field; Sulawesi.) Acergy Condor Pipe laying vessel, built in 1982. Maintenance over the years has included SPS Overlay treatment in November 2006. In September 2010 it commenced a contract for pipe laying at water depths up to 2000 m offshore Brazil. Pipe laying vessels of the Acergy fleet have used bothS-Lay and J-Lay but neither will apply to the current activity of Acergy Condor as it is flexible pipe that is being laid. Such pipe obviously owes its flexibility to its structure, which comprises a non-metallic outer layer (‘sheath’) with spirally wound metal 1 Acid fracturing pumper spring wire along its inside surface. About 75% of such pipe internationally is made by Technip. It can be recovered and re-used, making its use attrac- tive in decommissioning, as has indeed been the case in the North Sea. It has been used at the Etame Field, which has a life expectancy of only a few years, and so its retrieval will be an option. Its flexibility means that a pipeline on the seabed and a riser to the production facility can be linked without a joint. (See also Casablanca Field; Conkouati; Lula Field.) Acid fracturing pumper Offshore acid stimulation of a well is done from a well intervention vessel. Onshore it is done from a pump mounted on a chassis and cab, and an example of such a device is the NOV Rolligon Acid Fracturing Pump unit. Its specifications are that its pumping power is 1350 b.h.p. to 1500 b.h.p. for acid treatment, and it can provide part of the power required for hydraulic fracture. Here the semantics issue apropos of ‘acid’ and ‘fracture’ explained in an endnote in this volume arises. The unit is known as an acid fracturing unit even when (as will be so for most of the time) it is only admitting acid for chemical treatment of the formation. One can understand why the unit under discussion cannot on its own perform a hydraulic fracture by comparing it with one expressly built for hydraulic fracture, with pumping fluid containing proppant.

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