Improved Recovery Week articles from March 1998

Improved Recovery Week archives from March 1998

Congress urged to rein-in EIS zealots who delay oil/gas projects on federal lands, inflate costs. (environmental impact statement)
March 30, 1998... Congress needs to rein-in bureaucratic zealots who are delaying legitimate development on federal lands and adding unnecessary costs, declares an E&P company that struggled for three years to get a coalbed methane project approved in Utah....

Companies to invest 20 bln. pesos for Cantarell revival this year. (Mexico; oil field)
March 30, 1998... The huge offshore Cantarell field, which has been a major player in Mexico's crude oil production for nearly 17 years, will receive some 20 billion pesos in new investment this year, says Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the country's national oil...

Texaco awards team for hiking gas production at old Permian Basin field from 2 to 56 mmcf/d. (Texaco Exploration and Production Inc.)
March 30, 1998... A nine-member team of Texaco E&P Inc. engineers recently received a company award for work that increased gas production from 2 mmcf/d to more than 56 mmcf/d at a field in the Permian Basin of Texas. For their revitalization of the Bryant "G"...

U.S./Canadian joint venture sets gas hydrates development.
March 30, 1998... Canada and the U.S. recently signed a joint venture to pursue research that will help secure mutual future energy resources. U.S. Energy Secretary Federico Pena and Canadian Natural Resources Minister Ralph Goodale signed a Memorandum of...

Ok. governor names emergency panel to dull oil price effects. (Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating)
March 30, 1998... There is some hope that oil prices will rebound if OPEC and other overseas oil exporting countries hold back production. However, in states like Oklahoma, the government already is making plans on what to do if the price drop emergency...

Saga swaps horizontals for verticals at Snorre; Norwegian government delays second phase. (Saga Petroleum ASA)
March 30, 1998... Developers of at least one offshore oil field believe drilling conventional shallow-angle vertical wells now is preferable to drilling long-reach horizontal wells. Oslo, Norway-based Saga Petroleum ASA noted recently that operational...

Syncrude's Aurora Mine gets Alberta govt. O.K.; C$1.5 billion facility deemed 'amended' project. (Syncrude Canada Ltd.)
March 30, 1998... The Aurora Mine, the C$1.5 billion oil sands mining facility being built by Syncrude Canada Ltd., in Alberta, received its final approval recently from the Alberta government. The mine is part of Syncrude's nearly C$6 billion in expansion...

Swift finals two Giddings horizontal wells; one is 'most prolific' in company's history. (Swift Energy Co.)
March 30, 1998... Houston-based Swift Energy Co. says two recently completed horizontal wells in the Giddings field in Texas' Austin Chalk play are "keepers." One of them, in fact, promises to be the most prolific working interest well drilled in the...

New permanent downhole meter measures water breakthrough.
March 30, 1998... More accuracy is being promised in measuring the extent of water-breakthrough in wells using a novel permanent downhole metering system put on the market by the Expro group. The company, which operates from headquarters in Aberdeen,...

New York calls for R&D proposals; will fund up to $75,000 for each. (Natural Gas and Petroleum Exploration Target Development Program)
March 30, 1998... New York's Energy Research and Development Administration (NYSERDA) has made some $300,000 available for technical proposals for the state's Natural Gas and Petroleum Exploration Target Development Program. The idea, say NYSERDA officials,...

Global Marine touts GOM turnkey drilling; practice also spreads beyond U.S. borders. (Gulf of Mexico)
March 30, 1998... While some critics say "turnkey" drilling in the Gulf of Mexico has lost its popularity with the onset of higher service and supply costs, Houston-based Global Marine Inc. says its turnkey unit is doing just fine. And that may translate into...

Two western companies embark on Chinese field rehabs; projects focus on Zhongyuan Basin wells.
March 23, 1998... The historically oil-rich Zhongyuan Basin, in the east-central area of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC), is due for a major shift in field redevelopment, with North American companies at the helm. The basin, located about 400 miles south...

Imperial cuts C$130 million in spending at Cold Lake; drilling, new plant construction deferred. (Imperial Oil Ltd.)
March 23, 1998... In Western Canada, oil sands bitumen producers continue to cut back on developing newly announced projects. With world oil prices at their lowest in nearly 10 years and differentials between heavy oil and conventional light crude widening, a...

DOE notes new drilling technologies applied in Alaskan fields; 360 degrees 'tight-turn' well set. (Department of Energy)
March 23, 1998... As the latest application of new drilling technology at Alaska's North Slope area oil fields, ARCO Alaska Inc. and BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. have pioneered through-tubing rotary drilling (TTRD). The savings brought about by existing well...

DOE solicits for new technologies to postpone well abandonments and to arrest declining oil reserves.
March 16, 1998... The Energy Dept., having recently proposed a nominal budget appropriations increase for fiscal 1999 in oil and natural gas R&D, is backing up its announced faith in cost-shared R&D by calling for development of new technologies/approaches to...

Utah extends tax credit on oil and gas workovers.
March 16, 1998... Producers in Utah have an additional five years to benefit from severance tax credits on oil and gas recompletions and workovers. The Utah legislature recently passed and sent on to the governor a bill to extend to 2004 the credits, which...

Shell Canada-BHP to spend C$100 million gauging oil sands mine, pipeline, upgrader. (Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd.)
March 16, 1998... Last week's announcement by Shell Canada Ltd. and its partner, Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd. that they will spend more than C$100 million this year to evaluate theft Alberta oil sands project is another sign that the heavy oil "big picture"...

Statoil announces effort to collect waste CO2, inject it in offshore fields as new EOR method.
March 16, 1998... Taking a tip from the U.S. and Canadian governments' new program to inject waste carbon dioxide into coal beds to produce methane, Norway's state oil company has set up a 3-year, US$7 million project that will include injecting waste C[O.sub.2]...

Numac cuts heavy oil flow; awaits 'challenging' deals. (Numac Energy Inc.)
March 16, 1998... Calgary-based Numac Energy Inc. has severely curtailed spending on its heavy oil activities, particularly at its Manatokan project in Alberta. The company blamed the impact of the deterioration in crude oil prices and differentials have had...

Lawson follows Wesson in directorship of NPTO. (William Lawson; Thomas C. Wesson; DOE's National Petroleum Technology Office)
March 16, 1998... William Lawson, a technology manager and researcher at the Energy Dept.'s Federal Energy Technology Center (FETC), on April 12 will become the new manager of DOE's National Petroleum Technology Office in Tulsa, Okla. Lawson succeeds Thomas...

Ground vibration studies as means to hike oil flow from marginal wells; 10 producers join in.
March 16, 1998... A group of oil companies and the Los amos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico are investigating claims by Russian earth scientists that exposure to low-frequency seismic waves actually helps boost oil production from marginal fields....

Pemex to inject natural gas in 2-year-old fields. (Petroleos Mexicanos)
March 16, 1998... Mexico's national oil company says it will spend $100 million during the next two years to develop on-shore fields in the Joju-Tecominoacan project area in the southeastern region of the country The spending on natural gas injection...

Texan's 'in-kind' royalty bill referred to committee. (Rep. Mac Thornberry; oil and gas royalties)
March 16, 1998... Legislation to change the way producing companies pay oil and gas royalties produced on federal lands, introduced in the House recently by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Tex., has been referred to committee. The bill, HR 3334, would no longer require...

Mobil Canada applies HFVS seismic technology to help confirm 1.5 billion bbls. of bitumen. (High Fidelity Vibratory Seismic)
March 16, 1998... Patented High Fidelity Vibratory Seismic (HFVS) technology developed by Mobil Corp. was used to improve the quality of data interpretation from a drilling program conducted by the company's Canadian subsidiary for its proposed oil sands mine in...

W.J. Rosenbloom. (patented a method and apparatus for solvent extraction of oil from oil sands bitumen)
March 16, 1998... W.J. Rosenbloom has patented a method and apparatus for the solvent extraction of oil from oil sands bitumen. Tar sand and water are combined with heated thinning oil to digest the bitumen rapidly and form a feed slurry having a lower viscosity...

Wyoming coalbed methane area faces 10-year drilling boom; producers propose 3,000 more wells by 2008.
March 9, 1998... Coalbed methane producers are proposing to drill another 3,000 wells in Wyoming's Powder River Basin over the next decade. According to the Bureau of Land Management, Barrett Resources of Denver is leading an effort to gain environmental...

Cotton Valley drills slim-hole laterals to test feasibility for water injection, stripper upgrades. (Cotton Valley Resources Corp.)
March 9, 1998... Results of preliminary development in two West Texas oil fields have convinced Dallas-based Cotton Valley Resources Corp. of the mechanical feasibility of drilling multiple slim-hole laterals from existing wells both for waterflood injection...

Cymric field, with California's largest production hike in 1997, gets shot at 300-million-bbl. total.
March 9, 1998... An 88-year-old Kern County oil field that last year chalked up the largest production increase of any field in California will get another chance to boost production. Chevron USA Inc. recently fried for permits to drill 28 development wells...

U.K. coalgas development begins to heat up as second field scheduled to come on stream.
March 9, 1998... Approval has been given for Britain's second commercial coalbed methane project - with a promise from the government that it will review the licensing system to encourage more exploration for the coal-related gas. Coal Bed Methane Ltd....

Closed-loop CO2 injection/coalbed methane production project cold cut 'global warming,' hike gas supply.
March 2, 1998... With the U.S. and Canada being among nations commit-ted to cutting back on greenhouse gas emissions, a fast-track initiative has been initiated that could create significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions, the chief "global warming"...

With solid proof that it works, BLM extends stripper oil royalty breaks on federal lands. (Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management)
March 2, 1998... With current world wellhead prices for oil sinking ever lower, many U.S. independent producers likely are relieved that the Interior Dept.'s Bureau of Land Management has extended lower royalty rates for marginal oil wells on federal lands....

Saskatchewan sells out as half-owner of Bi-Provincial Upgrader; Husky mulls expansion. (province sells stake to Husky Oil Operations Ltd)
March 2, 1998... Canada's Saskatchewan province has sold its 50% interest in the 53,000-b/d Bi-Provincial Upgrader (BPU) at Lloydminster, Alta. to Husky Oil Operations Ltd. for C$310 million. The sale was announced Feb. 19 by the province's Crown Investments...

Suncor selling upgrader 'off-gas' to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, add new revenue. (Suncor Energy)
March 2, 1998... As part of a campaign to cut greenhouse as emissions at its huge oil sands operation in Alberta, Suncor Energy plans to sell natural gas liquids and olefins from its "offgas" instead of burning them to help fuel thermal operations. In the...