Presentation | July 27-29, 2010 – Did a run-through of my presentation through a conference call to mentors in Oklahoma City; got plenty of interesting feedback that I will be sure to incorporate into my final presentation. Learned how to fix a broken tire.
Eventually fixed the problems on my presentation and tried to clarify other things. Finalized the executive summary and made sure everything is in an accessible place for the presentation. Flying out to OKC on Saturday!
Installing WCVR System | July 19, 2010 – Installed the Weatherford CVR application. In total, 31 joints of 2 3/8 tubing were removed from the original assembly and 64 joints of 2 7/8 dead string were installed in its place. A crossover allows the two different diameters to be connected and a perforated sub allows flow from the wellbore into the tubing. A capillary string is banded along the outside of the tubing and runs along the inside of the dead string. The entire installation and assembly took approximately eight hours.
WCVR Costs | July 20, 2010 – Worked on getting costs for the WCVR project; put tickets into excel and compared costs with the AFE to find which values are missing.
Summer Presentation | July 21, 2010 – Worked on slides and presentation.
WCVR Optimization | July 22, 2010 – After installing the WCVR, the well has steadily declined in production; a swabbing unit is required to help unload the well. We expect to begin soap injection soon and drop a plunger in the future to further increase production.
Summer Presentation | July 23, 2010 – Worked on slides and timing for the final presentation.
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Emissions Testing | July 12, 2010 – Prepared a generator for emissions testing. A device is hooked up to the generator which will use power to the generator’s capacity, allowing a more accurate and stable reading of emissions.
Weatherford CVR | July 13, 2010 – Obtained a water sample from the Red Desert 13-4 well. This sample is used by the lab to determine the optimal surfactant to use to decrease the density of the well fluid. The fluid sample also gives insights to pH and chloride levels so we can select the proper grade of steel capillary tubing.
Weatherford CVR | July 14, 2010 – Worked on communicating with the rest of the people involved in this project to finalize the logistics and collect the required parts. Coordinated anchor testing and slickline to prepare the well for pulling.
Weatherford CVR | July 15, 2010 – Worked on an authorization for expenditure (AFE) for the CVR project. Each cost needs to be itemized so we know approximately how much we will spend on this well. After detailing all of the costs, the AFE is distributed throughout the team for approval.
Weatherford CVR | July 16, 2010 – Began installation of the CVR application. Rigged up and pulled the tubing from the well and laid 31 pieces out which will not be used for the final installation.
Workover Rig | July 6, 2010 – Observed the setup of a workover rig. This rig’s objective is to perform maintenance on wells such as pulling the tubing to inspect for damages or holes without having to bring a drilling rig onto the site.
Workover Rig | July 7, 2010 – Observed the operation of a workover rig. Often, many trucks are brought in since each well could have a myriad of different problems. For example, when the workover rig finishes pulling the tubing in a well, a wireline is often called to check the integrity of the well casing.
Summer Project | July 8, 2010 – Contacted Weatherford about the CVR system. Looked at the gas analysis as well as well diagrams to get a basic understanding of how the well is designed.
Summer Presentation | July 9, 2010 – Worked on my PowerPoint for my presentation August 2nd. The template makes it hard to add large pictures and use more creative slide designs, so I need to rely on content to capture the interest of my audience.
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Drilling Rig | June 29, 2010 – Went out to a rig to observe the drilling of a new seven-well pad facility. I toured the drilling rig and learned the various pieces of equipment found on site. Drilling requires components such as mud and gel mixers, accumulators, and extremely powerful pumps and motors. Inside the right, a driller controls most of the operation, managing the speed at which the drill pipe is moved up and down the well hole.
The Bureau of Land Management’s tighter regulations are evident: they repeatedly stress the importance of blowout prevention systems.
Echometer | June 30, 2010 – To find the static tubing and casing fluid level, we had to use the echometer. This tool shoots pressured nitrogen and records the sound waves to detect the fluid level.
Drilling Rig | July 1, 2010 – A huge part of how fast a well can be drilled depends on the experience of a driller. He uses his judgment and experience to decide how fast the drill bit needs to spin and how hard it should press against the formation. For example, spinning too fast in sand or applying too much pressure in shale will destroy the drill bit. Also learned how to add more wells into WellView.
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Intern E&P Day | June 15, 2010 – Attended an intern event at the Petroleum Club in Oklahoma City.
Compressor Technician | June 17, 2010 – Shadowed a compressor technician while he performed maintenance on the field’s compressor stations. For the entire field, four compressor stations increase the pressure on the gas to compact it before sending the gas to the refineries. The compressors are essentially giant motors spinning at several thousand rpm to build up pressure before it enters the pipelines.
Research | June 18, 2010 – Since there wasn’t much going on in the field, I spent most of the day organizing all of the documents I brought home from Oklahoma City. I read over all of the Weatherford CVR material I had obtained and attempted to contact Weatherford for some answers to questions I’ve been having about the system. Also began working on the PowerPoint I will be using for my end-of-summer presentation.
CPR and First Aid | June 21, 2010 – Received my CPR and First Aid certification during a 4 hour course.
Well Review, Meeting with pipelining | June 22, 2010 – Attended an entire day of internal and external meetings, which helps me understand the relationship between Devon and its pipelining companies. The meeting between Devon and Anadarko is called to discuss issues each company has encountered while working with each other and to discuss future plans so each partner can schedule future actions accordingly. For example, to rectify an issue regarding gas quality differences among wells in pad well facilities, composite samplers were proposed. Similarly they discuss problems about information shared between the companies. I realized the importance of consistent units, since the group spent about 10 minutes confused about whether certain gauges were measured in pisa or pisg. A pressure difference of 1 atm cost the pipelining company a huge sum of money.
Well Review, Generator Company | June 23, 2010 – Full day of well reviews looking at why certain gas wells have lost production over the years. Especially concerned with irregular downward “steps” in production. Attended sales pitch of Capstone generator company attempting to sell microturbine generators to replace the current CAT generators.
On-site | June 24, 2010 – Attended an on-site with Devon and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This meeting is established on a proposed well site to facilitate communication between Devon and the BLM in order to find any issues with the drilling site that may impact the wildlife or environment. An engineering company draws schematics for the proposed wells including details about leveling the well location. The BLM sends several specialists to study the location:
Hydrologist: Makes sure the water runoff will not contaminate the soil and looks for drainage ditches that may cause certain safety concerns.
Wildlife Expert: Ensures drilling operations will not interfere with plant and wildlife stipulations (e.g. drilling during mating season).
Pipeline Expert: Anadarko needs to make sure the proposed well facilities can reach the pipeline.
Soil Expert: Checks the soil, makes sure it won’t present any dangers during drilling such as collapsing.
Natural Resource Specialist: Leads the team, looks at the big picture and the schematic of well facilities.
Experts from the BLM come to inspect the proposed well to make sure both the drilling and standard operations will have as little impact on the environment as possible. Devon negotiates with the BLM to drill a well that has both a light footprint and is both economically and technologically feasible. Oftentimes, this involves rounding a corner of the well site or even moving the entire site several hundred feet away.
Below is a brief on my accomplishments during the third week of my internship.
June 4, 2010 – Day 9: Riding with a lease operator
I began reviewing the documents sent to me by Weatherford about the CVR. There is a lot of terminology, but from what I gather, it is the combination of plunger lift, foaming, and surface area reduction in order to reduce the critical velocity of the well.
June 5, 2010 – Day 10: Siberia Ridge Frac Job
Today I observed the hydraulic fracturing of the Siberia Ridge well in the Wamsutter (Almond) formation.
Stage 1 – Lower Almond – 30 vis Hybor G
Stage 2 – Almond Bar – 30 vis Hybor G w/ 30Q N2
It was done in two stages each broken up into many subsections. First we pumped perforating fluid (sand suspended in water, creating a mucus-like substance) in 13 distinct stages increasing . We flushed the well using water to clean it and plugged the well.
The plug is attached to several fracturing charges and lowered over 10k ft into the well using an e-line wire line truck. During the plugging stage, the plug malfunctioned due to a lack of oil in the hydraulics and forced us to bring the entire device back to the surface to inspect and perform maintenance on it.
The plug was placed above the initial perforations, and new perforations were made above the original ones at regular intervals. The hydraulic fracturing process was repeated on these new fractures, this time also incorporating N2 into the mix to aid the fracturing process.
After the fracturing process, a different company manages the flow back, which relieves the pressure which built up within the well during fracturing. First, N2 comes up with negligible amounts of water. When gas starts flowing from the well, it will be flared for a while. Once the well is cleaned out, it will be diverted to sales until the tubing can be installed.
The field engineers working for Halliburton served as project supervisors and monitored the entire procedure. Using several prepared excel spreadsheets with significant information, they were able to quickly calculate and collaborate data. They collaborate with Devon’s consultant to ensure the job is done exactly as Devon desires.
June 7/8, 2010 – Day 11-12: Following a SCADA technician
Watched a SCADA technician perform diagnostics and maintenance on malfunctioning electrical parts. He makes sure everything in the field with wires is working. For example, we had to replace a plunger arrival sensor which had broken off and rewire it to the circuit in the well. Similarly, I observed as he replaced weak communication devices on the well and reconfigured them to exchange information with Devon’s primary server.
June 9, 2010 – Day 13: Production Logging
A Baker Hughes e-line truck performs the production logs for the well. Production logs show what is coming out of each perforation. To do this, it analyzes several conditions, including gamma ray, temperature, and density. It puts all of this information in a graph that looks very similar to an echo meter. The production log determines which formations are producing the gas and which ones are producing uneconomical amounts of water. This allows engineers to decide which formations to perforate in the future when drilling new wells and which formations to avoid.
June 10, 2010 – Day 14: Site Security Diagrams
Site security diagrams show the flow of hydrocarbons and water from the well head through the pad and into the pipeline. They are modeled with Microsoft Visio and show the various components of each well, including valves, generators, and oil tanks. Today, went to a workover rig and learned what each pipe carries and where it goes.
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Shadowing a production optimizer | Day 5 (Friday, May 28, 2010) – Some more optimizing wells that could perform better. This last day in production optimization is important so that I can monitor the performance of various wells as we are trying new things to increase output. So far, I have been exposed to four different types of plungers: pad (slow falling), brush (used when a lot of sand is present), bar stock (cut in spirals to spin sand out), and bypass (two distinct parts that allow plunger to open and close).
Safety training | Day 6 (Tuesday, June 1, 2010) was spent completing new employee orientation including classes in field/office safety.
Wireline | Day 7 – Observed a wire line truck performing daily duties. [The wire line truck is the vehicle used in the field with a large crane and a large quantity of steel cable (20,000 ft).] This includes retrieving plungers which are not surfacing properly and bumper springs that have malfunctioned. In certain cases where the well had no fluid on the bottom, the plunger destroyed the bumper spring, so efforts had to be made to retrieve each broken part one piece at a time. For example, a barbed rod is dropped down the well to retrieve a spring which has detached itself from the rest of the bumper.
Shadowing a pumper | Day 8 – Went with a pumper (lease operator) on his route, making sure each well’s production remained at a consistent level. Relieved stress on loaded wells by blowing them into the tank. As Mike once put it, a lot of the job is just “hurry up and wait.”
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Here’s a brief on my accomplishments and understandings over the first week of the internship. I tried to condense it as much as possible but there is so much to take in:
Monday was essentially paperwork.
Shadowing a pumper | Tuesday, May 25 – Day 2 was spent shadowing Brett (one of the pumpers) around his wells. He introduced me to how the wells work, and explained the function of every valve and tank. It was a lot of information to take in all at once, but visiting 25+ different wells over the span of a day definitely helped. I learned how to blow wells when the pressure gradient became too high as well as different precautions Devon takes to prevent the wells from freezing in the winter.
I also got the opportunity to test for water/oil level in the tank. I expected some kind of sophisticated gadget to take these measurements, and I was surprised at the rather crude technique used: basically a very long tape measure with a special dye that changes pink upon touching water is lowered into the 20 foot tank, and from that we read water and oil levels.
Shadowing a production optimizer | Wednesday, May 26 – Day 3 – Spent the day following Mike the optimizer around. His job is to look at the data wells are sending back and make decisions on which wells could be improved with a little tweaking. Most of the time was spent watching a pad well which had failed and attempting to diagnose the problem: this involved swapping various types of plungers between wells and making adjustments within the separator.
Towards the end of the day, we went to an older well without a blowout tank, so to relieve the water head that had built up on top of the plunger, we had to blow it into the atmosphere – this practice is generally frowned upon but is required for the older wells.
Shadowing a production optimizer | Thursday, May 27 – Day 4 – Pretty much the same thing as yesterday. Learned about various methods used to squeeze a little more production out of a well, and during this process discussed methods used to retrieve stuck or broken plungers from wells using wire lines. Day 4 was very beneficial in solidifying and affirming what I learned yesterday.
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