Drilling Technology

Challenge 1: Slim Casing Design for Slim Hole Drilling

Slimming our Casing Design by Resolving Loss of Circulation, etc.

About the Challenge:

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, wells are typically constructed with multiple cemented casing strings before getting to the target reservoirs, primarily because of multiple severe loss zones in the overburden formations that are difficult to cure with conventional methods in addition to water-reacting sloughing shale. We are seeking technologies that allow significant slimming-down of well casing design while ensuring adequate reservoir hole size. These would include several major topics including effective LCM (loss circulation material), optimized mud design for hole stability, slim casing and tight clearance liner running and cementing techniques, solid expandable, etc.

Deadline: Sept 16
How to get involved with Saudi Aramco Technology Quest 2011:
1. Review the research domain-wise challenges There are seven research domains, each with 1-5 challenges 2. Register your initial ideas Submit your collaboration idea that address the specific challenge before September 16, 2011 3. Register additional ideas Check other challenges and submit each collaboration idea individually 4. Hear back from Saudi Aramco Each collaboration idea will be sent to a specialist Saudi Aramco scientist who will respond to your idea within 7-10 days. Those who submit ideas with potential for future collaboration will be invited to attend the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest with a request to register at the website. For more information about the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest, please email: info@techquest2011.com

NOW!

Register

Why?
Saudi Aramco is beginning to explore its tight and unconventional gas reserves. The telescopic casing architecture that has served Aramco well for decades would make development of such reserves not economically feasible. It will be necessary to substantially reduce well construction costs to make unconventional gas development practical. One of the primary keys to success will be in substantially reducing the number of casing points necessary to reach the reservoirs.

What?
The current large number of casing points is not driven by the mud window, as is the norm in other areas of the world. Most of the casing points are driven by the need to put drilling hazards lost circulation, reactive/unstable shale, or abnormally pressured zones behind pipe. Aramco is seeking technology partners to study the root causes of each hazard and create economically viable solutions that will eliminate the need for many of the current casing points. Some possible candidate technologies are borehole strengthening mud chemistries, two phase drilling fluid technologies, and expandable clad thru clad drilling open hole drilling patch technologies, as well as the need for advanced geosciences technologies to define the root causes.

Benefit:
The benefit of solving the underlying drilling challenges and eliminating several casing points is reducing well construction costs by an estimated 30%. An even larger benefit will be enabling the economic development of Saudi Aramcos vast untapped unconventional gas resources which will be impractical with current practice.

For more information visit www.techquest2011.com

All proposals, together with all Intellectual Property Rights therein, submitted to Saudi Aramco for the purpose of Technology Quest 2011 will remain the property of the owner and will be classed as confidential. Saudi Aramco views this venture as a partnership with successful participants.

Drilling Technology
Challenge 2: Simplifying Test Procedures in Wells
Dealing with Lengthy Test Procedures in Exploration Wells.

About the Challenge:

Conventional practice to conduct reservoir flow test in exploration wells involves a large amount of downhole and surface equipment preparations including pickling DST tools with chemicals/acid plus stimulation fluid and perforation material like explosives as well as field personnel. In addition rig operational procedure dictates a very lengthy period of time in order to achieve the planned objectives including bottom-up tests with pressure built-up to fully evaluate the reservoir production potential. In a lot of cases, wells do not flow for clean up and the need for rigging up coiled tubing and nitrogen is needed to lift the well. After all this, in some cases, well is deemed dry hole. As a result, the conventional and commonly adopted processes incur rather a large chunk of well budget, even if the target reservoir may fail to deliver the expected outcome.

Deadline: Sept 16
How to get involved with Saudi Aramco Technology Quest 2011:
1. Review the research domain-wise challenges There are seven research domains, each with 1-5 challenges 2. Register your initial ideas Submit your collaboration idea that address the specific challenge before September 16, 2011 3. Register additional ideas Check other challenges and submit each collaboration idea individually 4. Hear back from Saudi Aramco Each collaboration idea will be sent to a specialist Saudi Aramco scientist who will respond to your idea within 7-10 days. Those who submit ideas with potential for future collaboration will be invited to attend the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest with a request to register at the website. For more information about the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest, please email: info@techquest2011.com

NOW!

Register

Why?
Conventional well testing of exploration wells is a very lengthy and expensive process. This is even more so when the reservoirs involved are tight or unconventional, increasing the time needed for a complete build up test. The rig up and testing is generally done after drilling TD and before completion with the rig still on location. All of this leads to expending a great deal of valuable rig time as well as incurring very high other costs.

What?
Thinking out of the box, what can be done to:

1. Shorten time to rig up for well testing 2. Rig up in parallel with other wellsite operations in advance of TDing the well. 3. Optimize length of each test to see necessary build up duration and no more. 4. Develop new out of the box methods for well testing and all subsequent operations that allow earlier release of rig.

Benefit:
Coming up with real out of the box solutions leading to a paradigm shift in well testing would result in more cost efficiency in exploration campaigns and greater rig availability. This ultimately would mean better exploration economics and also being able to increase the planned rigs per year possible with the available rig fleet.

For more information visit www.techquest2011.com

All proposals, together with all Intellectual Property Rights therein, submitted to Saudi Aramco for the purpose of Technology Quest 2011 will remain the property of the owner and will be classed as confidential. Saudi Aramco views this venture as a partnership with successful participants.

Drilling Technology
Challenge 3: Drilling Efficiency for Tight & Unconventional Gas Development
Advanced Drilling Components, Drilling Fluids and Alternative Cutting Methods

About the Challenge:

In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, non-associated gas reservoirs are typically below 11,000 ft TVD (True Vertical Depth) and overburden formations are often hard to drill and in some areas they are subject to abnormally high formation pressure. Further some gas reservoirs are hard and abrasive in a HPHT(High Pressure/High Temperature) environment all of which combine to make the drilling process slow when compared with a typical oil drilling operation. We are seeking to develop technologies that generate significantly increasing drilling efficiency through a variety of possible processes (for example, from drilling fluids, specialized drilling tools, downhole drive mechanism, next generation drill bits) that integrate downhole and surface data to reduce vibration and maximize the energy spent on on-bottom drilling or other alternative cutting methods. We envisage that the design of drilling muds with adequate rock softening potential, torque and drag reducing capability and moderate to high spurt loss in tight formation is expected to enhance the ROP (rate of penetration) to improve the drilling efficiency further.

Deadline: Sept 16
How to get involved with Saudi Aramco Technology Quest 2011:
1. Review the research domain-wise challenges There are seven research domains, each with 1-5 challenges 2. Register your initial ideas Submit your collaboration idea that address the specific challenge before September 16, 2011 3. Register additional ideas Check other challenges and submit each collaboration idea individually 4. Hear back from Saudi Aramco Each collaboration idea will be sent to a specialist Saudi Aramco scientist who will respond to your idea within 7-10 days. Those who submit ideas with potential for future collaboration will be invited to attend the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest with a request to register at the website. For more information about the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest, please email: info@techquest2011.com

NOW!

Register

Why?
Saudi Aramco is beginning to explore its tight and unconventional gas reserves. Consequently, significantly increasing drilling efficiency will be a major factor that will contribute to making tight and unconventional gas development increasingly economical.

What?
The current technology for hard rock drilling includes a state-of-the-art drill bit and an appropriate drive system (an enhanced high power mud motor and RSS (Rotary Steerable System)) in addition to purposely designed drilling fluid. The typical ROP (Rate of Penetration) however ranges from 5 ~ 15 ft /hr and bit or other tools (motor or MWD (Measuring While Drilling/LWD Logging While Drilling) also have limited operating hours because of highly weighted mud, hard rock, and high temperature environment. Consequently the average drilling footage is usually on the order of 150 ~ 250 ft per day with many bit runs required for a typical 3000 ft horizontal lateral). Therefore, if the well needs to penetrate any abnormally high pressure overburden formation and there exists significant contact length across such reservoir section, it often requires a relatively long time (up to a couple of months) to drill and case which results in a large well cost.

Benefit:
The benefit of increasing drilling efficiency could be substantial considering the fact that more than half of current 90+ drilling & workover rigs operated by Saudi Aramco are assigned for exploration and gas development drilling.

For more information visit www.techquest2011.com

All proposals, together with all Intellectual Property Rights therein, submitted to Saudi Aramco for the purpose of Technology Quest 2011 will remain the property of the owner and will be classed as confidential. Saudi Aramco views this venture as a partnership with successful participants.

Drilling Technology
Challenge 4: Smart LCM for Cavernous and Highly Fractured Loss Circulation Zones
Focus areas for Challenge: Drilling fluids

About the Challenge:

Several formations in Saudi Aramco fields such as Umm Er Radhuma (UER) and Shuaiba frequently causes substantial loss of circulation with partial to no return. So far no conventional LCM (loss circulation material) has shown an efficient control of loss of circulation in these fractured and cavernous formations. Hence, to overcome the technical limitation of the conventional LCM, we are looking for a smart LCM that is highly ductile, is extremely tough and has 50 to 100 folds swelling potential in salt water-based carrier system with programmable swelling rate to place in the right location

Deadline: Sept 16
How to get involved with Saudi Aramco Technology Quest 2011:
1. Review the research domain-wise challenges There are seven research domains, each with 1-5 challenges 2. Register your initial ideas Submit your collaboration idea that address the specific challenge before September 16, 2011 3. Register additional ideas Check other challenges and submit each collaboration idea individually 4. Hear back from Saudi Aramco Each collaboration idea will be sent to a specialist Saudi Aramco scientist who will respond to your idea within 7-10 days. Those who submit ideas with potential for future collaboration will be invited to attend the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest with a request to register at the website. For more information about the 2011 Saudi Aramco Technology Quest, please email: info@techquest2011.com

NOW!

Register

Why?
Saudi Aramco has faced the issue of loss of circulation of >100 bbls/hr to total (no return of circulation) due to the lack of an appropriate LCM that is applicable for highly fractured and cavernous formations. Due to the limitations of the conventional LCM, we are looking for a smart LCM that can adapt their shape and sizes to block different fracture and cavernous zones.

What?
The current practice and LCM often fail in fractured and cavernous loss zones due to improper LCM characteristics such as ductility, toughness, swelling and shape changing potential without failure, etc. Hence, development of a highly expandable, extremely tough, very ductile and flexible, high salinity and high temperature tolerant LCM can provide an excellent solution to our loss circulation problems.

Benefit:
There are enormous technical, economical and environmental benefits that can be obtained if we can reduce the loss circulation problem by 25% or more. From the economics point of view, it can save millions of dollars/year by eliminating the mud loss, reducing the treatment cost and eliminating the non-productive time (NPT) associated with loss of circulation. From a technical point of view, it can reduce the operational risk significantly with an improvement of drilling efficiency. And finally, from an environmental perspective, it can eliminate the detrimental effect of lost mud to fresh water zones and to the surrounding environment and habitats.

For more information visit www.techquest2011.com

All proposals, together with all Intellectual Property Rights therein, submitted to Saudi Aramco for the purpose of Technology Quest 2011 will remain the property of the owner and will be classed as confidential. Saudi Aramco views this venture as a partnership with successful participants.