US experiences in water management of shale gas developments

2014 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 541
Author(s):  
Daniel Cravens
Keyword(s):  
Shale Gas ◽  
Distribution Systems ◽  
Water Distribution ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
High Water ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Groundwater Supply ◽  
The Us ◽  
Drilling Rigs

More than 1,700 drilling rigs are operating in the US, with more than half in Texas. The avid and dry Permian Basin in southwest Texas is one of the most prolific oil and gas basins in the US. Vertical drilling to depths of 4,000 m, with horizontal laterals 2,000 m, is common. The fraccing of a horizontal well requires large amounts of water. In areas that completely depend on groundwater for frac water, the demand for the resource is high. Water transport and treatment costs can threaten the viability of even the best of projects. The volume of water required for different horizontal frac operations, changes depending on the formation, frac solutions, and lateral frac distances. Discoveries are being made that have determined that larger diameter horizontal fracs are yielding more product, but they require even more water. The oil and gas industry is beginning to realise that groundwater drilling and resource management can make or break an oil and gas project. In these areas where water availability depends initially on groundwater supply, a complete understanding of the available groundwater resource is critical. Economically viable solutions can ultimately be a combination of new wells, treated water, moveable water distribution systems, mobile treatment plants, surface storage, and deep injection of brine fluids. In this extended abstract, the experiences gained on existing shale gas developments in the US are used to address specific challenges faced in Australia.

Identifying Key Safety Culture Factors for the Offshore Industry

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ning Lou ◽  
Ezra Wari ◽  
James Curry ◽  
Kevin McSweeney ◽  
Rick Curtis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Safety Culture ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Transportation Safety ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Offshore Industry ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Offshore Oil

This research identifies key factors, or safety culture categories, that can be used to help describe the safety culture for the offshore oil and gas industry and develop a comprehensive offshore safety culture assessment toolkit for use by the US Gulf of Mexico (GoM) owners and operators. Detailed questionnaires from selected safety culture frameworks of different industries were collected and analyzed to identify important safety culture factors and key questions for assessment. Safety frameworks from different associations were investigated, including the Center for Offshore Safety (COS), Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The safety culture factors of each of these frameworks were generalized and analyzed. The frequency of the safety culture factors in each framework was analyzed to explore commonality. The literature review and analysis identified a list of common factors among safety culture frameworks.

SafeOCS Industry Safety Data Program: An Industrywide Safety Data Management Framework

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (12) ◽  
pp. 34-37
Author(s):  
Demetra V. Collia ◽  
Roland L. Moreau
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
High Reliability ◽  
Safety Data ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Near Miss ◽  
Outer Continental Shelf ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Recommended Practices ◽  
Industry Associations

Introduction In the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the oil and gas industry, regulators, and other stakeholders recognized the need for increased collaboration and data sharing to augment their ability to better identify safety risks and address them before an accident occurs. The SafeOCS program is one such collaboration between industry and government. It is a voluntary confidential reporting program that collects and analyzes data to advance safety in oil and gas operations on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). The US Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) established the program with input from industry and then entered into an agreement with the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) to develop, implement, and operate the program. As a principal statistical agency, BTS has considerable data-collection-and-analysis expertise with near-miss reporting systems for other industries and the statutory authority to protect the confidentiality of the reported information and the reporter’s identify. Source data submitted to BTS are not subject to subpoena, legal discovery, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Solving for the Gap Across industries, companies have long realized the benefits of collecting and analyzing data around safety and environmental events to identify risks and take actions to prevent reoccurrence. These activities are aided by industry associations that collect and share event information and develop recommended practices to improve performance. In high-reliability industries such as aviation and nuclear, it is common practice to report and share events among companies and for the regulators to identify hidden trends and create or update existing recommended practices, regulations, or other controls. The challenge for the offshore oil and gas industry is that industry associations and the regulator are typically limited to collecting data on agency-reportable incidents. With this limitation, other high-learning-value events or observed conditions could go unnoticed as a trend until a major event occurs. This lack of timely data represented an opportunity for the industry and the offshore regulator (BSEE) to collaborate on a means of gathering safety-event data that would allow for analysis and identification of trends, thereby enabling appropriate interventions to prevent major incidents and foster continuous improvement. The SafeOCS Industry Safety Data (ISD) program provides an effective process for capturing these trends by looking across a wider spectrum of events, including those with no consequences.

Is ‘oil and gas’ industry of ASEAN5 countries integrated with the US counterpart?

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (37) ◽  
pp. 4112-4134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hung Quang Do ◽  
M. Ishaq Bhatti ◽  
Muhammad Shahbaz
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us

Self Directed Integrity Assessment of Non-Piggable Pipelines

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashish Khera ◽  
Rajesh Uprety ◽  
Bidyut B. Baniah
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Management Plan ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Internal Corrosion ◽  
Integrity Assessment ◽  
Regulatory Standards ◽  
The Us ◽  
Integrity Management ◽  
External Corrosion

The responsibility for managing an asset safely, efficiently and to optimize productivity lies solely with the pipeline operators. To achieve these objectives, operators are implementing comprehensive pipeline integrity management programs. These programs may be driven by a country’s pipeline regulator or in many cases may be “self-directed” by the pipeline operator especially in countries where pipeline regulators do not exist. A critical aspect of an operator’s Integrity Management Plan (IMP) is to evaluate the history, limitations and the key threats for each pipeline and accordingly select the most appropriate integrity tool. The guidelines for assessing piggable lines has been well documented but until recently there was not much awareness for assessment of non-piggable pipelines. A lot of these non-piggable pipelines transverse through high consequence areas and usually minimal historic records are available for these lines. To add to the risk factor, usually these lines also lack any baseline assessment. The US regulators, that is Office of Pipeline Safety had recognized the need for establishment of codes and standards for integrity assessment of all pipelines more than a decade ago. This led to comprehensive mandatory rules, standards and codes for the US pipeline operators to follow regardless of the line being piggable or non-piggable. In India the story has been a bit different. In the past few years, our governing body for development of self-regulatory standards for the Indian oil and gas industry that is Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) recognized a need for development of a standard specifically for integrity assessment of non-piggable pipelines. The standard was formalized and accepted by the Indian Ministry of Petroleum in September 2013 as OISD 233. OISD 233 standard is based on assessing the time dependent threats of External Corrosion (EC) and Internal Corrosion (IC) through applying the non-intrusive techniques of “Direct Assessment”. The four-step, iterative DA (ECDA, ICDA and SCCDA) process requires the integration of data from available line histories, multiple indirect field surveys, direct examination and the subsequent post assessment of the documented results. This paper presents the case study where the Indian pipeline operators took a self-initiative and implemented DA programs for prioritizing the integrity assessment of their most critical non-piggable pipelines even before the OISD 233 standard was established. The paper also looks into the relevance of the standard to the events and other case studies following the release of OISD 233.

Optimization of perforation drilling for mitigating punch-through in multi-layered clays

2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (11) ◽  
pp. 1658-1673 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.S. Hossain ◽  
M.J. Cassidy ◽  
R. Baker ◽  
M.F. Randolph
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Soil Conditions ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Frequent Use ◽  
Layered Clays ◽  
Industry Practice ◽  
Offshore Oil And Gas ◽  
Drilling Rigs ◽  
Offshore Oil

“Spudcan” foundations for mobile drilling rigs continue to exhibit a high failure rate in the offshore oil and gas industry. The more frequent use of larger jack-ups in highly stratified regions, such as the Sunda Shelf in Southeast Asia, contributes to this concerning increase in “punch-through” incidents, which can lead to buckling of a leg or even toppling of the rig. An industry practice known as “perforation drilling” is sometimes used to mitigate the punch-through risk in layered clays, extracting soil from the upper strong layer before the jack-up is installed. This paper reports results from centrifuge model tests exploring the efficiency of perforation drilling. The soil conditions tested simulate offshore strength profiles that have reported punch-through failures. An experimental method for “drilling” sites in an enhanced gravity centrifuge environment was developed and the installation responses of model spudcan foundations penetrating through multi-layered clays with interbedded stiff layers were recorded. The experimental results show that the removal of soil inside the spudcan perimeter, with an area of 9% perforated, eliminated rapid leg run and severe punch-through on the two- and four-layer seabed profiles tested. This confirms the effectiveness of perforation drilling and indicates how the offshore drilling plan may be optimized.

scholarly journals A Life Cycle Assessment of Guar Agriculture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
VeeAnder S. Mealing ◽  
Amy E. Landis
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Water Use ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Guar Gum ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
High Water ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Us

Abstract Guar gum, the main product of the guar crop, is used widely in the US as an emulsifier in the food industry and as fracturing fluid additive in the oil and gas industry. The US is the number one global importer of guar, and interest has grown to domestically cultivate guar in the US. Guar is an annual desert legume native to India and Pakistan. The goal of this study was to evaluate the environmental sustainability of growing guar in the U.S. via a life cycle analysis (LCA). The LCA helps identify the information gap for US agriculture and guide future field studies to optimize guar cultivation in the US. This study concluded that in terms of environmental sustainability, irrigation, harvesting, and P-fertilization methods offer the most opportunity for improved guar agricultural sustainability. This is promising because one of guar’s prominent characteristics is its high water use efficiency and ability to grow in marginal soils. Lowering irrigation and water use can be implemented with simple management practice changes like optimizing irrigation. In addition, this study shows that there is an opportunity for field trials to optimize fertilizer application rates to achieve the greatest yields. This study also found a knowledge gap with respect to C soil fluxes and field emissions of N and P from guar agriculture. As the United States pursues adopting guar agriculture in the Southwest, it will be critical to evaluate irrigation to achieve maximum yields (e.g. drip, flood, sprinkler) and fill fertilizer and emissions knowledge gaps.

scholarly journals Methane and ethane emission scenarios for potential shale gas production in Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 125-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoon J. H. Visschedijk ◽  
Hugo A. C. Denier van der Gon ◽  
Hans C. Doornenbal ◽  
Lorenzo Cremonese
Keyword(s):  
Shale Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Gas Production ◽  
Main Concern ◽  
Gas Composition ◽  
Gas Reservoir ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Oil And Gas Production ◽  
Gas Leakage ◽  
The Us

Abstract. A main concern surrounding (shale) gas production and exploitation is the leakage of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. High leakage rates have been observed outside of Europe but the representativeness of these observations for Europe is unknown. To facilitate the monitoring of methane leakage from a future shale gas industry in Europe we developed potential production scenarios for ten major shale gas plays and identified a suitable tracer in (shale) gas to distinguish oil and gas related emissions from other methane sources. To distinguish gas leakage from other methane sources we propose ethane, a known tracer for leakage from oil and gas production but absent in emissions from other important methane sources in Europe. Ethane contents for the ten plays are estimated from a European gas composition database and shale gas composition and reservoir data from the US, resulting in three different classes of ethane to methane ratios in the raw gas (0.015, 0.04 and 0.1). The ethane content classes have a relation with the average thermal maturity, a basic shale gas reservoir characteristic, which is known for all ten European shale gas plays. By assuming different production scenarios in addition to a range of possible gas leakage rates, we estimate potential ethane tracer release by shale gas play. Ethane emissions are estimated by play following a low, medium or high gas production scenario in combination with leakage rates ranging from 0.2 %–10 % based on observed leakage rates in the US.

scholarly journals Cybersecurity in Oil Storage and Transportation

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Klarmann
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oil Storage ◽  
Safe Production ◽  
Industry Standards ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Impact

ABSTRACT Cyber threats to the oil and gas industry have been existent in one form or another for as long as computing and networking systems have utilized to increase the efficiency of production and transportation operations. The number of systems that are utilizing internet-connected technology to aid the industry has risen dramatically over the past 20 years, seeing use on exploration, management of production systems, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), and supply chain management. As the number of available exploits and attacks against these systems increases over time, it is more necessary than ever to ensure that cybersecurity is in facility and vessel plans. Incorporating cybersecurity measures into the existing security framework will be critical to ensuring that malicious actors do not impact communities and the environment through destructive attacks upon production and transportation. This paper will provide a look at the impact cyberattacks may have on the safe production, storage, and transportation of oil, as well as provide insight as to what industry standards and legal proposals exist to ensure that industry partners are operating securely throughout the US.

scholarly journals Technology and Developing Trends of Automatic Catwalk in China’s Drilling Rigs

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (07) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nilievna Nkanza ◽  
Feng Ding ◽  
Sun Qiaolei ◽  
Tu Yiliu
Keyword(s):  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Development Trend ◽  
Well Drilling ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
Drilling Rig ◽  
Automation Equipment ◽  
Drilling Rigs ◽  
Automation Technology ◽  
The Development Trend

The Improvement of automation technology and its application in drilling rig have increased the drilling rig safety and efficiency. The petroleum drilling rig in China has been increasing as China is the fourth-leading oil producer in the oil and gas industry. However, there is a low percentage of automation equipment and the automatic catwalk still remains at the traditional stage compared to other countries. This paper introduced the present situation of the domestic well drilling rig, automatic catwalk technologies and the development trend is summarized.

Australia's shale industry – how we can become globally competitive

2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 546
Author(s):  
Peter Cox
Keyword(s):  
Engineering Design ◽  
Life Cycle Cost ◽  
Oil And Gas ◽  
Oil And Gas Industry ◽  
Project Delivery ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Gas Industry ◽  
The Us ◽  
Pipeline Networks ◽  
Industry Practice

Project delivery technology is changing and developing at a rapid rate, and Australia’s oil and gas industry could do a better job of embracing change and getting to the forefront of advanced digital technology applied to developing onshore gas resources – particularly to our vast undeveloped shale reserves. Our shale deposits are in remote parts of our country, so present significant challenges, especially in relation to geographical distance away from local and international markets. This paper will focus on the use of automation and standardisation in the engineering design process combined with project execution strategies to significantly reduce both schedule and cost in delivering surface infrastructure required to get our gas shale reserves to both domestic demand centres and export facilities. The traditional project delivery models that have served us well in the past need to be challenged and a new paradigm adopted. Standardisation of the compression and dehydration facilities in the US market has been developed over many years, resulting in efficient project delivery, and enabling reserves to be brought to market on a fast track basis. This paper will work through practices in the US and how they can be applied to Australia. Australian standards and industry practice defines how we design our gathering and pipeline networks. This paper will present a combination of construction strategies and automation of engineering design to optimise life cycle cost in remote regions where construction mobilisation and logistics is a significant factor combined with changing priorities as further reservoir data is obtained from exploration wells.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document