The Production Of Hydrocarbons From Conventional Resources

The worst started between 1878 and 1985 when solution salt miners started to drill in the Tully Valley brine field located in Onondaga County. Started by Solvay Process Company, it soon became the site of 162 wells. Many companies followed this lead using reckless extraction techniques including wild brining, and uncontrolled air padding to create interconnected multi-well caverns with large, unsupported roof spans (Sanford, 1996). Not unexpectedly the results of these practices paved way for multiple sinkholes widespread subsidence, and increased mudboil

The Salar de Uyuni salt flats are located in Daniel Campos Province Potosí, Bolivia, they have become Bolivia’s largest mineral resource. The resources that they are known for producing are salt, magnesium, potassium, and boron. The Salar are remnants of many lakes that use to occupy Bolivian Altiplano in the Late Pleistocene(Orris). Salar de Uyuni has become the world’s largest salt plan. The Salar serves as a major transport route across the Bolivian Altiplano and serves as major breeding ground for many species(Mason). The formation of Salar de Uyuni flats started from a large drainage system. Which then has to become an enclosed basin that does not drain to the sea and will wash away salt and arid climate where evaporation exceeds precition leaving behind salt(Orris). This has caused an extraordinary flatness to the entire Salar salt flats.

A risk to any drilling operation is the unplanned release of hydrocarbons to the surface. This condition results from formation pressure of the reservoir overcoming the drilling rig’s safety and control devices (which are a combination of the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling fluid, diverter systems, blowout preventers, etc.). Many factors can contribute to unplanned hydrocarbon escapes to the surface, but the vast majority of events are brought under control in a safe and efficient manner using practices established in driller training, specifically designed to

This report illustrates a geological review of a play within the South Brae oilfield and determines the potential of reservoirs within this area. It is hard to predict and provide ability for oil companies to license an oilfield before drilling therefore it is dependent upon several core sections available to investigate petrographically the northern North Sea. Cores and petrophysical data extracted from blocks 16/7a-A9, 16/7a-A17 and 16/7a-A21 related to licenses in block 16/07a found in the South Viking Graben area are provided and analysed in order to resolve whether exploration licenses should be purchased and the possible drilling of an exploration well.

In today’s society the issues of producing energy is becoming more and more scare which, constantly posses the question, “How will energy be obtained in order to sustain future generations?” Hydraulic fracturing, informally known as fracking is believed to be an effective alternative to provide us with the energy we need to fuel tomorrow. Hydraulic fracking was first used at Texas Stanolind Oil and Gas Cooperations in 1947. However, it was not until 1949 that The Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Cooperation was given a licensee to use hydraulic fracturing. Since then a combination of two advanced methods have been introduced and incorporated (4). These methods are slick-water hydraulic fracturing and precision drilling of wells. Nevertheless,

The process of the collection of an underground fluid would not be possible without the use of hydraulic fracturing. In the Shale reserves, located about 5,000 feet underground, suffer an extremely low permeability rate. Permeability is the measure of how well a fluid flows through an absorbent material at the depth, and within such nonporous rock, the ability of fluids to travel to the well is greatly limited. Fracturing increases the area of the fluid that is exposed to porous materials and thus greatly increases production. The method of fracturing utilizes a few key components which allow for an economical extraction of resources.

After the correct depth is reached, then a directional, or horizontal section is drilled to reach the oil or gas deposits. The fractures in the rock are formed from a process that consists of pumping a large amount of a fluid mixture into the rock formations at high pressures. The fluid is mostly made of water, a proppant (materials that keep the fractures open), and chemicals that help open the rock fractures further. Internal pressure pushes the fluid mixture back to the surface after the process is complete. The fluid that comes back to the surface is referred to as “flowback” or “produced water.” This waste fluid is usually “injected underground for disposal,” but in some cases it is treated with more chemicals and then discharged into water sources (“The Process of Hydraulic Fracturing”).

This report describes the basic principles of hydraulic fracturing pumps, and the instrumentation related to operate the process safely and successfully. Throughout the report, it will discuss different types of pumps used, the control systems needed for ease of operation. Also, the hydraulic fracturing process will be discussed.

Hydraulic fracturing is the process in which oil and gas is extracted from fractures found in wells that are hundreds of metres deep. In order to break these fractures extremely high volumes of water, chemicals and propellants are injected into the wells using large pipes. The propellants often consist of substances such sand, ceramic pellets or small incompressible particles which are used to hold open the fractures. (Earthworks, 2015) Due to the high amounts of internal pressure, the fluid is allowed to return to the surface containing naturally occurring materials such as brines, metals, radionuclides, and hydrocarbons. (Earthworks, 2015) Whilst an effective way of extracting these

Hydraulic Fracturing, also known as “fracking”, is a technique used to extract petroleum and natural gas from deep-rock formations. The process utilizes high-pressure ‘fracking fluid’ which is a mixture of water, sand and other propellants coupled with a thickening agent. After drilling a wellbore to a depth between six and ten thousand feet, the bore curves off horizontally. This horizontal portion of the bore generally runs for a few miles underground. Once the bore is created, it is lined with a multilayer cement and steel liner called surface casing which aids in containing the fluid and gasses. Perforating tools are then inserted down along the bore which sends a pulse wave through the shale formations using shaped charges. This detonation creates cracks through both the surface casing and targeted rock formations creating a connection between the wellbore and the reservoir. After the removal of the perforating gun, the hydraulic fracturing process can begin.

For the past few years, I directed my research towered development of mechanical systems and devices for oil and gas industries. The research involve modeling the downhole assembly and fabricating systems/setups and mechanisms to imitate deep drilling (high temperature and high pressure drilling

Petroleum engineers deal only with sedimentary basin rocks in oil and gas drilling, and these sedimentary rocks are types of rock that are formed by the deposition of material at the Earth’s surface and within bodies of water. Permeability in these rock is a measure of the ease with which fluid flows through a porous rock, and is a function of the degree of interconnection between the pores. Permeability can be separated into three parts: absolute, effective, and relative. Absolute is when pore spaces are 100% saturated with the same fluid, effective is when the permeability of a flowing phase that does not saturate 100% of the rock, and relative which is the ratio of effective permeability to absolute permeability of the same rock. When permeability is low the degree at which fluids can flow through the rock is low and therefore not a good means of producing hydrocarbons. Even if a reservoir has a high saturation, a low permeable rock will have no means of obtaining the porous medium. However this is not the only cause with saturations of rock. The irreducible water saturation also plays a part in the production of hydrocarbons. This is when water is held against the rock grains by surface tension and cannot be produced which is determined by grain structure, i.e. size and mixture.

It is a real challenge to optimize hydraulic fracturing in tight rock. This is because models are complex integrating geomechanics, fluid flow, fluidization of proppant, mass and heat transfer, and dynamics and take extensive computation run time. Also, experiments are difficult to conduct – often the rock pressures for tight formations is high, typically greater than 50 MPa and thus fracturing experiments to optimize the operation is very difficult since it is hard to use physical models with the initial state of stress on the rock (as is in the reservoir) and crack it in a lab especially at realistic length scales. The prediction of initiation and propagation of hydraulic fractures in a target formation is challenging since the physics of these processes are not fully resolved and there are many uncertain parameters that have to be determined for unconventional reservoirs. For example, not only are the initial state-of-stress uncertain in these formations but so too are the spatial distributions of geomechanical properties such as the Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. Thus, populating geospatial models

The production of oil from most commercially viable reservoirs is generally described by three stages termed natural recovery, supplementary recovery and enhanced recovery processes. The recovery processes are used in consecutive order and the shift between methods is usually governed by whether the subsequent production method is economic or not. The production of oil has a very wide range of efficiency, described as the recovery factor (RF). No matter if any single recovery process is efficient or not, the three terms are used by convention from the initial planning stage. For instance, it is also worth noting the use of enhanced methods without the use of supplementary methods may well still improve the overall recovery

The functions of drilling mud, and how their properties are modified to suit downhole conditions