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Energy and Environmental > Oil and Gas > Flashcards

Oil and Gas Flashcards

1
Q

What are fossil fuels?

A

Hydrocarbon deposits resulting from high pressure-temperature transformation by earth stresses of plant and animal (plankton) remains

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2
Q

What are some types of conventional fossil fuels?

A

Coal, light oil and natural gas

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3
Q

What are some non-conventional fossil fuels?

A

Heavy oil, tar sands,oil shales

gas shale, gas hydrates, coalbed methane

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4
Q

When does OPEC forecast that oild demand will plateu?

A

2040 - 109.3 million barrels a day

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5
Q

How much oil is there in the world?

A

3000 billion barrels ultimate
1000 billion bbl produced
1300 billion bbl in reserves
YTF - 400-700 bllion bbl

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6
Q

What does YTF stand for?

A

Yet to find

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7
Q

What is the global production of oil?

A

67 million barrels a day from 850, 000 wells

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8
Q

How many fields are in the middle east?

A

150

produce 17 million barrels a day of oil

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9
Q

What does E&P stand for?

A

exploration and production

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10
Q

What is exploration?

A

The process of finding new, previously undrilled oil and gas accumulations.

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11
Q

What do we need to identify to find oil and gas accumulations?

A
  • new sedimentary basins
  • understanding source/ resevoir seal distribution
  • Identifying new prospects and leads
  • drilling exploration wells to prove-up new reserves/ resources
  • mainly involvy geology and geophysics
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12
Q

What is production?

A

The process of appraisal, development planning and resevoir management (‘production’) in order to produce and sell oil and gas

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13
Q

What needs to be identifyed for production?

A
  • Field appraisal: resevoir and fluid types, reserves volumes
  • devlopment planning: platforms, wells, pipelines, depletion etc.
  • fluid production, injection, depletion, improved/ enhanced recovery etc.
  • mainly involves geology, geophtsics and petroleum engineering
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14
Q

What was involved in the oil industry in the 90s?

A

Upstream:
(exploration, development and production)
Midstream:
(Intermediate processing: LNG, GTL, upgrading
Downstream:
(refining, transportation, distribution, storage, retailing)
Pipeline and marine

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15
Q

How do we look for oil?

A
  • start with sedimentary basins
  • look for world class source rocks
  • generation and migration
  • resevoir
  • trap
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16
Q

What do we look for in world class source rocks?

A

7 geological intervals well known from global studies

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17
Q

What do we look gor in oil generation and migration?

A
  • sufficient heat flow and major structural elements
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18
Q

What do we look for in a resevoir?

A
  • thick permeable sandstones and carbonates

- the major deltas and carbonate platforms through geological time

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19
Q

What do we look for in a trap?

A
  • Giant structures sealed by mudstones or salt
20
Q

What is a trap?

A

A geological structure affecting the resevoir rock and caprock of a petroleum system allowing the accumulation of hydrocarbons in a resevoir

21
Q

What are the two kinds of traps?

A
  • stratigraphic or structural
22
Q

Describe a trap?

A

A capping layer, with a later of oil and gas underneath, a laer of water, and then rock and source rock. The source rock emite oil and gas with heat, which comes from the crust, and the migration of oil to the surface is throgu buoyancy

23
Q

What makes a good resevoir?

A

A porous, poorly graded later of rocks

24
Q

What happens in maturation?

A

Kerogen is converted into petroleum

25
Q

What forces petroleum up?

A

Overpressure due to volume expansion

26
Q

What temperature is required for the source rock to become petroleum?

A

between 100-150 C

27
Q

What are the different types of traps?

A
  • anclinal (upside down V)
  • Fault trap (geological shift, causing il, gas and water to be trapped
  • unconformity trap (layer of rock over the top of the trap,
28
Q

As we can’t actually dig under the surface to see the traps, how do we find them?

A
  • surface geology
  • potential fields methods
  • reflection seismic
29
Q

What is involved in surface geology surveying?

A

Assume that the structure in the subsurface is realted to the strucutre at the surface

  • extremely succesfil in ‘the old days’
  • nowadays helped by satellite imagery
30
Q

What is involved in potential field methods of surveying?

A

Mostly gravity, magnetics and electro magnetics

measure trends and anomalies

  • rather imprecise, allowing only to see major structural features (basins and highs)
  • often used in initial stages of exploration to select areas to be covered with seismic data
31
Q

What is involved in reflection seismic surveying?

A

imaging the subsurface by reflected sound waves. Can use explosives, compresed air, vibrators, ‘thumpers’

  • onshore and offshore, easier offshore
  • most important imaging/ detection tool, which has been phonmenally improved in accuracy over the past decades due to advances in computing
  • nowadays can directly producce ‘geological cross-sections’ of the earth
  • sometimes oil and gas can be seen directly on seismic data
32
Q

How is a sedimentary basin found from the air?

A

a sedimentary basin will have a drop in magnetic field

33
Q

What is reflection seismic?

A
  • visalises contrasts in acoustic properties, harder and softer rocks
  • hardness is called ‘acoustic impedance’
  • it’s the product of density and velocity of the rock
  • oil and gas filled porosity tends to make the rock softer (then water filled porosity) and is therefore potentially visible on seismic
34
Q

What is the problem with reflection seimsic surveying?

A
  • low resolution due to the wavelengths of the signals used
35
Q

How is reflection seismic data aquired?

A
  • Source is triggered - acoustic waves into ground
  • signals are digitally recorded and processed
  • resulting “data” when properly processed can reflect the structure of strata in the subsurface
36
Q

How are land seismic surveys done?

A

geophones (seismic sensors) are laid out along the survey line
line of explosives are placed in a shot hole a few feet below the surface or a vibroseis source is used
- the vibrator is a metal plate whch is mounted on a truck and vibrated at precise frequencies

37
Q

How are land surveys done on mountains?

A

using geophones is the best way, cementing them in yields the best results

dyamite causes too much damage

38
Q

How are marine seismic surveys done?

A

offshore seismic sensors (hydrophones) are towed within long streamers by a boat
air guns serve as the energy source for this

39
Q

How does a drilling system work?

A

It is a closed loop, where mud is injected into the bored holes.
The mud has several functions
- Water or oil based
- choice dependent on conditions

40
Q

What is the purpouse of mud in drilling?

A
  • well control
  • cleaning the hole
  • cutting agent
  • hole stability
  • formation evaluation
41
Q

How do we design a well?

A
  • we case off the hole and reduce the hole size as we go down
    this redueces the risk of hole collapse - instability that usually increases with open hole itme
  • prevent fracture failure at shallower depths as a result of high weight mud
  • to siolate overpressured zones which could lead to well control problems
42
Q

what are the different tpes of drilling rigs?

A
  • land rigs 8-70k a dayup to 9000m depth
  • semi-subs 60-180 k a day
    2250 m of water
  • jack-ups 30-300k a day <50m of water
  • drill ships (3000m of water ) $1 mil a day
43
Q

Critical issues from the macondo well?

A
  1. poor/ absent cement job
  2. 1400 psi presure on the drill line when displacing mud with sea water (should have been 0 or -ve)
  3. failure of BOP to function correctyl
  4. no effective well capping in place for this water depth
44
Q

How was the macondo well problem fixed?

A

a ‘top hat’ that sat on top of the well

45
Q

How much oil, in how long was discharged into the see from macondo?

A

152 days, 4.9 billion barrels

Energy and Environmental (8 decks)

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