BRAZILIAN OIL PIONEERS

In the Brazilian popular imagination, the discovery of oil was announced on August 9, 1938, by the Viscount of Corncob. The Donabentense Oil Company drilled Caraminguá’s first well, near the creek that passed through the Yellow Woodpecker Ranch (“Sítio do Picapau Amarelo,” in colloquial Portuguese). The latter was the name of a famous Brazilian children’s book. In fact, the first oil well flowed in Salvador, Bahia, on January 21, 1939, discovered by Manoel Ignácio Bastos (1891 - 1940), a Brazilian geographer engineer, whose business partner, Oscar Salvador Cordeiro (1890 - 1970), was the president of the Bahia Commodities Exchange. A brief analysis of documents, such as reports, Brazilian decrees and executive orders, as well as newspapers, detail the actions of these Brazilian oil pioneers. Statistical data analysis was also performed about onshore and offshore oil production between 1941 and 2019, as a part of Bastos and Cordeiros’ heritage.

Development of a method for maintaining the performance of drilling fluids during transportation by Platform Supply Vessel

The object of research is the process of transportation of drilling fluid used for lubrication and cooling of drilling equipment of offshore oil production platforms. The subject of the study is the stratification of the density of the drilling fluid along the height of the cargo tank in which it is transported. The technology of transportation of drilling fluid on the Platform Supply Vessel is considered. A problematic point in ensuring this process is that during the transportation of drilling fluids, due to the action of gravitational forces on organic and inorganic compounds in their volume, there is a latent change in their dispersion over the volume of the fluid. This leads to the stratification and stratification of the fluid density along the height, as well as to the formation of sediments at the bottom of the cargo tanks, in which the drilling fluid is transported. The study is aimed at developing a technology that maintains a constant value of the density of the drilling fluid along the depth of the tank in which it is transported. The studies were carried out in the vessel system for transporting drilling fluid of a specialized marine vessel of the Platform Supply Vessel type with a deadweight of 5850 tons. It is experimentally established that for a transportation time of 6–36 hours, the density stratification of the drilling fluid is 3.04–32.04 %. As a method that ensures the minimum stratification of the density of the drilling fluid during its transportation, it is proposed to use an additional X-shaped circulation of the drilling fluid in the volume of adjacent cargo tanks. Studies have confirmed that the density stratification over a time period of 6–36 hours decreases to a range of 2.30–9.01 %. The complex use of additional X-shaped circulation and simultaneous air supply to the bottom of the cargo tank provides a density stratification value of 0.73–2.93 %. The proposed technology was tested on a specialized seagoing vessel of the Platform Supply Vessel type with a deadweight of 5850 tons and can be used on offshore vessels that ensure the operation of offshore oil production platforms.

A Lagrange Relaxation Based Decomposition Algorithm for Large-Scale Offshore Oil Production Planning Optimization

In this paper, a new Lagrange relaxation based decomposition algorithm for the integrated offshore oil production planning optimization is presented. In our previous study (Gao et al. Computers and Chemical Engineering, 2020, 133, 106674), a multiperiod mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model considering both well operation and flow assurance simultaneously had been proposed. However, due to the large-scale nature of the problem, i.e., too many oil wells and long planning time cycle, the optimization problem makes it difficult to get a satisfactory solution in a reasonable time. As an effective method, Lagrange relaxation based decomposition algorithms can provide more compact bounds and thus result in a smaller duality gap. Specifically, Lagrange multiplier is introduced to relax coupling constraints of multi-batch units and thus some moderate scale sub-problems result. Moreover, dual problem is constructed for iteration. As a result, the original integrated large-scale model is decomposed into several single-batch subproblems and solved simultaneously by commercial solvers. Computational results show that the proposed method can reduce the solving time up to 43% or even more. Meanwhile, the planning results are close to those obtained by the original model. Moreover, the larger the problem size, the better the proposed LR algorithm is than the original model.

Draft Genome Sequence of Enterobacter roggenkampii Strain OS53, Isolated from Corroded Pipework at an Offshore Oil Production Facility

ABSTRACT Here, we report the genome sequence of Enterobacter roggenkampii strain OS53, isolated from corroded pipework at an offshore oil production facility. The draft genome sequence comprises 6 contigs and contains 5,194,507 bp with an average GC content of 55.90%.

International Governance of Oil Spills from Upstream Petroleum Activities in the Arctic: Response over Prevention?

Discovery of petroleum resources in Arctic waters and the rapid loss of sea ice raise concerns over environmental risks of oil development in Arctic waters. One of the biggest threats to the marine environment from offshore oil production is a large-scale oil spill, akin to Deepwater Horizon. The challenging operating conditions, lack of infrastructure and effective clean-up techniques in the Arctic conditions exacerbate the need to ensure robust regulation of petroleum activities in the region. Whereas national laws vary extensively across the Arctic States, international law does not offer a uniform approach to prevention of and response to oil spills. This paper examines the scope and application of the relevant treaties and argues that a regulatory gap exists in the prevention of oil spills and addressing the challenges of response in Arctic conditions. It further suggests that there is an increasing role for soft-law regional cooperation in addressing these gaps.