Judy Clark
Senior Associate Editor
HOUSTON, May 3 -- James Farnsworth, BP PLC's vice-president, exploration, said May 2 that the advancement of technology is crucial to meeting the increasingly more-difficult challenges of exploration.
Two successful strategies BP takes to meet its frontier exploration goals is to acquire pioneer acreage early before the technology to develop it is even available and then collaborate with industry contractors to develop the necessary "Just in Time" technology, Farnsworth said. For example, BP led technology development when it provided 100% of the funding ($40 million) for seismic experiments with towed streamers and worked in collaboration with Schlumberger on an initiative to develop a program to run seismic data thru salt.
And, he said, "BP alone could never have developed all the technology [needed] for Thunder Horse," its deepwater Gulf of Mexico discovery (OGJ, May 2, 2005, p. 85). Those technologies developed over 5 years from the time BP acquired the license in 1994 to its first discovery well Jan. 1, 1999. Innovations during that time included 3D seismic, more than 100 new seabed and subsea components, fourth generation drill ships enabling the company to drill in deep water, and the first use of a 50,000 ton semisubmersible production platform. "All those components will come together later this year," he added.
BP also encourages the development of ideas within the company and has an Innovation Board to whom company personnel can go for seed money to develop their ideas.
Computer technology is the second vastly important development that has contributed volumes to exploration advances, Farnsworth said. He said BP increased its computer capability by three orders of magnitude during 1995-2005, enabling ever-larger amounts of data to be computed in time and facilitating complex migration and other solutions.
Fields of the future
New technology is needed to overcome problems inherent in drilling onshore, in deep water, and in the arctic; in subsalt exploration and where there are deep reservoir deposits, more expensive drilling, low-quality reservoirs, poorer seismic attributes, lower frequency seismic, heavy oil, and hydrates, Farnsworth said.
As the frontiers of exploration become more difficult, he said, "technology gets harder and harder, but somehow we always manage to come up with answers."
Contact Judy Clark at [email protected]
