FUGRO
Fugro is expanding its survey fleet in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) to include a new AUV, Echo Surveyor VII, and a new vessel, R/V Fugro Americas.
AUVs are the ultimate choice of instrument platform for deep sea and remote surveys. As well as providing improved multibeam swath coverage, The Echo Surveyor VII will support the acquisition of sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiler and CTD profiler data, and will carry various environmental sensors to meet a wide range of offshore survey demands.
With its tight turning circles that greatly reduce the time between survey lines, it will offer clients a wide range of features including an increase in depth rating to 4500 meters. Being fully airfreight portable, Echo Surveyor VII will also allow rapid mobilization.
The Fugro Americas is a state-of-the-art multi-purpose vessel well suited for high resolution geophysical surveys and seafloor mapping.
"We are extremely proud of the Fugro Americas and look forward to her arrival in service," says Jim Grady, Asset Manager, Fugro GeoServices, Inc. "At 193 feet she is bigger and faster than our current vessels in the GoM, has more berths as part of our purpose-built design, and is both quiet and fuel efficient. SOLAS classed, she is capable of undertaking seismic, conventional, AUV and geotechnical surveys thus providing the advantage of just one mobilization that can meet every client's needs."
Baker Hughes
Baker Hughes has announced the launch of the Navi-Drill™ Ultra™ Curve drilling motor, which drills high-build curves with precise directional control in horizontal shale plays.
Featuring reduced bit-to-bend length and improved toolface control, the Ultra Curve motor completes the vertical, curve, and lateral in one run, thereby exposing more of the reservoir and increasing well efficiency and productivity.
Because the steerable motor has a smaller adjustable kickoff angle requirement, it can provide higher and more consistent build-up rates in the curve section and better rotation through higher dogleg severities. It also delivers improved directional steering control through the lateral section and enhanced hole cleaning in the vertical section.
The Ultra Curve motor extends footage and rates of penetration in the vertical sections and improves the performance and directional consistency in the build section of wells, enabling precise wellbore placement and improving overall drilling performance and reducing well costs.
Guralp Systems
Guralp Systems announced the successful deployment of an array of ocean bottom nodes as part of a 3D active marine seismic survey offshore Australia. The nodes have extended the aperture of the streamer survey from 8km to 30km.
Guralp, in conjunction with their Australian representatives at the Seismology Research Centre, have recently supplied an array of 20 ocean bottom seismic nodes to the Australian Geophysical Observing System (AGOS). Following a test in shallow water the nodes were deployed for 1 week over an oil field on the North West Australian margin in a water depth of 1100m within the area of a 3D marine seismic survey. Seismic signals from the survey were recorded to offsets in excess of 30 km and could have been recorded to even larger offsets, had the acquisition geometry allowed larger separations between sources and receivers.
The Guralp nodes acquire 3 component broadband seismic data from 0.03Hz to 100Hz plus hydrophone data, and can operate for up to 12 months in water depths up to 6000m. The nodes were deployed using the 21m vessel Capricorn Lady equipped with an A-frame at the stern. The nodes sink to the ocean floor and start recording automatically. Their deployed location is determined using an acoustic positioning system. On completion of the survey the nodes are commanded to return to the surface using an acoustic communication link on the vessel. Once at the surface the nodes broadcast their position over radio to facilitate recovery.
Mark Volanthen, Managing Director of Guralp Oil & Gas stated "I am delighted that AGOS chose to work with Guralp on this project. This is the first time Guralp nodes have been used to provide additional data to streamer surveys. Our nodes are more frequently used for applications including surveillance of underground gas storage facilities, monitoring natural fractures in the overburden around oil & gas fields and life of field monitoring of oil & gas reservoirs to maximise hydrocarbon recovery."
Santrol
Santrol, a Fairmount Minerals company, announced the opening of its eighth proppant terminal in the Permian Basin as part of the continuing strategy to enhance customers' proppant transportation efficiency. The new Carlsbad, New Mexico, rail terminal is serving the western part of the basin.
Santrol's seven other Permian Basin terminals are located in Big Lake, Kermit, Monahans, Odessa, Slaton, and Sweetwater, Texas. Santrol's proppant distribution network now includes more than 50 terminals throughout the U.S. in all of the major conventional and unconventional hydrocarbon basins.
Additionally, Santrol announced the commercialization of CoolSet curable resin-coated proppant that sets in fractures to prevent proppant flowback at reservoir temperature of 100° F.
With robust unconfined compressive strength and enhanced conductivity, 20/40 CoolSet proppant increases hydrocarbon production. The technology, which is frac fluid and breaker friendly, also ensures better crush resistance, minimized proppant embedment, and significantly reduced fines generation.
Customers can rely on sourcing this curable proppant from Santrol's eight Permian Basin terminals that now circle the vital hydrocarbon play, in addition to receiving CoolSet proppant in other important oil and gas regions, such as the Midcon.
Cameron
Cameron's CryoCAM plant is now online at Nuevo Midstream's Ramsey processing facility in Reeves County, Texas.
Cameron's CryoCAM 200-MMscfd cryogenic gas processing plant for the Phase III expansion of Nuevo's gas gathering, processing and treating system in the Delaware Basin near Orla, Texas in now online. The new CryoCAM plant brings the total cryogenic gas processing capacity of the Nuevo system to 300 MMscfd, nearly tripling its current capacity.
Cameron has introduced two new standardized modular configurations of its CryoCAM cryogenic gas processing plants for maximum natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery using NGL-MAXSM technology from Randall Gas Technologies. Cameron offers standard 75-and 200-MMscfd cryogenic gas processing plants.
CryoCAM gas processing plants are based on well-established NGL-MAX technology, a patented process that can provide maximum NGL recovery by using semi-lean and lean reflux, and has the flexibility to increase throughput at slightly lower recoveries. Typical ethane recoveries are 97%, while also recovering nearly 100% of the propane and heavier components in ethane recovery mode and propane recoveries of 95% and 10% of ethane in ethane rejection mode. The process can provide up to 10% additional gas liquids revenue when compared to non-proprietary designs.
Cameron also manufactures high-performance process solutions, providing custom-engineered and standardized process packages for separation of oil, gas, produced water and solids. With products and technologies from the former PETRECO® and NATCO®, Cameron's portfolio includes liquids recovery, large-membrane CO2 separation, amine sweetening, MEG reclamation, glycol dehydration, compact separation and more.
Schlumberger
Announced the introduction of the GeoSphere* reservoir mapping-while-drilling service. The new technology reveals features in subsurface beddings and fluid contacts at the reservoir scale to optimize well landing operations, steering capabilities and mapping of multiple boundaries using new deep-directional resistivity measurements enabled by proprietary real-time interpretation techniques.
With a deep range of investigation that extends more than 100 ft. from the wellbore, drilling teams can use the GeoSphere service to reduce drilling risk and accurately land wells, resulting in the elimination of pilot holes. In addition, the real-time reservoir mapping-while-drilling service enables the positioning of wells within target reservoirs, away from fluid boundaries, leading to increased reservoir exposure as well as allowing geoscientists to refine their seismic interpretation and geological and structural models.
The GeoSphere service has been tested in more than 140 wells worldwide, including locations in North America, South America, Europe, Middle East, Russia and Australia.
According to the company, in the North Sea, a customer used the GeoSphere service to successfully land a well and detect the top of the reservoir target from a distance of nearly 50 ft., allowing for optimization of the drilling plan before the formation was drilled. With the drill bit over 300 ft. away from the target reservoir, the mapping-while-drilling technology confirmed that there was considerable distance for adjusting the trajectory if needed, to optimize reservoir entry. In offshore Brazil, a customer deployed GeoSphere technology to accurately map multiple deepwater-well reservoir sections. The reservoir mapping-while-drilling service was used to guide well steering decisions, which enabled the customer to improve the drain position, avoid unplanned exits from target reservoirs, and to acquire reservoir knowledge to optimize production. And in Northern Europe, a customer used the GeoSphere service to double the reservoir net-to-gross ratio from 0.45 to 0.96 on two horizontal wells with complex geologies. The increased exposure in this thin bed discontinuous reservoir, compared to all previous wells in the field, resulted in a production improvement in both wells of more than 8,000 additional bbl./day.
Baker Hughes
Announced that its Magnitude joint venture has expanded its capabilities to provide dedicated resources and technologies for borehole, surface, and permanent microseismic monitoring. With this expansion, Magnitude offers a full range of microseismic services—including acquisition, processing, and integrated interpretation—that can help operators improve well completion design and maximize recovery at a lower cost per barrel. Specifically, these services can reduce the risks and uncertainties related to fracture stimulation operations, providing operators with the information needed to optimize stimulation designs, avoid geo-hazards, and characterize treatment impact on the formation in real time.
A key component of Magnitude's new services is a team of seasoned experts whose disciplines range from engineering, geophysics and microseismic, to wireline and rock mechanics. By offering all monitoring applications, Magnitude experts can recommend optimum acquisition designs for any well configuration, with no bias toward any specific approach. During the fracture stimulation, microseismic data is acquired using one or more of the array configurations and processed in real time to provide almost instantaneous feedback of basic fracture network geometry, containment, event magnitudes, and other properties. This realtime feedback enables operators to adjust treatment designs on-the-fly, if desired, or to evaluate treatment effectiveness when coupled with fracture modeling. Post-processing analysis is then provided to optimize future well spacing, stage spacing, number of perforation clusters and general fracture modeling for future wells.
Microseismic monitoring is used in various settings with sensors deployed in boreholes, at the surface, or near-surface. Borehole monitoring utilizes a multilevel array of geophones, placed in a nearby observation well, at a depth close to the targeted zone. Surface monitoring uses arrays of several thousands of geophones placed at ground level in a configuration specially engineered to cancel noise and maximize seismic waveform detection. Finally, near surface monitoring relies on shallow buried arrays of a few multilevel sensors installed at 200 to 300 ft. depth. Permanent installations can be used for large field frac monitoring, refrac monitoring or monitoring of induced microearthquakes around treatment or waste disposal wells.
The TechnoWise Group, Inc.
The TechnoWise Group, Inc. announced that it has signed a worldwide Distribution Agreement for Weatherford International to exclusively promote and sell MotorWise motor controllers in oilfield applications.
MotorWise controllers provide real-time intelligent control of the power delivered to the AC electric motors used in pumping units, which are the largest consumer of energy in production oilfields. The patented system uses the latest Digital Signal Processing (DSP) energy management technology to apply energy optimization algorithms that reduce and even eliminate the flow of unused or wasted power used by the motor without affecting operation of the pumping system. Ultimately, operators can significantly reduce their operational expenses by decreasing and even stopping the electrical power multiple times during each pump stroke.
Modular by design, the MotorWise motor controller is compatible with conventional, beam-balanced, and enhanced geometry pumping units allowing operators to easily scale back their energy needs for their pumping units. Additionally, the controller also acts as a soft-start device to further enhance performance of the pumping system.
The partnership is part of Weatherford's strategic focus on its core businesses, specifically production optimization. The MotorWise motor controllers will allow the companies to address production declines and the rise of unconventional resources throughout North America and abroad.
Magnetek, Inc.
Magnetek, Inc., a supplier of digital power and motion control systems, today announced the availability of wireless controls certified for use in potentially hazardous locations. The Company received both ATEX and IECEx certifications for their XLTX and MLTX2 wireless controls, which are now approved for use in EX Zone 0, Zone 1, and Zone 2 hazardous environments.
"We are pleased to receive the ATEX and IECEx certifications for our XLTX and MLTX2 transmitters, as these wireless controls are now certified to control equipment used worldwide in potentially hazardous applications such as oil and gas applications, petro chemical operations, and above ground mining," said Ben Stoller, director of radio controls. "End user acceptance of the stringent ATEX and IECEx standards is typical in North America and worldwide."
ATEX compliance, required by the European Union, certifies that Magnetek wireless controls are safe to use in potentially explosive areas with flammable gases or vapors. IECEx equipment certification signifies that Magnetek's wireless controls conform to international safety standards for environments where a potential exists for explosions.
Oil States International, Inc.
Announced that its Board of Directors has approved the spin-off of its accommodations business, recently named Civeo Corporation, through the distribution of all the shares of Civeo common stock to the holders of Oil States common stock.
Following the spin-off, Civeo will be an independent, publicly traded company, and Oil States will retain no ownership in Civeo. In connection with the spin-off, Civeo will make cash distribution of
$750.0 million to Oil States; Civeo intends to fund this distribution with cash proceeds from borrowings under its expected $775 million term loan.
Oil States has received a private letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service to the effect that, among other things, the distribution of Civeo common stock to Oil States stockholders, together with certain related transactions, will qualify as a transaction that is tax-free for U.S. federal income tax purposes. Oil States stockholders should consult their own tax advisors as to the particular tax consequences of the distribution, including potential tax consequences under state, local and non-U.S. tax laws.
No action is required by Oil States stockholders to receive shares of Civeo common stock. Oil States stockholders are not required to pay anything for the new shares nor to surrender any shares of Oil States common stock to participate in the spin-off. Civeo common stock will be issued only by direct registration in book-entry form. An Information Statement containing details regarding the distribution of the Civeo common stock and Civeo's business and management following the spin-off will be mailed to Oil States stockholders prior to the distribution date.
The completion of the spin-off is subject to the satisfaction or waiver by Oil States of a number of conditions, including (1) the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring effective the Registration Statement on Form 10 for Civeo common stock, (2) Civeo paying a special dividend of $750.0 million to Oil States and (3) certain other conditions described in the Form 10. In addition, Oil States has the right not to complete the spin-off if, at any time prior to the distribution, the Board of Directors of Oil States determines, in its sole discretion, that the spin-off is not in the best interests of Oil States or its stockholders or that market conditions are such that it is not advisable to separate Civeo from Oil States.