DOE Digest

Recovery Method for Alaskan North Slope Heavy Crude

Alaska's North Slope boasts a massive heavy oil resource, as much as 36 billion barrels of OOIP within the Ugnu, West Sak, and Schrader Bluff formations. These reservoirs lie tantalizingly in reach of existing infrastructure, but recovering them has proven daunting. At a depth of 3,000-3,500 feet, these formations' proximity to the subsurface permafrost renders the already low-gravity crudes extremely viscous. Low formation strength presents an additional hurdle to high recovery and productivity rates. North Slope operators thus far have focused on the less-viscous crudes in the West Sak and Schrader Bluff heavy-oil formations, where viscosities range from ~30 centipoise to ~3,000 centipoise. Combined original-oil-in-place volumes for these two formations total about 10-20 billion barrels.

There has been some success producing the less-viscous crudes in the West Sak and Schrader Bluff formations by injecting slugs of water alternating with gas (WAG). There are several gas streams available on the North Slope that contain natural gas liquids and carbon dioxide. Natural gas liquids have been used for years as part of a miscible gas EOR effort at Prudhoe Bay. DOE-funded a three-year research project at the University of Houston to develop tools (compositional model, new relative permeability model, reservoir simulator, etc.) for modeling the optimum WAG flood design for these shallow-sand viscous oil reservoirs. In their final project report, researchers also noted that horizontal wells offered great potential for increasing productivity. Potential for increased productivity with electromagnetic heating was also noted.

For more information see DOE's Tech Line www.fe.doe.gov/news/
techlines/2005/tl_alaska_oil.
html.

Intelliserv's High Speed Drill String Telemetry Network Completes 5th Test Well

Working for BP America Inc. (BP), an IntelliServ network consisting of five-inch telemetry drill pipe (IntelliPipe) and associated telemetry drill string components, including heavyweight drill pipe, drill collars, roller-reamers and drilling jars, was used to drill from surface to a total depth of more than 13,000 feet. The network successfully provided high-speed, real-time telemetry services throughout the drilling program, with live data sent via satellite to engineers in Provo and Houston.

 "The IntelliServ network performed extremely well during the latest field trial, providing a customer data rate of 66,000 bits per second. It also

demonstrated reliability comparable  to mud pulse telemetry, with a mean-time between failure of over 800 hours," stated Michael Reeves, IntelliServ. Reeves went on to indicate that the same telemetry tubulars had been used to drill four previous test wells and the IntelliServ network has now accumulated over 3,000 operating hours in extremely harsh conditions, including very high-shock air drilling.

To date, IntelliServ tubulars have been used to drill more than 50,000 feet of hole for BP, demonstrating handling characteristics and mechanical reliability equal to Grant Prideco premium drilling tubulars. An upgrade enabling customer data rates of one million bits per second has been pilot tested and will be implemented later this year.

Excerpted from email alert by New Technology magazine (www.ntm.
nickles.com/).

Newfield Increases Monument Butte Oil Production

Newfield Exploration Co. estimates more than 1 billion bbl of oil is in place in Utah's Monument Butte oil and gas field in the northern Uinta basin. Newfield purchased their Monument Butte interests in Aug 2004 from Inland Resources. Since then, Newfield estimates reserves are up 16% and production averages 1,200 bopd, up 12%. Projections with an active drilling program (175 wells in 2005) are for production to increase to 10,500 bopd by yearend. That is a far step up from 300 bopd when Lomax Petroleum's DOE Class 1 waterflood demonstration project in the Monument Butte Unit started in 1992. Work in the DOE project identified several technological keys to successful waterflooding of this low permeability, high heterogeneity reservoir containing high paraffin oil.

Excerpted from "Newfield Lifts Utah Monument Butte Oil Flow, "Oil and Gas Journal, Apr. 4, 2005, p. 44. See also (1) Slide 7, Newfield presentation at IPAA Conference in April 2005 (www.newfld.com/pdf/
IPAAConfApril2005.pdf) and (2) DOE's fact sheet on early work as Class I Demonstration Project (www.netl.doe.gov/scngo/Petro
leum/publications/projfact
sheets/E&P/Inland04.pdf).

Varied Technologies Reported in Latest GasTIPS Issue

• Enhancing Microbial Gas from Unconventional Reservoirs

• High Temperature Electronics, One Key to Deep Gas Resources

• Enhanced Wellbore Stabilization and Reservoir Productivity with Aphron Drilling

• Fluid Technology

• Fiber Laser Offers Fast Track to Clean Perforations

• Safety Net Royalty Relief Analysis of Natural Gas and Oil Production and Revenues

• Regulatory Considerations in the Management of Produced Water, A U.S. Perspective

• Volume-Optimized Compressed Natural Gas

Articles in Vol. 11, No. 2 accessible online at www.netl.
doe.gov/scngo/Reference%20Shelf/GasTIPS/GasTIPS.
html.  GasTIPS is a publication of Gas Technology Institute, U.S. DOE and Hart Energy Publishing, LP.

Fuzzy Exploration Tool Advances Further

In a DOE-supported project the Reservoir Evaluation and Advanced Computational Techniques (REACT) group at New Mexico Tech's Petroleum Recovery Research Center developed a Fuzzy Exploration Expert (FEE) tool, relying on computer databases information and digital maps developed by neural networks to mine and use a wide variety of information and "fuzzy logic" to provide realistic estimates of risk of drilling and workover opportunities. The first system developed for the Brushy Canyon in the Delaware Basin proved reliable and a second system was developed for Siluro Devonian Carbonates in the Permian Basin. It too proved successful. These two systems were developed using knowledge gained from interviewing experts with experience in these plays.

REACT is now working to build similar systems for more plays in the Permian Basin. Input from experienced explorationists about exploration techniques in different Permian Basin plays is being sought. When appropriately honed through sequential questionnaire techniques (Delphi method), this feedback will form the knowledge foundation for FEE application in these additional plays. The customizable system will also allow users to further customize it by modifying, adding or removing rules quickly and easily.

Information on the FEE tool concept is available online at http://baervan.nmt.edu/research
_groups/REACT/expert/expert
main.html. Companies wanting early access to project software and results are encouraged to contact REACT's Robert Balch (ph 505-835-5305, balch@prrc.
nmt.edu) about joining the Consortium.