The presence of coal deposits in Louisiana has long been documented, but it has only recently been determined to be of higher rank than the lignite surface mined in Northern Louisiana. Tests have shown that deeper and to the south the coal is sub-bituminous, biogenic and contains significant gas. There are three Wilcox seams 1,850 to 3,200 feet. In 2002 several producing companies drilled test wells and since then Mark V has established the first production units in Louisiana—three 5,000 acre units in Caldwell Parish. In the unitization hearings, an analogy was drawn to the Powder River deposits of the same age, and it was noted that the gas content in Louisiana is even greater. A company spokesman for Mark V indicated three wells have been drilled and are on production and a fourth will be connected soon. The wells are in the dewatering stage, so it has not been determined what gas rates will ultimately be achieved.

ConocoPhillips has had a multi-rig continuous development program ongoing in the Lobo Field in South Texas since 1997. This development program will ultimately require 900 wells over a six-year period. The field is highly faulted and most of the Non-Productive Time is due to trouble time from lost circulation (38%) and stuck pipe (34 - 37%), in some cases so severe that wells have been abandoned. To mitigate those problems, the decision was made to initiate a five-well pilot program utilizing Casing While Drilling (CWD). The pilot was successful and the program expanded to 22 wells. In this expanded program, lost circulation time accounted for a much improved 0.4%.

increase the potential for lost circulation. It was found, however, that the side-load forces generated by CWD tend to pulverize the cuttings as they travel up the annulus and these smaller particles act to form a more impermeable mud cake than with conventional drilling, particularly in the intermediate section where most of the trouble occurs. Due to this "smear effect," the CWD in Lobo field shows that the higher effective circulating density can be used positively for downhole pressure management and lost circulation. CWD has become the drilling technology of choice for known trouble locations in the area.

Hart's E&P presented 14 meritorious awards for Engineering Innovation at the recent Offshore Technology Conference in Houston. The awards were for the "best of the best" of many nominees in exploration, production, construction and service areas. Among others, the awards included:

Exploration, Individual Equipment: Schlumberger's Quicksilver Probe, which enables the operator to perform openhole formation analysis quicker and results in contamination levels below 3% versus up to 40% with current technology.

Subsurface Characterization: Halliburton's Chi Modeling System generates a synthetic "triple-combo" (resistivity, neutron porosity and density) openhole logs from cased-hole pulsed neutron capture logs, eliminating the necessity and risk of openhole logs with equal accuracy.

Studies performing post audits of unsuccessful applications of reservoir conformance techniques (generally unwanted water shut-off, but can be gas) indicate that 75 to 80% of the time, the problem stems from not understanding the lack of success and only 20 to 25% due to poor execution. This first of a three-part series focuses on understanding the problem of reservoir conformance. The process begins at a high level and increasingly narrows the study to the problem area. It seeks to answer the questions as to how the fluids move through the reservoir and how the wellbore interacts with the fluids and the reservoir. Understanding the reservoir is the first challenge. Reservoir characterization utilizes geological models, cores, logs and seismic to understand the rocks and how fluids move through them. The next level is reservoir monitoring, examining the rate of flow of all phases over time, relying on decline curves, injection to withdrawal rates, productivity and injectivity indices and other production measures and ratios. The next step is reservoir testing, in which a change is induced and the reaction to that change is analyzed including pressure testing, seismic and tracer testing. The final level of understanding is the wellbore itself. The description of the wellbore from drilling and completion records and changes over time must be examined. Monitoring and testing at the wellbore level are then conducted to understand the interaction between wellbore and reservoir.