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SPE's 2006-2007 Distinguished
Lecturer Program
Thirty speakers representing diverse
technical specialties and geographic locations are involved
in SPE's 2006-2007 Distinguished Lecturer Program. The
following cites just a few:
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Managing Smart-Oilfield Assets and the
Training Needs for Collaborative Decision-Making, Iraj
Ershaghi, University of Southern California
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Managed-Pressure-Drilling (MPD)
Technology Applications, Variations and Case Histories,
Don Hannegan, Weatherford
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Drilling with Casing—What It Can and
Cannot Do for an Asset, Tommy Warren, Tesco
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Cementing—Planning for Success the Life
of the Well, Daryl Kellingray, BP's E&P Technology Group
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Accurate Determination of Remaining
Hydrocarbon: Art or Science, Ahmed Badruzzaman, Chevron
Energy Technology Co.
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The full list of topics/Distinguished
Lecturers is available online (www.
spe.org/web/dl/topics.shtml), as is the
current speaking schedule (www.spe.org/web/dl/#).
Seize the opportunity to learn from them if they come to a
location near you. 
Bypass Plunger Lifts Volatile Oil in Colorado's
Pressure-Sensitive Codell Formation
In producing Colorado's Codell formation,
there is advantage to maintaining a higher wellhead
pressure. Operating at higher pressure delays the closure of
microfissures and the formation of retrograde condensate and
dead oil in the reservoir. Operating at higher pressure can
increase hydrocarbon recovery, but there is a
counterpoint—increased back
pressure can cause liquid loading. |
Conventional artificial lift options that
can operate with higher back pressure include gas lift,
hydraulic or gas cycling. Operational or economic
constraints often make these approaches unsuitable in
onshore applications. In Colorado's Wattenberg field,
Kerr-McGee is employing a bypass plunger for artificially
lifting the Codell's volatile oil.
Kerr-McGee's practice there is to drop a
bypass plunger within 48 hrs of the well's initial startup,
rather than waiting for the well to lose its ability to move
fluids to the wellbore when pressure drops. Traditional
plunger operations focus on removing the entire fluid slug
to the surface. Kerr-McGee changes the focus to make the
fluid slug small enough so that only a minimal differential
pressure can move the slug to the surface. With smaller
slugs, the bypass plunger makes many more trips a day. A key
component to making the system work is the differential
controller that controls the plunger travel speed and
preserves as much back pressure as possible.
Excerpted from "Bypass Plunger Effectively Lifts Volatile
Oil," Oil and Gas Journal, June 19, 2006, pp. 40-43. |
