First-ever FDPSO at work on Azurite field development

Eldon Ball • Houston

History was made in August 2009 when Murphy West Africa Ltd. began producing the Azurite field offshore Republic of Congo. Azurite uses the industry’s first floating, drilling, production, storage, and offloading (FDPSO) vessel.

While the FDPSO concept has been of interest for some time, Murphy West Africa and its contractor partners made the concept a reality. It is a robust concept with potential for broader applications as the number of pioneer deepwater discoveries shrinks and as the industry seeks new ways to monetize stranded pockets of oil and gas.

Murphy West Africa and its contractor partners successfully demonstrated the viability of the FDPSO concept. The economic benefits of incorporating a drilling rig onboard an FPSO brings new hope for deepwater developments in similar environments. See the article in this month’s issue byHarry Howard and Ken Hampshire of Murphy Exploration and Production , with Jeffrey Moore, Charles White, and Ken Bayne of Doris Inc. beginning on page 56.

Falklands drilling program to test new play types, deeper objectives

One of the “final” exploration frontiers falls under the spotlight next February when drilling resumes off the Falkland Islands. The semisubmersibleOcean Guardian will spud the first series of wells in these waters since the pioneering campaign of 1998.

London-based Desire Petroleum, the driving force behind the new program, is the sole remaining participant from the original license consortia that hired the semiBorgny Dolphin for back-to-back wells in the North Falkland basin. All the other members, including Agip, Hess, Murphy, and Shell, pulled out following negative reactions to the drilling results.

Read the full story of Desire Petroleum’s plans for the Falklands byJeremy Beckman,Editor, Europe, beginning on page 28.

Two-year-old independent OGX of Brazil finds success

Founded just two years ago, the Brazilian oil company OGX Petróleo e Gás Participações already reports indications of hydrocarbons in two of the 22 high-potential exploration blocks it owns offshore Brazil.

OGX is notable for its entirely Brazilian composition. Like national oil company Petrobras, where OGX found and recruited its engineering talent, Brazil’s largest independent views the booming local oil and gas industry with national pride.

“OGX’s success is the proof that it is worthwhile investing on talent of the Brazilian people as well as on the richness and abundance of our natural resources. These recent discoveries will contribute to a robust economic growth and bring greater social justice,”Eike Batista, OGX’s founder and principal shareholder, tells Offshore magazine.

Contributing Editor Peter Howard Wertheim reports, beginning on page 34.

Best practices for offshore directional drilling

The increasingly crowded offshore drilling environment and the trend toward optimizing production means great emphasis must be placed on avoiding collisions with offset wellbores in developed fields. Collision with a producing well can cause a loss of well control, resulting in a significant impact on productive time and income from shut-in wells.

A study by BP and Baker Hughes illustrates best practices for planning and drilling phases in developed fields to minimize these risks and to optimize production, with special consideration to the following:

• Whipstock placement and orientation to simultaneously avoid collision risks and optimize directional drilling
• Reducing directional uncertainties by using gyro MWD and single/multishot gyro tools while drilling near offset wells
• Anticollision management using traveling cylinder plot and spider plot.

The full study is detailed byBryan Daire, Theodore Eicks, and Leo Jew of BP , with Nitin Sharma, Mike McDonald, and Jeffrey Mohammed of Baker Hughes beginning on page 44.

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