What is the role of technology in producing oil and natural gas?

When many people think of the oil and natural gas industry, they hardly think “high-tech.” In fact, they probably think of an old-fashioned, dirty industry using technology from decades ago. The images they see on television or in the movies show oil gushing madly out of a well or a mechanical drilling rig with men in dirty clothes throwing a chain around drill pipe.

Most people do not realize how outdated these images are. The oil and gas industry cleaned up its act long ago, and in fact the industry is one of the few in the world where you never actually “see” the product—from the well to the refinery to the gas tank of your vehicle—petroleum products are safely and efficiently produced and transported in a totally enclosed environment.

Developing technologies

The ability to produce, refine, and transport millions of barrels of petroleum products on a daily basis in this manner would not be possible without the continuing development of technology. The oil and gas industry is very technology-oriented, and new technologies continue to be developed to allow for exploration and production in more remote and harsher environments. In addition, many of the technological advancements in the oil and gas industry have found applications in other high-tech fields, including the space program.

The development and application of advanced technology is vital to the industry’s task of finding and developing oil and gas resources along every step of the process. Oil and gas reservoirs are covered with thousands of feet of rock that makes it difficult to find the deposits. But the development of three-dimensional (3D) seismic, coupled with significant increases in computational power, allow geologists and geophysicists to convert raw seismic data (which is essentially an ultrasound of the earth) into fairly accurate, 3D visual models of the subsurface. Advances in wireless and satellite data transfer allow geologists to view and manipulate the seismic data from the comfort of their own office, which may be halfway around the world, or in huge theaters with curved screens that can be used to project images in three dimensions. Seafloor seismic acquisition techniques have also gained acceptance, which allows geologists to more accurately detect oil and gas below salt domes, whose presence made detection impossible by previous methods. Seafloor seismic and 3D techniques have enabled the industry to improve its success rate, meaning that reserves are found with fewer wells, less waste, and less surface disturbance.

Changes in the reservoirs

Seismic technology has further developed to include a fourth dimension—time. Time-lapse, or 4D, seismic acquires repeated seismic surveys over the same area of a hydrocarbon field in order to determine the changes occurring in the reservoir during hydrocarbon production so that the operator can make future production decisions. These snapshots of a reservoir over time also allow one to determine which direction oil is flowing, which allows for less invasive and more environmentally compatible drilling operations.

Overcoming challenges

New and better technology has also made it possible for the industry to economically develop large petroleum deposits offshore. Drilling oil and gas wells in thousands of feet of water adds significantly to the complexity, cost, and potential risks. However, technological innovations have enabled the industry to overcome the added challenges and drill wells that would have been impossible 10 years ago. For example, the industry achieved a drilling first in 2006 when a Gulf of Mexico well was drilled in 7,000 ft of water to a depth of more than 20,000 ft below the sea floor. [1]

Such wells are drilled from ships that use dynamic-positioning technology. A series of small thrusters, combined with global positioning system (GPS) technology, allow the drillship to remain essentially stable despite wind and water currents—shifting less than 50 ft (15.25 m) in any direction. This stability allows the ship to drill in very deep water and in most weather conditions. The technology also allows the ship to quickly and safely move out of an area that may be in the path of severe weather, such as a hurricane.

Offshore technology

Offshore platforms are very expensive to build, transport, and install. If every offshore field required a platform, many of them would be too costly to develop, so technology has evolved to place much of the equipment for producing the oil or gas on the seabed. New technology is even available to process and separate the oil, gas, and water streams on the seafloor, avoiding the need for a processing platform. All of this sub-sea technology can be monitored and controlled in real time from an onshore facility, and repairs and installations are conducted by underwater vehicles known as remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, that are operated by a worker on a nearby platform or vessel.

Getting the produced fluids from the seafloor to the shore requires an extensive network of pipelines and sub-sea boosting pumps, which have to pump the oil and gas many miles. This technology is essential for the Ormen Lange field development, which is Norway’s largest offshore gas field. The record-setting offshore project is being developed without any platforms. Instead it has 24 sub-sea wells in four seabed templates that will pump the gas to a processing facility on the west coast of Norway. From there, it is transported to the east coast of England via a 1,200-km long sub-sea export pipeline. [2]

See Onboard a High-Tech Oil Rig, Popular Mechanics, April 2008, for an article on how the ever-increasing fossil fuel demand has companies going farther and digging deeper for oil than ever before.

Reducing environmental effects

Advanced technology is making a difference in reducing the industry’s effect on the environment as well. For example, in remote regions of the Arctic, ice roads, and special drilling pads are installed for exploratory drilling during the winter months to minimize the disturbance to the environment and wildlife. Today’s Arctic developments use less than 40% of the space that was required to develop Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay field.

Another environmental boost comes from advances in drilling, which allow operators to drill not just vertically, but also horizontally, in any direction from one starting well. With this advance, drillers can place a well in the area where it will have the least possible environmental effect and still reach a reservoir that might be miles away laterally. By drilling several wells from a single location, the amount of land surface required to develop a field can be dramatically reduced. In fact, it is now possible to develop nearly 80 sq miles of area below the surface from a single two-acre site on the surface. [3] In addition, so-called “smart” drills have sensors and measurement devices on the drillstring near the drill bit that allow drillers to measure downhole conditions in real time and make changes to the drilling program on-the-fly.

Cleaning up

Technology programs are focusing on cleaning up the byproducts or aftereffects of oil and gas production as well. For example, synthetic-based drilling fluids have been developed that reduce toxicity, oil usage, and oily wastes that must be disposed. When offshore platforms have reached the end of their useful life they may be removed for recycling or appropriate disposal, or they may be relocated for beneficial use as artificial reefs. These artificial reefs expand valuable fish habitats in areas lacking natural reefs (Gulf of Mexico, Thailand, other areas).

The industry is examining ways to minimize its emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well. Carbon capture and sequestration techniques are being developed to capture the carbon dioxide emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels in power plants and pipe them to injection wells for storage underground or for use in enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations in fields with declining production.

Innovations in technology are expanding the depth horizons for exploration. Subsurface temperatures and pressures increase with depth, so that a depth is eventually reached that is beyond the capabilities of conventional equipment. But industry has worked diligently to develop equipment made from space-age titanium alloys that can withstand the high temperatures and high pressures (HT/HP) in very deep wells. The electronics needed to guide drilling operations and provide feedback on what is encountered downhole have been insulated to withstand HT/HP. As a result of these innovations, the industry now can develop fields with temperatures of 400°F (204°C) and pressures of 16,000 psi (11,000 N/cm2).

Extracting more oil and gas

While there is a familiar adage in the industry that “the easy oil is gone,” technology keeps advancing to extract more oil or gas out of each deposit, whether it is a conventional reservoir or otherwise. Newer stimulation technologies, treatment fluids, and enhanced recovery techniques enable the oil or gas to move more easily to producing wells. Hydraulic fracturing techniques create small cracks from the wellbore into the reservoir rock, which serve as a “highway” for the hydrocarbons to reach producing wells. Nonconventional oils, such as the large shale oil deposits in the United States or the tar sand deposits of Canada’s Athabasca tar sands and Venezuela’s Orinoco field, are benefiting from production technology advancements as well. Techniques like downhole steam injection lower the viscosity of these thick oil reserves, allowing them to more easily flow to producing wells.

Constantly learning

Technological innovation has been the hallmark of the petroleum industry from its earliest days. Petroleum engineers and geologists are constantly challenged to learn more about where oil and gas reserves are found, how to get the oil or gas out of the ground efficiently, and how to do all of it while minimizing environmental impacts.

As the most experienced engineers and geologists retire, the oil and gas industry will be looking for the next generation of highly skilled and motivated young professionals to move in and find ways to meet the world’s growing demand for energy in economical and environmentally sound ways. The oil and gas industry offers the next wave of professionals a challenging, fast-paced and high-tech environment in which to grow, both personally and professionally. An important part of SPE’s mission is to collect and spread the technical information that will help engineers uncover the next technological breakthroughs for continuing to produce the oil and gas that powers the world economy.

A presentation , courtesy of the American Petroleum Institute, discusses some of these technical advances and provides illustrations. These slides are based on posters that were displayed in the Russell Senate Office Building rotunda during February 2002.

[1] Chevron press release, “Chevron announces record setting well test at Jack,” 5 September 2006.
[2] Hydro’s Ormen Lange website, www.hydro.com/en/our_business/oil_energy/oil_gas/norwegian_fields/
ormen_lange.html
[3] Bisney, John. “Energy Options on the Road to Tomorrow,” API Insight, Spring 2007.