Commentary, 3/4 2012Apr 20, 2012 North Sea Gas Leak
On 25 March, as we were preparing this issue to go to press, Total reported a gas leak at the Elgin gas field located in the UK North Sea approximately 240 kilometres east of Aberdeen.
From the Editor, 3/4 2012Apr 20, 2012 The "T" is for Technology
You may be reading this issue while taking a break from everything that’s happening at OTC in Houston. If so, we’re glad you found us here.
For everyone else, we’re also pleased you’ve pick us up, whether it’s at work or while visiting one many conferences offered this spring.
Game-Changing Technology – Feeling Your MistakesApr 20, 2012 Designing and then drilling a “virtual” well before setting in motion kilometres of string can offer powerful lessons, says Aker Solutions. Some of those lessons suggest the supplier-contractor’s Visioneering simulator suit might even have helped avoid a disaster like the ill-fated Macondo well. At the company’s IPort centre in Stavanger, well and rig designers – along with drill crews – learn by seeing and “feeling” trouble.
By William Stoichevski.
BP Norge – Pioneering Second Generation Digital OilfieldsApr 20, 2012 BP Norge installed its first fibre-optic communications link to the Valhall and Ula fields in the North Sea in 1999. Since then, it has substantially developed its implementation of BP’s Field of the Future programme of digital technology, ranging from the first advanced collaboration environments for drilling and operations to the world’s first life of field seismic array on the Valhall field and advanced remote monitoring tools.
By Eldar Larsen & Paul Hocking.
Geological Expression – The Future of Seismic InterpretationApr 20, 2012 Investment in innovation and new technologies is increasingly critical for economic success in hydrocarbon exploration and production. This is particularly the case in seismic interpretation where we are trying to obtain an understanding of the subsurface geology through analysis of complex remote sensing data. The importance of seismic data to both exploration and production is reflected in the almost USD 8 billion annual spend on seismic acquisition and processing. Globally, some 11 million square kilometres of licensed offshore acreage is now covered by seismic data.
By Jonathan Henderson.
Media: A Matter of TrustApr 20, 2012 Ever since the advent of the Internet in the mid-Nineties, source verification has been a significant issue. When everybody (almost) has access, and anybody can post more or less anything they want, how can we discern true from false? How do we know that a story is accurate? And more importantly, who owns the rights to the story?
By Erlend Gram Simonsen.
