This course provides case history reviews of field applications.  New this year is a section on field applications of nanoparticles and how they can help you improve your hydrocarbon recoveries.  Other technologies highlighted include carbon dioxide injection, sweep improvement utilizing microbes, steamflooding, and water disposal.  Applications are onshore sandstone and carbonate reservoirs from the United States and Nigeria.  Not all reviewed projects were economically successful but each has valuable lessons learned.

This course develops strategies for completing horizontal wells with either cased or open hole configurations, with or without sand control. It reviews the historical development of horizontal wells and completions and discusses drill-in fluids, hole displacement, cementing, perforating, stand-alone screens, horizontal gravel packing, execution and procedural guidelines for avoiding trouble, well surveillance and operations after it is completed, and well intervention for reducing water-gas oil ratios.

This course is designed to instruct in the estimation of petroleum reserves under SEC and SPE/WPC reserves definitions guidelines. The course discusses all definitions, including the latest developments and interpretations presented by the SEC and SPE/WPC. The course covers in detail the requirements that must be met to classify reserves as proved reserves but also discusses classifications of probable and possible reserves. Following a review of reserves definitions, the course presents and discusses the main reservoir engineering and geoscience methods that are used to estimate reserves and how reserves definitions affect such estimates. Case examples will be presented to illustrate estimation methods, along with typical errors associated with reserves estimates and how to avoid them. In addition, the course covers supplemental estimation techniques, such as reservoir simulation and probabilistic methods to estimate reserves and how to properly apply such techniques.

This course is based on the SPE monograph Volume 22, “Practical Aspects of CO2 Flooding,” published in 2002, and is an outgrowth of the University of Texas of the Permian Basin/SPE CO2 Conferences and short courses held in Midland, Tex., in December for the past 12 years. The co-authors of the monograph presented a review of the monograph at the December 2002 conference. The authors’ presentations and the monograph were very well received by the conference attendees and should also be very well received by SPE members outside the Permian Basin area as well. The instructors intend to present this course before the SPE meetings around the world, wherever there is an interest in improving oil recovery from oil fields, by CO2 flooding or by hydrocarbon gas flooding, and in CO2 sequestration, a topic of growing interest to all SPE members. In teaching this course, the instructors plan to 1) spend most of the time discussing the practical aspects of CO2 flooding and keep discussion of the theoretical topics to a bare minimum, 2) discuss economics of CO2 flooding (vis-à-vis waterflooding), 3) give the course attendees some practical and useful problems to work on, 4) discuss CO2 geosequestration wherever there is interest in this topic, and 5) provide each course attendee a workbook containing copies of the instructors’ PowerPoint presentations and solutions to the problems.

This course teaches an integrated version of the basics of waterflooding and enhanced oil recovery. The connection of each process to a few fundamental principles is illustrated. The course then reviews the specifics of thermal and solvent methods, relating basic principles to the results of field cases.

This is a course covering what an engineer who is involved with managing and producing oil and gas fields should know about geology.  The environment of deposition impacts the size and shape of a reservoir, where the better quality reservoir rock is located, the origin and complexity of barriers to flow, what influences the variations to porosity, permeability, and irreducible water saturation, and the pore system that affects recovery factor.  In a coastal marine environment, principles of sequence stratigraphy that control sand deposition at the shoreline, on the shelf, or in deep water will be described.  In carbonate depositional system, the locations of better quality reservoir rock will be described in relation to a reef environment.

Computer animations of sequence stratigraphy will be available to each participant.

This course is designed for engineers with a year or more of experience needing an introduction to the geology of producing fields, and how geology might influence their decisions about reservoir management.  Managers and geologists who want a review of the key topics listed below.

Topics Covered:  Introduction – Oil reservoir case study – Recovery; Environments of Deposition – Clastics and Carbonates;  Sequence Stratigraphy; Geologic Mapping with Frisco City Field Case Study; Pore Systems and Diagenesis - Capillary Pressure; Fractured Reservoirs - Shale Gas; Case study of field on water flood in deepwater depositional setting.