Superset Weeks 1-14

Which main ruling by the Mexican government caused Mexico to cease being a leading oil power?

Declaring that everything under the surface belonged to the people of Mexico

argillaceous

Describing rocks or sediments containing particles that are silt- or clay-sized, less than 0.625 mm in size. Most have a high clay-mineral content, and many contain a sufficient percentage of organic material to be considered a source rock for hydrocarbon.

arenaceous

Describing sandy-textured rock or sediment. Arenaceous does not necessarily imply silica-rich, but rather particles of sand size, 0.625 to 2 mm, according to the Udden-Wentworth scale.

Lord Mayor of London

Marcus Samuel took this position on November 10, 1902; this position made him lose his focus on the oil industry, and drove Fred Lane to leave the company later that year.

Which company acquired Mexican Eagle then had the investment fail soon after?

Shell

Chiah Surkh

Signs of oil first appear in Persia at this site in October 1903 after 11 months of drilling.

bed rock

Solid rock either exposed at the surface or situated below surface soil, unconsolidated sediments and weathered rock.

fluid properties and reservoir drive mechanisms

The choice of IPR used can depend on

asthenosphere

The relatively plastic layer of the upper mantle of the Earth on which the tectonic plates of the lithosphere move.

basement

The rock layer below which economic hydrocarbon reservoirs are not expected to be found

William Knox D'Arcy

This man is dubbed the founder of the oil industry in the Middle East; he gained his wealth from organizing a gold mine syndicate in Australia.

Thomas Boverton Redwood

This man suggested that D'Arcy should apply for a loan from the British Admiralty to continue the Persian oil exploration; he was also a member of the Admiralty's Fuel Oil Committee.

Henri Deterding

This man took over both Royal Dutch and Shell following their amalgamation in 1907.

Russo-Japanese War

This war between Russia and Japan commenced in January 1904; the Russian forces ended up losing horribly by the end of 1905.

Deutsche Bank, Nobels, Rothschilds

Who formed the European Petroleum Union (EPU) in 1906?

To obtain warm water ports

Why did Russia seek expansion into Central Asia in the early 1860's?

Rough terrain/climate; Unstable politics

Why did drilling in Persia prove to be a challenge for the British?

They worried that Russia or France may gain control of the region.

Why did the British Admiralty invest in D'Arcy's venture for oil in Persia after initially denying him a loan?

Oil-based muds

mud consist of water droplets dispersed in a continuous oil phase

Underbalanced Perforating

surge flow of fluid into the wellbore should clean the perforation tunnel of all disaggregated rock and liner debris during

depth of invasion of solids and filtrate

the state of dispersion of solids in the mud, the size and concentration of solids and polymers in the mud, the pore throat size or permeability of the formation, the pH and salinity of the filtrate, and the water sensitivity of the formation are all factors that affect

multiple rate tests

1. n. [Well Testing] Tests conducted at a series of different flow rates for the purpose of determining well deliverability, typically in gas wells where non-Darcy flow near the well results in a rate-dependent skin effect.

liquid level

1. n. [Well Testing] The depth at which the first liquid is found in a well.

late time transient data

1. n. [Well Testing] The portion of the pressure transient occurring after radial flow.

initial reservoir pressure

1. n. [Well Testing] The reservoir pressure measured in a discovery well, usually referred to as pi. This value is necessary for many reservoir engineering calculations, such as reserve determination.

multiphase flow

1. n. [Well Testing] The simultaneous flow of more than one fluid phase through a porous medium. Most oil wells ultimately produce both oil and gas from the formation, and often produce water.

line source solution

1. n. [Well Testing] The solution to differential equations treating the well as a vertical line through a porous medium. The solution is nearly identical to the finite-wellbore solution.

injection well testing

1. n. [Well Testing] The testing of wells in which fluid is being injected into the reservoir. The most common type of test is a falloff test, in which injection is halted and the pressure decline is measured as a function of time. The most common situation is a waterflood.

mobility

1. n. [Well Testing, Enhanced Oil Recovery] The ratio of effective permeability to phase viscosity.

middle-time transient data

1. n. [Well Testing] A common term for the infinite-acting radial flow regime. This portion of the pressure-transient response is between wellbore-dominated flow regimes in the early-time transient data and boundary-dominated flow regimes in the late-time transient data.

limited entry

1. n. [Well Testing] A completion with only a portion of the productive interval open to flow, either by design or as a result of damage.

linear flow

1. n. [Well Testing] A flow regime characterized by parallel flow lines in the reservoir. This results from flow to a fracture or a long horizontal well, or from flow in an elongated reservoir, such as a fluvial channel, or as a formation bounded by parallel faults.

isochronal test

1. n. [Well Testing] A multirate test designed as a series of drawdown and buildup sequences at different drawdown flow rates, with each drawdown of the same duration and each buildup reaching stabilization at the same pressure as at the start of the test. The purpose of the test is to determine well deliverability. This type of test is most commonly done in gas wells.

initial flow period

1. n. [Well Testing] A short flow period at the beginning of a drillstem test. This period is followed immediately by a longer shut-in period to allow the pressure to closely approach initial reservoir pressure.

impermeable barrier

1. n. [Well Testing] A single, impenetrable barrier to fluid flow in a reservoir that causes a change of a factor of two in the slope of buildup or drawdown curves. These are often observed in a normal test if the barrier is close (a few hundred feet or less) to the tested well.

isotropic formation

1. n. [Well Testing] A type of formation whose rock properties are the same in all directions. Although this never actually occurs, fluid flow in rocks approximates this situation closely enough to consider as this.

naturally flowing well

1. n. [Well Testing] A well in which the formation pressure is sufficient to produce oil at a commercial rate without requiring a pump. Most reservoirs are initially at pressures high enough to allow a well to flow naturally.

layered reservoir testing

1. n. [Well Testing] An advanced testing technique using a combination of transient-rate and pressure measurements and stabilized flow profiles to determine permeability and skin for each of several layers commingled in a well. The technique requires a series of flow-rate changes, with at least one flow-rate change for each layer to be characterized.

material balance

1. n. [Well Testing] An expression for conservation of mass governed by the observation that the amount of mass leaving a control volume is equal to the amount of mass entering the volume minus the amount of mass accumulated in the volume.

infinite acting radial flow

1. n. [Well Testing] Flow into the wellbore during a well test, from a reservoir with no apparent outer boundary limit affecting fluid flow during the test period, the direction of flow being perpendicular to the axis of the well.

isotropic permeability

1. n. [Well Testing] Permeability that is the same in all directions. This never really occurs, but permeability along various directions of a formation is often close enough for calculation purposes

basin

A depression in the crust of the Earth, caused by plate tectonic activity andsubsidence, in which sediments accumulate.

bed

A layer of sediment or sedimentary rock, or stratum.

base map

A map on which primary data and interpretations can be plotted. this typically includes locations of lease or concession boundaries, wells, seismic survey points and other cultural data such as buildings and roads, with a geographic reference such as latitude and longitude or Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid information.

anticline fault

A minor, secondary fault, usually one of a set, whose sense of displacement is opposite to its associated major and synthetic faults. Antithetic-synthetic faultsets are typical in areas of normal faulting.

asphalt

A solid or nearly solid form of bitumen that can melt upon heating and contains impurities such as nitrogen, oxygen and sulfur. Asphalt forms naturally when the light components or volatiles of petroleumhave been removed or evaporated.

anticlinal trap

A type of structural hydrocarbon trap whose closure is controlled by the presence of an anticline.

Wadati-Benioff zone

A zone of the upper mantle in which earthquakes occur when a lithospheric plate is subducted, named in honor of seismologists Kiyoo Wadati and Hugo Benioff.

anticline

An arch-shaped fold in rock in which rock layers are upwardly convex. The oldest rock layers form the core of the fold, and outward from the coreprogressively younger rocks occur.

Formation Damage

Any unintended impedance to the flow of fluids into or out of a wellbore

hydrating cement

Calcium silicates, Calcium aluminates, Calcium sulfates, Calcium carbonates or bicarbonates, and Alkali sulfates are the major constituents in the aqueous phase in contact with

Bazooka

During the 1930s and 1940s, work in the area of shaped charges progressed in the military arena. With its armor-piercing charges, it was one of the first large-scale uses of the technology pioneered by Henry Mohaupt and others. This technology was accepted by the oil industry in the late 1940s and early 1950s and became the most used perforating method by the mid- to late 1950s.

appraisal

The phase of petroleum operations that immediately follows successful exploratory drilling.

Bullet Guns

First commercial perforating device in the early 1930s

near-wellbore permeability reduction and near-wellbore relative permeability changes

Formation damage mechanisms can be broken down into two broad classes

Who created Phillips Petroleum Company in the 1920's?

Frank Phillips

What did Harry Doherty suggest as the solution to the rule of capture for new oil fields? What was it called?

Government intervention to treat the field as a single unit that had production split. It was called unitization.

Who led the charge against the rule of capture in the 1920's?

Harry Doherty

22%

How much did the Russian share of world petroleum exports decrease from 1904 to 1913?

60/40 (Royal Dutch/Shell)

How were profits split between Royal Dutch and Shell following their amalgamation in 1907?

What major Texas oil company did SONJ gain control over in the 1920's?

Humble Oil

A lack of supply in the 1920's led to geophysics technology that did what?

Imaging below the surface to find oil

M.B. Standing

In 1970, introduced the important concept of well flow efficiency

axial surface

In folded rocks, the imaginary surface bisecting the limbs of the fold.

Who was the leader of Venezuela that was very friendly to oil companies after the failure in Mexico?

Juan Vicente Gomez

Where was the strike that caused the oil frenzy in Venezuela?

La Rosa

What was the result of the rule of capture in a new oil field?

Massive inefficiency with oilmen just trying to extract faster than their neighbor

Sir Weetman Pearson of this company lead the search for oil in Mexico

Mexican Eagle

What company did SONY and Vacuum Oil merge into?

Mobil

What company did SO Indiana purchase in the 1920's?

Pan American Petroleum

authigenic

Pertaining to minerals or materials that grow in place with a rock, rather than having been transported and deposited.

benthic

Pertaining to the environment and conditions of organisms living at the water bottom

What field was struck by Mexican Eagle in Mexico and was the biggest well in the world at the time?

Potrero del Llano 4

What was the term that described how oilmen would extract oil when a new oil field was found?

Rule of capture

Where was production centered around in Mexico after Mexican Eagle found oil?

The "Golden Lane"

What decade did the successor companies of Standard break their alliances and begin competition?

The 1920's

azimuth

The angle between the vertical projection of a line of interest onto a horizontal surface and true north or magnetic north measured in a horizontal plane, typically measured clockwise from north.

apparent dip

The angle that a plane makes with the horizontal measured in any randomly oriented section rather than perpendicular to strike.

calcium carbonate and fibrous additives

The bridging additives most commonly used to ensure the formation of a bridge across the fracture face

inflow performance relationships (IPRs)

The impact of skin on well productivity can be estimated by

Pressure-Buildup Analysis

The most common method for determining skin. In this test, a well that has been producing for a time, is shut in for time Δt. The pressure buildup is recorded as a function of time. By constructing a Horner plot, we can compute the skin and the product of the permeability and formation thickness of the reservoir (in field units).

Skin Factor (S)

The most commonly used measure of formation damage in a well. A dimensionless pressure drop caused by a flow restriction in the near-wellbore region.

attitude

The orientation of a planar or linear feature in three-dimensional space. Planar features that are not horizontal, such as tilted strata, are described by their strike, or the azimuth of the intersection of the plane with a horizontal surface, and the dip, or the magnitude of its inclination from a horizontal reference.

bed thickness

The thickness of a layer or stratum of sedimentary rock measured perpendicular to its lateral extent, presuming deposition on a horizontal surface.

Deutsche Bank, Standard Oil, Royal Dutch

These three companies primarily controlled the oil regions of Russia early in the 20th century.

Antoine Kitabgi

This Persian government official went to Paris in 1900 to find an investor willing to pursue a petroleum concession in Persia.

Shah Muzzafar al-Din

This Shah signed an agreement with William D'Arcy in 1901 for a Persian oil concession; the Shah would make money off of the profits, and Britain would receive a 60-year concession in Persia.

Royal Dutch Shell

This company bought out all of the Rothschilds' Russian oil assets in 1912.

Royal Dutch Shell Group

This company emerged in 1907 following the amalgamation of Royal Dutch and Shell.

Bloody Sunday

This is also known as the Revolution of 1905 in Russia; police fired on a group of workers marching on Winter Palace to submit a petition to the Czar.

December 1904

This is when the Baku oil workers win their first collective labor agreement after a second strike.

Joseph Stalin

This man became the chief socialist organizer in Batum in 1901, leading strikes and demonstrations against local oil industry.

Shell purchased 1/4th of this company which the Senate made Shell sell its shares to eventually.

Union Oil

What country did European and American oilmen look to after the failure in Mexico?

Venezuela

Fracture plugging

When drilling through fractured formations, large quantities of whole mud can be lost to the fracture network

whole mud leakoff

When drilling through very-high-permeability rocks or fractured formations, solids present in the drilling fluid may not be able to bridge across the face of the pores or fractures, resulting in a leakoff into the formation. This leakoff can result in very severe, irreversible damage to the fracture or matrix.

linear IPR

appropriate for waterdrive reservoirs producing at pressures above the bubblepoint and for hydrocarbons without substantial dissolved gas

Standing's IPR

is most appropriate for solution-gas-drive reservoirs

Isochronal test

determination of flow efficiency and skin test in gas wells in which it takes a long time to achieve stabilized rates, wells are shut in and produced for a fixed time interval (Δt) at several different rates.

Multirate tests

determination of flow efficiency and skin test that can be conducted on both oil and gas wells. In these tests, several stabilized flow rates are achieved at corresponding stabilized flowing bottomhole pressures.