Table of Contents

The integration of multiple data sets enables a more robust subsalt interpretation and provides a new method to predict structural traps that are cored by deep allochthonous salt in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

Enventure’s recent record-setting installation of solid expandable tubulars in ultra deep Gulf of Mexico (GoM) waters establishes a new era for technology once contained to contingency applications. Today, expandable tubulars are increasingly seen as an opportunity to reach oil and gas resources in reservoirs of extreme depth, pressure, and temperature.

Deepwater drilling today – in the Gulf of Mexico and other basins worldwide – often involves drilling both salt and subsalt intervals. Over the past decade, the use of expandable concentric underreamers or “hole openers” in deepwater drilling has become widespread. An estimated 75% of the salt/subsalt sections in the GoM now use underreamers. There are various reasons to enlarge a hole, including to enhance equivalent circulating density, to reduce cementing pressures, and to counter salt creep so casing will reach bottom. Underreamers are especially important in deepwater wells that require numerous casing strings.

The Deep Offshore Technology International Conference and Exhibition (DOT) returns to Houston Feb. 2-4, 2010, at the George R. Brown Convention Center with this year’s theme “Knowledge is Your Edge.” The theme indicates the critical role of technology in finding, developing, and producing oil and gas in deepwater and ultra deepwater regions around the world. For more than 22 years, DOT has been a forum for industry leaders to address technical issues, to introduce pioneering technology, and to share lessons learned about.

The use of synthetic components in deepwater mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU) mooring systems has become a viable option to extend the mooring capabilities of a MODU. To date, the use of synthetic components in MODU moorings has been limited mostly to polyester, with few exceptions. In a recent study, one alternative synthetic mooring component, high modulus polyethylene (HMPE), for use in deepwater MODU mooring systems is determined it can be engineered to perform similarly to a polyester system in deepwater applications, including survivability and with improved station keeping ability.

Drilling in the US Gulf of Mexico continued to decline in 2009 and is forecast to be flat this year; however, activity has been steady in deepwater, notably in water depths of greater than 3,000 ft (914 m). Operators in 2009 announced 13 deepwater discoveries, 10 of which are in greater than 3,000 ft of water and on pace with the previous two years. The 2009 deepwater discoveries, announced through end-November, represent nearly 1.4 Bboe, the most found in a single year in the GoM since 2002, according to Wood Mackenzie. One discovery, BP-operated Tiber, is estimated by Wood Mackenzie to hold about 600 MMboe of recoverable reserves, ranking it as one of the largest deepwater fields in the GoM.

Just as the voyagers of the science fiction Starship Enterprise probed the outer reaches of space to reveal new worlds, oil and gas exploration teams, working in the real world, have boldly gone where no one has gone before to discover giant fields in the deepest reaches of the Gulf of Mexico. They have taken a peek at billions of barrels of potential reserves. There are no Klingons to battle, but the operators and service companies will have to deploy next-generation technologies, some still in design and development, to overcome the greatest risks the industry has encountered to date. The technology challenges include extreme water and target depths, seismically dense salt canopy, low-porosity and low-permeability reservoirs, and high-pressure/high-temperature (HP/HT) downhole conditions.