The Next 50 Years is the strap-line of this year’s SPE Offshore Europe— underpinning those five decades will be technology, says BP’s North Sea regional president. Elaine Maslin reports.
This year SPE Offshore Europe is celebrating its 40th anniversary by looking forward to a prospect few in the early days of the North Sea’s offshore industry would have predicted.
More than four decades after the first oil was produced from the basin, the industry event is looking forward to The Next 50 Years, of both production and the supply chain.
Key to the past 40 years, and even more so for the next five decades, is the development and use of technology.
The challenges facing the industry in this mature basin are rising costs and declining production rates.
According to industry body Oil & Gas UK, North Sea operational expenditure rose 10% for the second year running in 2012, to £7.7billion, with a further rise of £800million in 2013.
The increases are being driven by general pressure on costs and increased spending on asset integrity, as installations near or pass the end of their design lives.
Production rates have dropped sharply, last year falling 18%, on the UK Continental Shelf.
Ensuring the long term future of the North Sea, in the UK and Norway, will require technology and collaboration, says BP North Sea regional president Trevor Garlick, who is chairing a keynote session during Offshore Europe.
The session, The Technology Imperative – collaborating today to realize the next 50 years of North Sea potential, will look at the role technology has played in the development of the North Sea to date, and the role it will play in accessing and recovering the remaining reserves in the future.
“The big challenge for the industry is to arrest the decline we have seen,” Garlick says. “One of the ways we can do this is to recover more from our assets. We estimate average recovery rates from North Sea reservoirs to be around 40%, meaning we leave more in the ground than we recover; I want this to change. Technology has a vital role in helping ensure we do this.”
BP North Sea is focusing on developing ways to drill and complete wells at a lower cost, improving plant reliability and asset integrity and enhanced oil recovery.
The UK industry as a whole has similar goals. According to a survey last year by the country’s government Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the main areas the industry wants to focus on are: seismic and reservoir characterization; enhanced oil recovery (EOR)/production optimization; asset integrity/life extension and decommissioning; and well construction and drilling.
“A key priority is to obtain better images of the reservoir,” Garlick says. “Our own seismic technology strategy is three-fold.”
BP is using wide azimuth high density OBC (ocean bottom cable) acquisition to identify additional targets in hub areas, including on Farragon, Clair, Magnus and ETAP, all in the UK North Sea.
4D seismic reservoir monitoring, through repeat towed-streamer acquisitions or permanent seabed systems, is being used on the Foinaven-Loyal- Schiehallion cluster, west of Shetland, ETAP, and Valhall and Ula, offshore Norway, to help increase recovery.
Making frequent 4D repeat surveys possible at reduced cost, with high data quality and reduced HSE risk, is still a challenge, he says.
“Ideally we would like to have permanent sources developed to have a fully integrated seismic monitoring system on the sea bed,” Garlick says. “There are down-hole tools available, but they are not yet proven in a 4D permanent reservoir monitoring context.
“A permanent source would enable us to monitor fluid movement and effects of EOR as and when needed, without having to rely on mobilizing a dedicated source vessel and the operational risk this brings.”
Improved imaging helps, but seeing the reservoir better is just the start, Garlick says. “We need to be able to increase the amount we can displace from the rock structure.”
BP is working on miscible water/ gas (WAG) schemes at Magnus and Ula and will deploy low salinity water flooding on the Clair development. On the Schiehallion redevelopment, BP is planning to deploy polymer flood. However, Garlick says: “For a mature basin the UK has relatively few EOR schemes either in production or in development.”
This is because of the cost of supplying suitable injectant, complexities around retrofitting equipment on existing facilities, and economics—projects providing incremental increases in production but with high up front capital cost outset or expensive operating costs.
Garlick says there could also be improvements in drilling. This year BP installed its longest ever 9 5/8 in. casing string in the UK sector at 6600m long, from the Magnus platform, using ERD (extended reach drilling) technology.
The project involved real-time monitoring of trends to inform decision making; incorporation of lessons learned from offset ERD wells; use of friction reduction technology and increased focus on drilling string components to minimize failure.
But there are further opportunities for improvement, in particular in managed pressure drilling; reliable cement evaluation; and subsea BOP reliability, Garlick says.
To achieve it all, collaboration and the use of technology is key, he says.
BP is sponsoring a PhD on how improved paint technologies can protect offshore infrastructure. Last year it announced a US$100million, 10-year partnership with the University of Manchester to improve materials management.
BP chief scientist Professor Ellen Williams, who will be on the keynote session panel, says collaboration with universities will also help to unlock future oil and gas reserves.
Prof Williams’ own research background is in the field of nanoscience. One of the last materials she worked on, before joining BP in 2010, was the ultimate thin film, graphene, which at just one atom thick has properties with potential applications in chemistry, coatings and electronics.
She says collaboration with universities is beneficial for both parties. “BP brings much needed funding. But as well as funding, BP brings real-world problems for universities to grapple with, which gives them a window on new directions and new applications in which they can shape their research.”
“There is lots of potential to increase the recovery of oil from the UKCS— there is no shortage of the key ingredient,” Garlick adds.
“The issue is converting remaining oil in to commercial reality before the infrastructure [platforms and pipelines] expires.” OE
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