Offshore Magazine

Drilling through bitumen in the GoM

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Frank Hartley,
Drilling & Production Editor

HOUSTON -- Bitumen formations in deepwater GoM have posed significant challenges to operators such as Hess (Pony), BP (Mad Dog), ConocoPhilips (Spa Prospect), and Chevron (Big Foot), said Gang Han with the Hess Corporation at the 2008 Offshore Technology Conference today in Houston. In many cases, bitumen encounters have resulted in significant delay in drilling schedule, often sidetrack or even well abandonment, according to Han.

Han says understanding bitumens behaviors under in-situ stress and temperature conditions, bitumens formation geometry, and driving mechanisms through material modeling and applying 3D numerical analyses may help reveal the myth.

05/05/08

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