Formation Damage & The Petroleum Industry

Formation is the terminology used to describe the type of rock (clay, shale etc.). Formation damage can easily be defined as damage to formation (type of rock).

Formation Damage is extremely harmful problem and headache to oil industry since its beginning. When the formation has damaged the well production hampered or in some cases completely blocked layers of permeable beds result in no production.

Formation Damage with respect to petroleum industry can be best understood with the help of following example:

Suppose an ABC company drilled the well and got production of 40 MSCF gas and the company abandon the well because the production is not economical. The same concession has purchased in a bid by XYZ Company. The XYZ company researchers analyzed that formation has damaged and after removing formation damage got production of 40 MMSCF gas.

In nut shell "The process beneath the earth are purely based on assumptions and calculations and there is no direct way to proof analyze".

I hope the example would be beneficial for understanding formation damage.


Article by Engineer Fahad

Inflow and Outflow Well Performance

The article involves four main words inflow, outflow, well and performance. The words give the meaning of operation known as inflow and outflow well performance.

Inflow in field terminology means entering of fluid from reservoir (a pool or trap of oil/gas) into wellbore. Outflow in field terminology means flow of fluid from wellbore to separator (surface).

These two parameters are very much important to understand from basic to deep (understanding correlations) for petroleum engineer.

In system where two parameters (inflow and outflow) are put known as Nodal Analysis. In Nodal Analysis we basically generate curves for inflow and outflow of a well to understand well's behavior and ultimately its performance.

The imaginary/generalized graph for inflow and outflow performance understanding is as under.

 

 

Article written by Engineer Fahad . . .

 

Division Of Petroleum Engineering Into Differnet Categories

Petroleum Engineering is a very vast field if we consider it in a broader sense and take a Big Picture. In this article I have put light onto the following main Engineering Divisions related to Petroleum Engineering.

1. Reservoir Engineering

2. Drilling Engineering

3. Production Engineering

4. Oil & Gas Distribution Engineering

5. Project Management Engineering

 

The extraction of petroleum starts from the reservoir engineering and ends up at project management engineering. In reservoir engineering, calculation of hydrocarbons in place is accomplished. After calculation of rate of return on investment and management meeting the drilling engineer's role starts. Drilling Engineer basically drills the well to hit the target provided by the geologist. After drilling, the well is handed over to production department responsible for all the operations related to the production of oil and gas till death of a well.


After getting production from the site location the oil and gas is transferred / sold out to marketing and distribution companies. The main role of oil and gas distribution engineer is to market the oil and gas to refinery or trading companies.


In the last Project Management is the field that looks after all the above fields and it requires art more than science because managing billion dollar projects of the industry is to look at all the above engineering divisions. 


Article written by Engineer Fahad.....

Purpose of this article is to spread information about oil and gas engineering divisions for both the professional and lay person.

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