Oilfield Review

Winter 2013/2014

Ice Core Science

Seeking Sweet Spots in Shales
Rotary Sidewall Coring
Autonomous Ocean Monitoring

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Unconventional Reservoir Sweet Spots from Geophysics

Ten years ago, when drilling into a shale reservoir, it was
unlikely that a drilling engineer would have had much time
for a geophysicist, and to be frank, there wasnt much the
geophysicist could have told him that would have helped.
But as the commercial success of shale reservoirs has
developed through horizontal drilling and multistage
hydraulic fracturing, geophysicists have found that, in
many cases, they do in fact possess the information that
can lead to optimized production.
So, what is the role of a geophysicist? The industry would
like geophysicists to produce maps of commercially producible hydrocarbons. Unfortunately we are not there yet.
We can produce maps of the subsurface structure and give
some indications of rock properties, but these results come
from interpretation of incomplete sets of information.
However, when it comes to unconventional reservoirs,
the ability to identify and high grade shales is essential to
optimizing completions and subsequent production. To this
end, seismic data plays a role that typically goes beyond
the role it plays in conventional reservoirs. Geophysicists
can use seismic data to map parameters that, while not
direct measurements of commercially producible hydrocarbons, can certainly be interpreted to give a qualitative
indication of likely subsequent production. These parameters are rock properties, in situ stress, presence of natural
fractures and reservoir geometry. All of these have a direct
impact on the likely effectiveness of hydraulic fracturing.
Geophysicists predict rock properties using inversion of
prestack seismic data to estimate and map, among other
things, the brittleness of rocks, which is a measure of how
easily they break or shatter. Brittleness can vary based on
the local environmentfor example, with temperature.
(Take a bar of chocolate out of the refrigerator and drop it
on a hard oor; now leave it out in the sun for 10 minutes
before you drop it. The material is the same, but in one
instance it is brittle and shatters, and in the other, it
doesnt.) Understanding the spatial variations in brittleness in a shale reservoir is valuable because the hydraulic
fracture engineer is likely to be far more successful working in an area of brittle shale than in ductile shale.
The azimuthal response of seismic data (the changing
response as a function of the direction that sound moves as
it passes through the rock) can lead to insights about the
in situ stress in the rock related to natural fault stress and
can help an engineer understand the likely direction of
fracture growth. Azimuthal variations in the seismic data
may also give indications of the presence and geometry of
natural fractures that are likely to increase intrinsic permeability of the rock.

Seismic data has always been used to help geologists

understand reservoir geometry and map natural barriers in
the rock, and it serves the same purposes in characterizing
unconventional resources.
By using this information, it is possible to gain a better
understanding of the sweet spots in a shale, signicantly
improving the likelihood of success in production of hydrocarbons (see Seeking the Sweet Spot: Reservoir and
Completion Quality in Organic Shales, page 16).
But the geophysicist isnt nished yet. In the last ve
years, it has become common practice to monitor in real
time the fracturing of the rocks caused by hydraulic stimulation. The challenge is one that the seismic geophysicist is
familiar with: recording seismic energy and resolving the
source of the sound. Although microseismic monitoring
doesnt yet have the track record of surface seismic mapping, the technique is rapidly improving and represents an
opportunity to close the loop on the interpretation of the
surface seismic data. If we make predictions of rock properties and fracability from surface seismic data, then
stimulate the rock and measure what actually happens, we
have the opportunity to expand our understanding of the
information within the seismic data; armed with this
understanding, geophysicists will indeed get closer to
being able to produce maps of commercially producible
hydrocarbons.
Dave Monk
Director of Geophysics
Apache Corporation
Houston, Texas, USA
Dave Monk, who holds a PhD degree in physics from The University of
Nottingham in England, is the Director of Geophysics and one of only two
Distinguished Advisors at Apache Corporation. Based in Houston, he is
responsible for seismic activity including acquisition and processing in
Argentina, Australia, Canada, Egypt, the North Sea and the US. He started
his career on seismic crews in Nigeria and has subsequently been involved
in seismic processing and acquisition in locations worldwide. Author of more
than 100 technical papers or articles and a number of patents, Dave received
best paper awards from the SEG in 1992 and 2005 as well as one from the
Canadian SEG in 2002, and was recipient of the Hagedoorn Award from the
European Association of Exploration Geophysics in 1994. Dave received honorary membership in the Geophysical Society of Houston and life membership
in the SEG and is the immediate Past President of the SEG.

Schlumberger

Oilfield Review
www.slb.com/oilfieldreview

Executive Editor
Lisa Stewart
Senior Editors
Tony Smithson
Matt Varhaug
Rick von Flatern
Editor
Richard Nolen-Hoeksema
Contributing Editors
Kate Mantle
Ginger Oppenheimer
Rana Rottenberg
Design/Production
Herring Design
Mike Messinger

Unconventional Reservoir Sweet Spots from Geophysics

Editorial contributed by Dave Monk, Director of Geophysics, Apache Corporation

Drilling Through Ice and into the Past

Climatologists, chemists, physicists and engineers have

developed drilling units capable of retrieving ice that has
been isolated from the rest of the world for more than a
million years. Their aim is to discover how and when the
Earths climate has changed over those millennia.

Illustration
Chris Lockwood
Mike Messinger
George Stewart
Printing
RR DonnelleyWetmore Plant
Curtis Weeks

16 Seeking the Sweet Spot: Reservoir and

Completion Quality in Organic Shales
For best results, wells in shale reservoirs target production
sweet spots where reservoir quality and completion quality
are high. Determining a sweet spot is an integral part of the
exploration and development effort. Operators are using
results from advanced interpretation techniques of surface
seismic data to develop drilling and completion programs.

On the cover:
A geologist serves to indicate the scale
in this photograph of an organic-rich
shale outcrop. Dark circles in an image
log (left) positively identify points
where a large-volume sidewall coring
tool extracted samples from a well
drilled in the Marcellus Shale. In a horizontal well drilled in a different unconventional reservoir (middle), sweet
spots identied from gas shows on the
mud log (blue curve) correlate with
proximity to strong seismic attribute
readings (pink and red clouds that project out of the page). (Outcrop photograph courtesy of Aaron Frodsham.)

About Oilfield Review

Oilfield Review, a Schlumberger journal,
communicates technical advances in
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include industry professionals and experts
from around the world; those listed with
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Oilfield Review is published quarterly and

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Visit www.slb.com/oilfieldreview for
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Reproductions without permission are
strictly prohibited.
For a comprehensive dictionary of oilfield
terms, see the Schlumberger Oilfield
Glossary at www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com.

Winter 2013/2014
Volume 25
Number 4
ISSN 0923-1730

Advisory Panel

30 Rotary Sidewall CoringSize Matters

Hani Elshahawi
Shell Exploration and Production
Houston, Texas, USA

Sidewall core analysis is a cost-effective method of directly

determining petrophysical and geophysical rock properties.
Until recently, one of the main limitations of sidewall cores
has been their small size. A new rotary coring tool provides
cores that are large enough for experiments and studies
without core sample size limitations.

Gretchen M. Gillis
Aramco Services Company
Houston, Texas
Roland Hamp
Woodside Energy Ltd.
Perth, Australia
Dilip M. Kale
ONGC Energy Centre
Delhi, India
George King
Apache Corporation
Houston, Texas

40 A New Platform for Offshore Exploration

and Production

Andrew Lodge
Premier Oil plc
London, England

The oil and gas industry has long capitalized on remote

sensing platforms for exploration and production. A mobile,
remotely controlled sensor platform has been developed to
provide persistent coverage over an offshore area. Powered
by wave motion and sunlight, it can be tted with numerous
sensors that continuously monitor ocean parameters and
collect and transmit real-time data to support offshore
exploration and production activities.

51 Contributors
52 Coming in Oilfield Review
53 New Books
54 Defining Directional Drilling:
The Art of Controlling Wellbore Trajectory
This is the twelfth in a series of introductory articles describing basic concepts of the E&P industry.
56 Annual Index

Editorial correspondence
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Drilling Through Ice and into the Past

That the Earths climate is changing is irrefutable. The future course, rate and ultimate
effects of that change are less clear. Climatologists, glaciologists and engineers are
retrieving ice cores from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and from glaciers in
temperate climes in an effort to learn from the past what the future may hold.

Mary R. Albert
Dartmouth College
Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Geoffrey Hargreaves
US Geological Survey
Denver, Colorado, USA
Oileld Review Winter 2013/2014: 25, no. 4.
Copyright 2014 Schlumberger.
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Jay
Johnson, Ice Drilling Design and Operations group,
Madison, Wisconsin, USA; Nature A. McGinn and
Julie M. Palais, US National Science Foundation (NSF),
US Antarctic Program, Arlington, Virginia, USA; and
Mark Twickler, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and
Space, University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA.
Mary R. Albert acknowledges NSF support through award
PLR-1327315.
Isopar is a mark of ExxonMobil Corporation.
1. Alley RB: The Two Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt
Change, and Our Future. Princeton, New Jersey, USA:
Princeton University Press, 2000.
2. Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, National Research
Council: Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises.
Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2002.
Lthi D, Le Floch M, Bereiter B, Blunier T, Barnola J-M,
Siegenthaler U, Raynaud D, Jouzel J, Fischer H,
Kawamura K and Stocker TF: High-Resolution Carbon
Dioxide Concentration Record 650,000800,000 Years
Before Present, Nature 453, no. 7193 (May 15, 2008):
379382.
Brook E: Paleoclimate: Windows on the Greenhouse,
Nature 453, no. 7193 (May 15, 2008): 291292.
3. Langway CC Jr: The History of Early Polar Ice Cores,
Cold Regions Science and Technology 52, no. 2
(January 2008): 101117.
4. Dansgaard W: The O18-Abundance in Fresh Water,
Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 6, no. 56
(December 1954): 241260.
5. Langway CC Jr: Willi Dansgaard (19222011), Arctic 64,
no. 3 (September 2011): 385387.
6. Bentley CR, Koci BR, Augustin LJ-M, Bolsey RJ,
Green JA, Kyne JD, Lebar DA, Mason WP, Shturmakov AJ,
Engelhardt HF, Harrison WD, Hecht MH and Zagorodnov V:
Ice Drilling and Coring, in Bar-Cohen Y and Zacny K
(eds): Drilling in Extreme Environments: Penetration and
Sampling on Earth and Other Planets. Dramstadt,
Germany: Wiley-VCH (August 2009): 221308.

> Quelccaya ice cap, 1977. (Photograph courtesy of Lonnie Thompson, The Ohio State University,
Columbus, USA.)

Oileld Review

Winter 2013/2014

10
10
20

1930 optimum

20

50

30
50

100

200

100

500

Medieval
Warm Period

300

1,000

400
2,000

600
800

Postglacial
optimum

Age in years before 1968

Little
Ice Age

200

Depth, m

Climatologists need to look back hundreds to

many thousands of years to learn how the Earths
climate conditions have changed over those
years. Doing so helps them better understand
Earths climate processes so they can make predictions of what is to come. In areas of ice sheets
where snow does not melt but piles up over many
hundreds of thousands of years, the resulting
kilometers-thick ice forms an archive of clues to
past climate.
Although the science of interpreting climate
from ice cores is less than 70 years old, climatologists have made some remarkable discoveries.1
For example, ice core science enabled the revelation that climate can change abruptly, in less
than 10 years, and the realization that the carbon
dioxide [CO2] composition of the atmosphere is
higher now than it has been in more than
800,000 years.2
The rst drills for retrieving ice cores for scientic use were designed by the US Army Corps of
Engineers in the 1950s. These drills, the design of
which originated from concepts associated with
geologic drilling, were used to drill a number of
intermediate-depth and deep ice cores both in
Greenland and Antarctica.3 When the US Army
created Camp Century in Greenland in the 1960s,
army engineers built a new electromechanical
drill for retrieving the rst deep, continuous core
to bedrock; for that core, Chester Langway, Jr.,
who was responsible for scientic analysis of the
cores, formed an international team that included
US, Danish and Swiss scientists to conduct an
array of measurements on the core. Ice core science rapidly evolved in many nations, and even
today, international, interdisciplinary endeavors
continue to be a hallmark of ice core science.
Danish scientist Willi Dansgaard performed
work that led to international collaboration on the
analysis of the Camp Century ice core. Dansgaard
made a discovery in the 1950s that enables analysts today to decipher the information etched into
these ancient records. Dansgaard developed
instrumentation that could rapidly measure the
seasonal variations in climate conditions over
short time intervals by measuring variations of
stable oxygen isotope ratios, such as 18O/16O in ice
cores. Dansgaard applied this technique to analysis of the 1,390 m [4,560 ft] long core recovered at
Camp Century in 1966 (right).4 Analysis of other
chemical species, by a wide range of scientists
from around the world, has since been performed
on ice cores to extract such weather and climate
information from dust, the results of volcanic
activity, snow accumulation rate and, for natural
and anthropogenic-related markers, a host of
chemical tracers in the ice sheets.5

5,000

1,000
1,100
1,200

10,000

2
4

1,300

5b
5d

1,330

20,000

5a
5c

50,000

5e
100,000

1,360

45

40

35

30

18O, 0/00

> The rst Camp Century ice core. Results from the analysis of the Camp
Century ice core showed that past climate conditions could be derived
from ice cores. The graph shows the amount, in parts per thousand (0/00), by
which the ratio of stable oxygen isotopes 18O/16O (18O) varies as a function
of depth and age along the 1,390-m length of the ice core. Low 18O values
(blue shading) are associated with low temperatures at the time, and high
values (purple shading) are associated with warm temperatures. The large
deviation of 18O values at around 1,100 m corresponds to the change from
the last glacial to the current interglacial period. Various past climate
events (2 to 5e) are also identied. These results demonstrate that ice core
drilling and the oxygen isotope method are viable ways of reconstructing
some past climatic conditions. [Adapted from The History of Danish Ice
Core Science, University of Copenhagen, Centre for Ice and Climate, Niels
Bohr Institute, http://www.iceandclimate.nbi.ku.dk/about_centre/history/
(accessed June 5, 2013).]

This article describes the process of drilling

through Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets and glaciers in tropical climates, the techniques used to
retrieve intact ice cores and the way ice cores are
stored and analyzed. Case histories include the
results of efforts to capture cores from the
Eemian interglacial period in Greenland, the
West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) and the
Quelccaya ice cap in Peru.

Building an Ice Drilling Rig

As scientists sought to acquire cores from
greater depths in the thick ice sheets of
Greenland and Antarctica, the equipment to do
so has evolved to meet the challenges unique to
those environments.6 One of the most recent
iterations in the development of ice drilling rigs
is the electromechanical deep ice sheet coring
(DISC) drill. The DISC drill, with its directional

Ice core

Sleeve

Core barrel segment

Core dog
Shoe

Threaded connection
to screen section

Core cage and stabilizer

Cutter

> Ice core cutter head. The ice core cutter creates an annulus between the ice and the sonde. As the
tool moves downward, it captures a continuous column of ice for retrieval to the surface. Using this
system, drillers have reached depths of about 3,800 m [12,500 ft] and can retrieve a core 12.2 cm
[4.8 in.] in diameter and 4 m [13 ft] in length. The rotating core barrel consists of a series of
mechanically connected tubes; the barrel can be tted with a berglass sleeve, which helps keep
fractured cores intact. Core dogs, which pivot into and break the ice when the drill is lifted, hold the
core in the core stabilizer and cage (photograph) as the cutter is brought to the surface. Core shoes
are small buttons on the bottom face of the cutter head that limit the penetration of the cutter blades.
The vertical distance between the bottom surface of the shoes and the cutter tips sets the pitch, or
rate of penetration, of the drill. (Adapted from Mason et al, reference 8.)

drilling capability, was designed and built by the

Ice Drilling Design and Operations (IDDO)
group at the Space Science and Engineering
Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
USA. The drill was developed to retrieve cores in
deep ice by incorporating, among other features, the ability to do the following:
collect ice cores from depths to 4,000 m
[13,000 ft]
capture ice cores of more than 98 mm [3.9 in.]
diameter
maintain 5 or less borehole inclination
collect replicate cores using directional
drilling
sample and record depth, drill rotation speed,
torque, WOB, uid temperature and core barrel
acceleration 10 times per second.7
Designers also sought to reduce overall project
duration by optimizing the balance between trip
time and coring time; in deeper projects, moving
the bit in and out of the hole is a larger contributor

to overall project time than is coring on the bottom. The DISC unit is able to drill longer cores
than were possible using earlier drills, thus is able
to reach its depth objectives in fewer trips.
The DISC drill consists of a drill sonde, drill
cable, drill tower, winch, surface power supply
and control system. The modular drill sonde
includes a cutter head assembly, core barrel,
screen section, motor pump section and instrument section. The cutter head assembly, which
has four replaceable cutters, incorporates a core
barrel to protect the captured core (above). The
cutter head, which cuts an annular ring of ice to
produce the core, includes four core dog cages, or
pawls, that break the core at the end of the coring run and keep it from slipping out the bottom
of the barrel as it is brought to the surface. The
cutter head assembly also includes buttons, or
shoes, located on the bottom face of the cutter
head. The buttons serve to limit the penetration
of the cutters by setting the pitch of the cutters.8

The motor pump section of the DISC sonde

contains two motors and a drill uid pump that
can operate in temperatures to 50C [58F]
and pressures to 40 MPa [5,800 psi]. One motor
drives the pump and the other drives the core
barrel and cutter head assembly.9 Ice cuttings are
collected in the screen section, which consists of
a housing made of the same tubes as the core barrel tted with screens in its center. Drilling uid
carries the ice chips created during coring operations up into the annulus of the core barrel to
screens in the assembly, which brings them to
the surface along with the core (next page, top).
The drill sonde is composed of antitorque,
instrument and motor sections for motor control,
data acquisition, power conditioning and communications. The system includes two motors, which
operate independently and are controlled
through a closed-loop current control system.
Because motor torque in these systems is proportional to current, torque is controlled by moderating power to the motors.
Sensors within the sonde measure the temperature of the electronics, drilling uid, cutter
motor, pump motor and motor uid. Because the
instrument section must remain pressure sealed,
sensors monitor the pressure between two redundant seals and each end cap of the assembly.10
The upper section of the sonde includes the
cables mechanical, electrical and optical ber
terminations. Rotary joints allow the drill sonde
to rotate relative to the cable. The cable physically supports the drill, supplies power to it and
enables communication between the sonde and
the surface. The DISC drill cable includes a central king wire, ber-optic cables, copper wires
and an outer wrapping of galvanized steel wires
to provide the mechanical strength to lower and
raise the sonde (next page, bottom).11
Unlike oil and gas drilling unit arrangements,
the axis of the DISC drill drum is parallel to the
drill cable as it runs through a spooling device to
the tower. The conguration allows the winch to
be located at the base of the tower, resulting in a
smaller footprint than those in which the cable
runs perpendicular off the winch to the tower.
Because of the tower-winch conguration, once
the drill is on the surface, it must be laid down
and the core barrel disconnected from the sonde.
Rig workers then lift and rotate the core barrel
180 to allow the core to be pushed from the top
of the barrel onto a processing tray. Removed
from the core barrel, the cores are usually cut
from their original 3.5-m [12-ft] lengths into 1-m
[3-ft] lengths; they are then stored in a freezer
for transportation to an archival storage and

Oileld Review

research facility. The DISC drill was eld tested

in Greenland and the designers implemented
necessary modications prior to the drill teams
work in Antarctica.12
Similar to those used in the oil eld, drilling
uids in ice coring serve multiple functions; in
addition to lifting ice chips to the screens, drilling uids used in ice drilling create a hydrostatic
pressure that prevents the borehole from collapsing. Ice boreholes are not geopressured, but ice is
plastic and will ow into the borehole in response
to vertical and shear stresses imposed on wellbore walls. Vertical stress, or glaciostatic pressure, is caused by the overburden weight of the
ice; shear stress, or glaciodynamic stress, is
caused by glacier ow over rock.13
The density of ice core drilling uids is
designed to be as close as possible to the density
of the ice being drilled; in the past, drillers used
n-butyl acetate as drilling uid. But driven by
health concerns for personnel, project leaders at
the WAIS Divide site in central West Antarctica
opted for a mixture of about three parts Isopar K
uid to one part hydrochlorouorocarbon. Fluid
handling systems for ice coring contain a tank
with measuring devices, valves, pumps and centrifuges to recover ice chips from the screens
before returning the uid to the system.
Development of new ice drilling technology in
the US is driven by the Long Range Science Plan,
which was the result of scientic community
planning organized by the Ice Drilling Program
Ofce (IDPO).14 The IDPO oversees engineering
7. Shturmakov AJ, Lebar DA, Mason WP and Bentley CR:
A New 122 mm Electromechanical Drill for Deep
Ice-Sheet Coring (DISC): 1. Design Concepts,
Annals of Glaciology 47, no. 1 (2007): 2834.
8. Mason WP, Shturmakov AJ, Johnson JA and Haman S:
A New 122 mm Electromechanical Drill for Deep
Ice-Sheet Coring (DISC): 2. Mechanical Design,
Annals of Glaciology 47, no. 1 (2007): 3540.
9. Mason et al, reference 8.
10. Mortenson NB, Sendelbach PJ and Shturmakov AJ:
A New 122 mm Electromechanical Drill for Deep
Ice-Sheet Coring (DISC): 3. Control, Electrical and
Electronics Design, Annals of Glaciology 47, no. 1
(2007): 4150.
11. Shturmakov AJ and Sendelbach PJ: A New 122 mm
Electromechanical Drill for Deep Ice-Sheet Coring
(DISC): 4. Drill Cable, Annals of Glaciology 47, no. 1
(2007): 5153.
12. Johnson JA, Mason WP, Shturmakov AJ, Haman ST,
Sendelbach PJ, Mortensen NB, Augustin LJ and
Dahnert KR: A New 122 mm Electromechanical Drill for
Deep Ice-Sheet Coring (DISC): 5. Experience During
Greenland Field Testing, Annals of Glaciology 47, no. 1
(2007): 5460.
13. Aber JS, Croot DG and Fenton MM: Glaciotectonic
Landforms and Structures. Amsterdam: Springer
Netherlands (1989): 155168.
14. The Long Range Science Plan was created by the US
National Science Foundation to set goals and offer
direction and logistical support for US ice coring and
drilling science and to support ice drilling technology
development and infrastructure.

Winter 2013/2014

Connection to cable

Screen barrel segment

Connection to cutter head

Screen cartridge

Check valve assembly

Fluid discharge ports

Double door check valve

> Screen section. The screen section lters ice chips produced by the cutters from the drilling uid as
it is circulated through the drill. The section also provides a compartment in which to collect and store
the ice chips for transport to the surface. The ice chip screen is designed for maximum lter area and
minimum pressure drop. A modular, interchangeable screen cartridge was developed for the DISC drill
for speed and ease of cleaning during drilling operations. The DISC screen and barrel design are
modular so that any number of screen cartridges can be used. Check valves control the direction of
drilling uid ow. The check valve assembly is connected to the screen section below the screens and
held in place by a spring-loaded locking ring. The check valve assembly supports the weight of the
screen cartridges that are above it and employs a set of double door check valves to allow the
uid-chip slurry that is pumped up from the cutters to enter the inside of the screen cartridge stack,
where chips are ltered and collected from the drilling uid; the ltered uid is discharged into the
wellbore. A concentric array of 12 openings allows one-way backow of clear uid to drain and bypass
the screens in the opposite direction down through the drill as the tool is tripping out of the borehole.
(Adapted from Mason et al, reference 8.)

King wire
Six optical fibers
Nylon buffer
Eight copper-clad steel wires
High-density polyethylene belt
60 copper wires bound
with aluminum polymer tape
High-density polyethylene belt
22 galvanized improved plow steel
strength-member wires
36 galvanized improved plow steel
strength-member wires

> DISC drill cable. The DISC drill cable is designed primarily for coring
conditions at the WAIS site and engineered for requirements for weight,
size and breaking strength. The cable is sized to t on the winch spool that
lowers the device into the core hole. The spool and cable are light enough
to be handled by available cranes and shipping methods. The breaking
strength is specied at 142 kN [31,900 lbf], which is greater than that of the
mechanical fuse at the top of the sonde and less than the total winch
pulling force. The cable is designed with void ller material around cable
parts and outer layers that are impervious to drilling uids used at the
WAIS site. The cable has an operational life of ve years. (Adapted from
Shturmakov and Sendelbach, reference 11.)

Uphill side
of borehole
Vertical
Maximum
20

Increased
diameter
from reaming

30-m maximum

Sidetrack
wellbore

performed by IDDO.15 Scientists in the ice core

community have long wished for replicate cores
from scientically signicant specic depths in
ice sheets such as those at which abrupt climate
changes have occurred. A replicate core is a core
from a sidetrack wellbore that has been drilled
nearly parallel to and very near a previously
retrieved core so that the two will have exact
depth and layer matches. In the last ve years,
engineers at IDDO have found a way to realize
this possibility. In 2012, engineering adaptations
to the DISC drill helped scientists recover replicate ice cores from multiple targeted depths at
the WAIS drillsite. Because scientists wished to
continue to deploy gravity-driven sensors in the

Vertical
Parent
borehole
Pump and motor section

Instrument section

Antitorque section

Cutter
Reduced diameter
core barrel

Lower actuators

Upper actuators

> Drilling a replicate core. The replicate drilling sonde (bottom) is a modied ice drilling and coring
sonde with reduced diameter core barrel and screen sections and a lower actuator module that
applies pressure against the borehole wall to initiate a sidetrack wellbore from the uphill, or high,
side of the parent wellbore (top). Lower actuators are tted with disk wheels (not shown) to reduce
friction along the borehole wall. Upper actuators keep the sonde from spinning while the core is being
cut by preventing transfer of torque to the sonde. [Adapted from Souney J: Replicate Ice Coring
System, In-Depth 6, no. 2 (Fall 2011): 7.]

Summit
Ice

Bedrock

> Ice ow. Because ice is plastic, it ows downward and outward (blue arrows) from the summit of
a dome. Therefore, ice cores taken from the center of a dome (horizontal black lines) retain a true
depth-age correlation. The black lines represent layers that become thinner with depth as they are
compressed by increasing overburden weight.

borehole below the depth at which the replicate

core was taken, the replicate core had to be
taken from the uphill, or high, side of the hole.
To meet this requirement, the replicate coring technique uses actuators placed along the
sonde that apply pressure to the sidewall of the
main wellbore, which causes the wellpath to
deviate (left). The deviated section becomes a
separate borehole within 30 m [100 ft] of the
point at which lateral forces are rst applied. The
sidetrack exits from the high side of a slightly
deviated main wellbore. Once the sidetrack is
established, cores are taken from a borehole that
is drilled nearly parallel to the main wellbore.
The replicate coring sonde includes actuators on
its upper end that act as antitorque devices to
keep the sonde from spinning; on the lower end
of the tool, actuators with disk wheels allow the
sonde to move smoothly along the deviated section. Coring is performed in repeated trips, each
of which can capture a 10.8-cm [4.25-in.] diameter core, until the desired length of core section
is acquired.16
Preparing the Take
Although the practices involved in drilling and
coring ice may be comparable to those used in
oileld operations, rock and ice in place behave
differently. Unlike rock, ice is plastic and ows
downward and laterally (below left). Therefore
to ensure true depth correlation of strata, drillers must site their equipment at the top of an
ice structure, or dome. Additionally, ice composition differs depending on burial depth, and as
a result, the ice must be handled accordingly.
Glaciers are composed of ice containing chemical impurities and air bubbles. From about
600 to 1,200 m [1,970 to 3,940 ft], the cored ice
is usually brittle when it is extracted from the
borehole. Because the pressure of the air bubbles trapped in the ice is greater than the bond
between the ice crystals, the ice core may spontaneously fracture and sometimes shatter.
Deeper than about 1,200 m, the pressure and
temperature of the ice force the air bubbles into
clathrate hydrates, making them part of the ice
crystal structure, and ice instability ceases to be
an issue.17
Technicians electronically measure the
length of cores brought to the surface and feed
the measurements into a computer program so
they may be tallied with measurements from previous cores brought up from the same wellbore.
They then evacuate drilling uid from around the
core as it is pulled from the core barrel. Residual
drilling uid is then removed from the core in a

Oileld Review

15. Albert M, Twickler M and Bentley C: A New Paradigm

for Ice Core Drilling, Eos Transactions, American
Geophysical Union 91, no. 39 (September 28, 2010):
345346.
16. Replicate Ice Coring System, US Ice Drilling Program,
http://www.icedrill.org/equipment/replicate-coringsystem.shtml (accessed July 6, 2013).
17. Clathrate hydrates are solids in which molecules, of air
in this case, occupy cages in molecular crystals of
hydrogen-bonded water molecules.

Winter 2013/2014

> Cores in storage. The National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver serves as a center for preparation
and storage of ice cores. The laboratory currently contains more than 17 km of ice cores from around
the world.

WAIS 2011 Cut Plan

Kerf (blue line) = 2 mm

DD17

DD18

DDO7

DDO4

DDO5

3 cm 3 cm

3 cm 3 cm

DDO8

DDO6

DDO3
3 cm 3 cm

1.2 cm 2.8 cm

1.2 cm 2.8 cm

Thin secton (DDVTS)

DDO2

drying booth, and the cores are then bagged,

boxed and shipped. Brittle ice is captured in netting to minimize breakage, and when it does
break into many pieces, scientists can still discern a great deal from it as long as the mass of
the core is preserved in stratigraphic order.
Many of the cores from the major ice sheets of
Greenland and Antarctica are now shipped to the
US National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in
Denver. Managed by the US Geological Survey
and funded by the US National Science
Foundation (NSF), the NICL stores more than
17 km [11 mi] of ice cores from 34 drillsites at a
storage temperature of 36C [33F] (right).
The NICL area for examining cores is maintained at 24C [11F]. The ice core to be analyzed is cut lengthwise, or slabbed. Slabs are
further divided into sections to be distributed to
scientists for various types of studies (below
right). For example, because sections cut from
the center of the core are least likely to have
been contaminated by drilling uids or other outside materials during capture, transportation
and storage, scientists at the laboratory typically
designate those sections for chemical analysis.
Other sections are cut to size specications or
from certain locations within the core for bubble
and layer counting, imaging or gas analysis using
mass spectrometers.
Paleoclimatologists seeking information
about past climates use proxy data gleaned from
natural resources such as tree rings and ocean
bottom sediment. The records they construct
from these sources are paleoproxy records
indirect natural records of past climate or meteorologic variability. From the isotopic and
chemical composition of ice and dust in ice cores,
scientists are able to estimate past regional average air temperatures, atmospheric circulation
variations, precipitation amounts, atmospheric
composition, solar activity and volcanic eruptions. Proxy data include a variety of chemical
species, stable isotopes, radioisotopes, dust composition, snow accumulation rate, volcanic ash
and sulfur, which scientists use to determine past
climate conditions.

DDO9

> Dividing the work. In the laboratory, technicians section the core for
specic types of analysis. In this instance, sections DD17 and DD18 were
used to determine stable isotopes (H and O) in water. Thin section DDVTS
was used for crystal and fabric analysis for size, shape and axes orientation
of ice crystals; these 10-cm [4-in.] sample sections are taken every 20 m
[65 ft]. Sections DD02 and DD06 were used for beryllium-10 isotope analysis.
Sections DD03, DD04 and DD05 were designated for chemical analysis. DD07
and DD09 were archived. DD08 was used for gas analysis, with samples
taken every 10 to 50 cm [4 to 20 in.] depending on climate signature and time
interval. Kerf is the width of the cut, which is dictated by the width of the saw
blade and represents how much material is sacriced during sectioning.

Evidence in the Ice

Since Dansgaards work in the 1950s, use of
radioisotopic ratiosprimarily hydrogen 2 [2H],
or deuterium [D], and oxygen 18 [18O]has
further developed, and the ratios are common
ice core proxies.18 Isotopes are atoms of the same
element with the same number of protons but an
unequal number of neutrons. As with all oxygen
atoms, the 18O isotope has 8 protons. However,
rather than the 8 neutrons of stable oxygen 16
[16O], which makes up about 99.8% of all oxygen

atoms, 18O has 10 neutrons. Because 18O is

heavier than 16O, water molecules made up of
hydrogen and 16O [1H216O] evaporate more readily than do molecules containing 18O [1H218O].
The resulting vapor contains a high ratio of lightto-heavy water molecules. As an air mass cools,
the heavier molecules condense more readily
and fall from the clouds as snow and rain. Thus
the oxygen isotopic ratio of rain and snow is
strongly related to condensation temperature. If
the temperature of the air continues to fall, the

Snow
70% air

Firn
60% air

Firn
10% air

Glacial ice
2% as
air bubbles

> Ice formation. Recently fallen snow layers are 70% air by volume but are
compacted under succeeding layers of snow. Beneath the annual snowfall,
which may range from 1 to 200 cm [0.4 to 80 in.] per year, the snow becomes
rn, which resembles granular ice with interstitial air decreasing from about
60% to 10% with depth. Deeper than about 60 to 120 m [195 to 390 ft], the rn
becomes glacial ice, with air remaining as bubbles within the ice matrix. As
the burial process continues, bubble volume is further reduced and the ice
becomes clear.

10

condensation will contain decreasing concentrations of heavy molecules, resulting in depletion

of 18O relative to precipitation that had previously condensed in a warmer environment. As a
consequence, past warming and cooling trends
have had a large inuence on the heavy-to-light
oxygen isotope ratio (18O/16O, or 18O) records
within the ice core.19
Scientists also take into account other factors
that might affect proxy values, and understanding relationships between proxies and climate
factors is important to core analysis. Scientists,
who gather data about past temperature, moisture source regions and hydrology from stable
isotopes present in the snow and ice, have
recently been tracking trace elements in the ice
to assess the past and current contributions from
anthropogenic and volcanic sources.20
Chemicals and dust found in ice cores also
provide proxies that signal past atmospheric circulation, volcanic eruptions, wind speed and tropospheric turbidity. Evidence of a volcanic
eruption in the form of ash layers and sulfate
detected through chemical analysis and other
tests can help scientists set dates of ice core layers.21 Ion concentrations of certain chemicals in
the ice reveal changes in atmospheric conditions
and the causes driving those changes.22
Scientists interpret dust layers in ice cores to
infer changes in climate and wind in the area
near where the core is captured. Dust layers also
help scientists mark instances of atmospheric
turbidity; they then use this information to assign
a date to the core. Dust concentration correlates
well with 18O composition in glacial ice.
Scientists have learned to interpret the value of
18O in glacial ice and in planktonic foraminifera
in sea sediments as a measure of the amount of
the Earths water that is frozen in ice; plotting
these data reveals the occurrence and duration
of ice ages.23 Paleoclimatologists use the oxygen
isotopeto-dust concentration correlation to better understand the causes of ice ages by studying
dust in ice that was buried deep enough to document climate variations in years before, during
and after numerous past ice ages.24
Analysis of ions and trace elements has typically required technicians to progressively remove
the potentially contaminated outer portion of the
core under extremely clean conditions. This
method has served researchers well but provides
low resolution of 10 to 20 cm [4 to 8 in.] per sample, and because this process is labor intensive
and time-consuming, datasets are often discontinuous. Scientists streamlined the process
through the development of continuous ice core

Oileld Review

melting systems that reduced sample preparation

time and increased sample resolution while providing continuous and coregistered data for a
large suite of elements. These systems use inline
continuous ow analysis (CFA) techniques or
couple the melter to an ion chromatograph and
inductively coupled plasma and eld mass spectrometers. These innovations provided continuous measurements of isotopes in meltwater and in
air trapped within ice core bubbles.
While the chemical and isotopic analysis of
the ice matrix yields proxy evidence of past
environmental conditions, ancient air trapped
in bubbles within the ice provides the only
direct samples of past atmospheres. Bubble formation results from the process of snow deposition, compaction and transition to ice at depth.
In the extremely cold locations of Greenland
and Antarctica where snow melt is rare, snowfall progressively piles up over many thousands
of years, creating kilometers-thick ice sheets.
As the snow continues to accumulate on the
surface, the increasing overburden compresses
the underlying snow. Snow that is more than
one year old and still porous is called rn (previous page). With depth, the pore spaces
between crystals in the rn become compressed. At a depth of 60 to 120 m [195 to 390
ft], the remaining pore space exists as bubbles
in the matrix, which has become solid ice; this
is known as close-off depth. Because air in the
pore space can diffuse through the rn, the air
trapped in the bubbles is younger than the ice
in which it is enclosed.
A combination of in situ rn air gas measurements, measurements of gases in the bubbles in
the ice, glaciological measurements and modeling is used to determine the difference between
the age of the gas and that of the ice at pore
close-off at a given site. Below pore close-off
depth, the gases age at the same rate as the ice in
which they are trapped. Measurement of the gas
composition with depth of the core allows scientists to determine changes in past atmospheric

composition for various gases, including changes

in methane [CH4] and carbon dioxide [CO2] levels.25 The air trapped in the bubbles deep in the
polar ice sheets provides the only opportunity for
direct measurements of the chemical composition of the ancient atmosphere.
Getting the Dates Right
In addition to correcting for the age difference
between the air trapped in ice and the ice itself,
scientists face the task of depth-age correlation
in ice cores. They accomplish this by comparing
proles of chemical species that exhibit seasonal
variation at the time of deposition and gases of
known past atmospheric composition, correlating core depth to the depth of volcanic deposition
for known eruptions and, for some locations, by
visually counting layers. Visual stratigraphy,
which relies on differences in brightness, texture, air bubbles and color between core layers, is
a direct means of correlating depth and age at
sites with high snow accumulation rates where
melt has not occurred and where dust serves to
enable layer identication (right).
Because counting layers visually is not always
possible, scientists most often use dating methods that compare chemical variations and gas
composition proles. In 2003, scientists dated
50 m [165 ft] of ice at Siple Dome, Antarctica, by
sending a camera with an LED down the wellbore. Image brightness was ltered digitally. The
results of the depth-age relationship derived
using digital imaging were close to those derived
by manually counting layers and by electrical
conductivity measurement (ECM) in a core from
a nearby location.26
Direct current ECM, one of two methods analysts use in the process of electrical stratigraphy,
measures the low-frequency conductivity of
cores. In this process, laboratory workers pull
two electrodes of relatively high potential difference along the surface of a prepared slab and
measure the current owing through the core.
The measurements are digitized at every millime-

ter along the length of the core; these data are

stored along with other information such as
depth, time of recovery, ice temperature and
locations of breaks and fractures. Because the
ECM conductivity measurement is a reection of
the acidity of the ice, it is a direct indicator of the
volcanic activity inuence on the chemistry of
the core. Scientists interpret ECM measurements
to reveal a stratigraphy of volcanic eruptions,

18. D = {[(2H/1H)sample (2H/1H)VSMOW] (2H/1H)VSMOW} 1000,

where (2H/1H)sample is the ratio of deuterium to ordinary
hydrogen in a sample corresponding to a particular
datum, and (2H/1H)VSMOW is the ratio of deuterium to
ordinary hydrogen in Vienna Standard Mean Ocean
Water (VSMOW).
19. In the 1960s, the Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water
was developed for the isotopic composition of
freshwater. Scientists studying ice cores use the
standard to estimate the temperature of condensation
at the time the snow fell.
20. Osterberg EC, Handley MJ, Sneed SB, Mayewski PA and
Kreutz KJ: Continuous Ice Core Melter System with
Discrete Sampling for Major Ion, Trace Element, and
Stable Isotope Analyses, Environmental Science &
Technology 40, no. 10 (May 2006): 33553361.

21. Scientists have commonly used chemical testing to

detect sulfate in ice cores and to detect preindustrial
volcanic activity. However, because rising volumes of
anthropogenic sulfates create background signals that
obscure the chemical signal from natural sources,
the technique is less accurate for post-Industrial
Revolution samples.
22. Osterberg et al, reference 20.
23. Planktonic foraminifera are single-celled shelled
animals that live on the surface of the ocean. When they
die their shells fall to the seabed. Depending on their
species, planktonic foraminifera, which can be
differentiated by their shells, ourish in various ocean
waters, from the warmer surface to the colder depths.
Therefore, scientists can use the planktonic foraminifera

remains found in the strata of ocean oor to infer the

oceans temperature at the time a sediment layer was
laid down.
24. Miocinovic P, Price PB and Bay RC: Rapid Optical
Method for Logging Dust Concentration Versus Depth in
Glacial Ice, Applied Optics 40, no. 15 (May 20, 2001):
25152521.
25. Bender M, Sowers T and Brook E: Gases in Ice Cores,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
United States of America 94, no. 16 (August 5, 1997):
83438349.
26. Hawley RL, Waddington ED, Alley RB and Taylor KC:
Annual Layers in Polar Firn Detected by Borehole
Optical Stratigraphy, Geophysical Research Letters 30,
no. 15 (August 2003): HLS1-1HLS1-3.

Winter 2013/2014

> Visual stratigraphy. Annual layers are clearly

visible in this ice core sample. Summer layers
(arrows) appear lighter because they contain
less dust. (Photograph courtesy of the University
of Colorado Boulder, USA.)

11

500

Volcanic acid fallout, kg/m 2

400

300

200

100

0
8,000

6,000

4,000

2,000

2,000

Year, CE

Electrical stratigraphy graph. Using the Greenland Crete and Camp Century
ice cores, technicians calculated the volcanic stratigraphy of the last
10,000 years from the size of the direct current electrical conductivity
method (ECM) peaks (red lines). ECM responds to the acidity of ice, which
varies with acidic input from volcanic activity. Scientists can date the ice by
matching the dates of these peaks with those of known volcanic eruptions.
(Adapted from Wolff, reference 27.)

which can be used to date ice cores. They use

these ndings, along with chemical dating, to
establish depth-age relationships (above).27
Scientists also use these measurements to determine depth correlations between cores; these
correlations may be used to determine or clarify
annual layers that are difcult to discern because
of droughts.28

A second method for electrical stratigraphydielectric proling (DEP)employs highfrequency, alternating current to measure ice
conductivity. Dieletric proling conductivity is an
indication of the amount of acid present in the
ice, but unlike the ECM method, the DEP measurement may be inuenced by chemicals such
as ammonium and chloride. In the DEP method,

Bedrock

> Ice-penetrating radar. This 150 km [95 mi] long section of radar data collected around the North
Greenland Ice-Core Project (NGRIP) drillsite in Greenland shows fairly at bedrock (dark line at
bottom) at a depth of about 3 km [2 mi] and undulating ice layers. The shape of these layers is
created by variations in basal melt rates. Where the layers dip down, the basal melt rate is highest.
(Photograph used with permission from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, University of
Kansas, Lawrence, USA.)

12

whole ice cores are placed between curved electrodes, lending the method several advantages
over ECM. DEP conductivity tests may be performed without touching the ice core and without
removing the core from the plastic shipping
sheath, which makes the method particularly
useful on unstable, brittle core sections.
Ice core depth-age correlation is also affected
by ice ow and base rock deformation. Ice ow
around basal deformities can cause melting, folding and other ice sheet deformations. These
events can affect how scientists interpret dates
and in some cases can destroy the physical record.
Because of these and other difculties, scientists must sometimes indirectly establish a
depth-age relationship of a core. In 1968, the
Byrd ice core in Antarctica was drilled to bedrock. But because the top 88 m [290 ft] of the
core were damaged or missing, scientists could
not establish a correlation by counting layers.
Chronology was established instead by rst identifying the horizon at 97.8 m [321 ft] below the
surface as a layer created by volcanic activity
known to have occurred in 1259 CE. Mean annual
accumulation at the Byrd site was 1.12 cm
[0.44 in.] per year for the 709-year period prior to
1968.29 The timescale for the remainder of the
core was established using ECM. Because measurements were sparse in the brittle zone from
300 to 800 m [980 to 2,600 ft], the measurements
were tted with linear functions and the depthage relationship obtained by integrating the
layer-thickness prole from surface to depth. The
timescale for older sections of the core was subsequently adjusted by correlating measurements
of methane concentration in the Byrd ice core
with those in layer-counted chronologies from
Greenland ice cores.30
Researchers may also extend depth-age relationships established from chemical and visual
studies from ice cores over larger, adjacent geographic areas by applying ice-penetrating radar
that uses time domain electromagnetic pulses.
Radar reections received at the antennae are
caused primarily by conductivity contrasts in the
ice that indicate distinct snowfalls (left). By
extrapolating radar-determined isochrones from
a dated ice core to the geographic area of interest, scientists can determine the lateral extent of
key stratigraphic layers in places that are distant
from the ice coring site.
Looking Back at the Future
Many climatologists consider capturing an ice core
from the last interglacial periodthe Eemian,
which lasted from 130,000 to 115,000 years ago

Oileld Review

Winter 2013/2014

NGRIP depth, m
2,800

3,000

3,200

18Oice , 0/00

32

18Oice

36

40

44
0

18Oatm

2,000

0.5

18Oatm , 0/00

0.5

800

CH4

400

400

350

N2O

300

N2O, ppbv

600

250

0.5
0.4

15N

0.3

70

0.2

80

Air content

90
100

1
2,200

2
2,250

3
2,300

4
2,350

2,400

Air content, mL/kg

CH4, ppbv

1,000

15N, 0/00

to be crucial to understanding the Earths current

climate warming trend. The Eemian interglacial
period was a warm period similar to that which the
Earth may be trending toward today. Although the
warming then was not caused by anthropogenic
emissions, results of the warming on the glaciers
and ice sheets do provide clues to climate processes and may help scientists improve predictions about the future. For example, some climate
models suggest the Greenland ice sheet will disappear if todays apparent warming trend continues;
proxy records from the Eemian interglacial period
provide a test of that hypothesis.31
Until recently, efforts to extract an ice core
with the complete record from the Eemian
period have been unsuccessful. That hurdle was
recently overcome at the North Greenland
Eemian Ice Drilling (NEEM) site when scientists extracted a 2,540-m [8,330-ft] ice core. The
NEEM project, an international collaboration
led by investigators at the Niels Bohr Institute,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark, took from
2008 to 2012 to acquire the core. The top 1,419 m
[4,656 ft] are from the current Holocene interglacial period. The glacial ice below that can be
matched to the glacial ice of the North
Greenland Ice-Core Project (NGRIP). Below
NGRIP depth, the Greenland Ice Core
Chronology 2005 extended timescale can be
used to a depth of 2,206.7 m [7,239.8 ft], which
correlates to 108,000 years before present,
assuming 1950 as present.32
Deeper than 2,206.7 m, annual layering in the
Eemian ice core becomes more difcult to discern because the ice near the bottom of the ice
sheet is folded. This lower section does, however,
contain zones with relatively high stable isotope
values of H2O [18Oice], which, as a proxy for condensation temperature, indicates the ice is from
the Eemian interglacial period (right). This conclusion is supported by the fact that ice deeper
than 2,537 m [8,323 ft] is near bedrock and has
low 18O values, which indicate it is from the
glacial period that preceded the Eemian.33
The NEEM ice core is the rst ice core record
from the entire Eemian period. Scientists will
continue their studies in an attempt to further
decode the folded ice; however, it is clear that
Greenland during the Eemian was about 8C
[14F] warmer than it is today. From the analysis
of the core, scientists have concluded that melting occurred at the edge of the ice sheet and the
ow of the entire ice mass caused the ice sheet to
lose mass and become reduced in height.
Although the ice sheet was shrinking at a rate of

6
2,450

2,500

NEEM depth, m

> Observed NEEM records. The observed records of isotopes 18Oice,

18Oatmosphere and 15N along with traces of CH4 and N2O in parts per billion
volume (ppbv) and air content from 2,162 m [7,093 ft] and deeper are plotted
here on the NEEM depth scale. Each zone (0 to 6) represents a section of the
NEEM ice core record. Symbols mark the start (diamond) and end (square)
of each zone. There is no discontinuity between Zones 4 and 5, but spikes of
CH4, N2O and air content occur in Zone 4 (shaded blue), which indicate a
period of surface melting or wet surface conditions. For comparison, the
NGRIP data are plotted as light grey curves on the NGRIP depth scale on top
of the plot. The NEEM and NGRIP depth scales are synchronized between
the NEEM depths of 2,162 and 2,207.6 m [7,093 and 7,242.8 ft]. (Adapted from
NEEM Community members, reference 32.)

27. Wolff E: Electrical Stratigraphy of Polar Ice Cores:

Principles, Methods, and Findings, in Hondoh T (ed):
Physics of Ice Core Records. Sapporo, Japan: Hokkaido
University Press (2000): 155171.
28. Taylor K, Alley R, Fiacco J, Grootes P, Lamorey G,
Mayewski P and Spencer MJ: Ice-Core Dating and
Chemistry by Direct-Current Electrical Conductivity,
Journal of Glaciology 38, no. 130 (1992): 325332.
29. Langway CC Jr, Clausen HB and Hammer CU:
An Inter-Hemispheric Volcanic Time-Marker in Ice
Cores from Greenland and Antarctica, Annals of
Glaciology 10 (1988): 102108.

30. Neumann TA, Conway H, Price SF, Waddington ED,

Catania GA and Morse DL: Holocene Accumulation and
Ice Sheet Dynamics in Central West Antarctica,
Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface 113,
no. F2 (June 2008): F02018-1F02018-9.
31. Wilhelms F, Schwander J, Mason B, Augustin L,
Azuma N, Hansen SB, Fitzpatrick J and Talalay PG:
Ice Core Drilling Technical Challenges, International
Partnerships in Ice Core Sciences white paper, http://
www.isogklima.nbi.ku.dk/nyhedsfolder/engelske_
nyheder/centre-people-to-antarctic-2013/IPICS_
Technical_Challenges.pdf/ (accessed January 15, 2014).
32. NEEM Community members: Eemian Interglacial
Reconstructed from a Greenland Folded Ice Core,
Nature 493, no. 7433 (January 24, 2013): 489494.
33. NEEM Community members, reference 32.

13

> West Antarctic Ice Sheet core. Because snowfall at the WAIS Divide rarely melts, ice layers for the past 40,000 years are
unbroken, and their divisions are visible and easily counted. The ice also contains much less dust than other ice sheets do.
A dark ash layer, however, in this 2 m [6.5 ft] long core section is clearly visible. (Photograph courtesy of Heidi A. Roop,
WAIS Divide Science Coordination Ofce, University of New Hampshire.)

From the Deep South

At a eld camp 1,045 km [650 mi] from the magnetic South Pole, engineers and scientists have
recently recovered an ice core that dates
68,000 years into the past. The WAIS Divide Ice
Core Project provides southern hemisphere climate and greenhouse gas records that are of
comparable time resolution and duration to the

Greenland ice cores. This ice core allows scientists to compare environmental conditions
between the northern and southern hemispheres
with greater detail than before and allows them
to study the levels of greenhouse gases present in
ancient atmospheres.
Researchers are using the ice core to understand the history of the WAIS to provide further
insights into past atmospheric composition and
abrupt climate change and to investigate the
biological signals contained in deep Antarctic
ice cores. Because the WAIS Divide core has an
order of magnitude less dust than the Greenland
ice core has, scientists expect it to provide them
with a more detailed atmospheric CO2 record
than was possible from Greenland ice. Many

other gases (both greenhouse and nongreenhouse) and their isotopes are being measured at
unprecedented precision and resolution.
The research team recovered the ice core
from ice that is more than 3,460 m [11,300 ft]
thick; they stopped drilling just 50 m [165 ft]
above bedrock to avoid contaminating water at
the bottom of the ice that has remained isolated
from the environment for at least 100,000 years.
Because snow falling at the WAIS Divide rarely
melts, each of the past 40,000 years can be identied in individual layers of ice (above). Deeper
than that depth, individual annual layers are not
as readily identiable, but the core contains a
higher time resolution record than any previously
recovered cores. Results from the analysis of this

34. Greenland Ice Cores Reveal Warm Climate of the Past,

University of Copenhagen, Niels Bohr Institute
(January 22, 2013), http://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/news/
news13/greenland-ice-cores-reveal-warm-climate-ofthe-past/ (accessed October 23, 2013).
35. Thompson LG: Ice Core Evidence for Climate Change in
the Tropics: Implications for Our Future, Quaternary
Science Reviews 19, no. 15 (January 2000): 1935.

36. Thompson LG, Mosley-Thompson E, Davis ME,

Zagorodnov VS, Howat IM, Mikhalenko VN and Lin PN:
Annually Resolved Ice Core Records of Tropical Climate
Variability over the Past ~1800 Years, Science 340,
no. 6135 (May 24, 2013): 945950.
37. Fischer H, Severinghaus J, Brook E, Wolff E, Albert M,
Alemany O, Arthern R, Bentley C, Blankenship D,
Chappellaz J, Creyts T, Dahl-Jensen D, Dinn M,

Frezzotti M, Fujita S, Gallee H, Hindmarsh R, Hudspeth D,

Jugie G, Kawamura K, Lipenkov V, Miller H, Mulvaney R,
Parrenin F, Pattyn F, Ritz C, Schwander J, Steinhage D,
van Ommen T and Wilhelms F: Where to Find 1.5 Million
Yr Old Ice for the IPICS Oldest Ice Ice Core, Climate of
the Past 9 (November 5, 2013): 24892505.

about 6 cm [2.5 in.] per year, it did not disappear,

and the research team estimates the volume of
the ice sheet was not reduced by more than 25%
during the warmest years of the Eemian period.34
This may indicate that high sea levels during the
Eemian period are primarily attributable to the
collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

14

Oileld Review

18O, 0/00
20

18

Dust, 104 ppb/mL

16

Nitrate, ppb

2,000

100

200

Current
warm period

1,900

Late Little
Ice Age

1,800
1,700

1,600

Early Little
Ice Age

1,500
1,400

Year, CE

1,300

Medieval
climate
anomaly

1,200
1,100
1,000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
0.8

1.2

1.6

Accumulation, m
water equivalent/year

50

100

Ammonium, ppb

> Identifying climate events. Decadal averages of 18O, net accumulation, insoluble dust, ammonium
and nitrate in the Quelccaya Summit Dome ice core from the Quelccaya ice cap of Peru allowed
scientists to identify specic climatological periods (shading). The asterisk on the dust prole
indicates the 1600 CE eruption of Huaynaputina in Peru. (Adapted from Thompson et al, reference 36.)

core have resolved a scientic debate concerning

relationships between climate change in the
northern and southern hemispheres and conrmed that the WAIS is very sensitive to conditions in the southern oceans. Scientists expect
additional signicant results from further analysis now that drilling of the ice core is complete.
To the Top of the Mountain
Ice coring is not restricted to extreme polar
climes and has been performed in high-altitude,
low-latitude glaciers. The wellbores in these tropical locations are shallower than those drilled in
ice sheets at high latitudes, but these ice cores
effectively reveal details of the Earths tropical
climate history. Tropical ice cores have been
retrieved from such geographically disparate

Winter 2013/2014

locations as the Himalaya and the Andes mountain ranges.

In 2003, scientists from The Ohio State
University, Columbus, USA, retrieved ice cores
1.92 km [1.19 mi] apart from two wellbores
Quelccaya Summit Dome and Quelccaya North
Domedrilled to bedrock in the Quelccaya ice
cap of the Peruvian Andes. Researchers analyzing the cores found that each of the 1,800 years
spanned by the cores was clearly dened by alternating dark and light layers. The dark layers are
tinted by dust accumulated during dry seasons;
the light layers are the result of snowfall during
wet seasons.35
In addition to the unprecedented clarity of the
annual layers, the Quelccaya ice cap cores are
important to climatologists because they were

formed in the high Andean plain of southern Peru.

The snow that became the ice that formed the
cores originated to the east of the Quelccaya ice
cap; this snow was also affected by El Nio
weather effects originating in the west. Because
El Nio is a temporary climate change that is
driven by sea surface temperatures, the chemical
signature in the Quelccaya ice cap is a proxy for
sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacic
Ocean over the past 1,800 years (left).36 Chemical
and isotopic records from these tropical ice cores
provide historical evidence of the nature of climate change in the lower latitude regions of the
planet and a context for current changes.
Perfecting the Tools
Although early ice coring drills were based on
concepts from geologic drilling, current state-ofthe-art units include advances not attempted in
rock drilling. For example, the DISC drills ability
to retrieve replicate cores from the high side of
the borehole, while leaving the original hole
accessible for borehole logging studies, is an
innovation that is unique to ice core drilling.
Enabled by a number of advances in technology, the relatively young science of using ice cores
to understand past climates and environments
has yielded societally relevant and important
discoveries. As it matures, the science is certain
to provide climatologists with increasingly clear
insight into the future of Earths climate.
These technological advances in ice core
drilling may also help answer a question that has
plagued scientists for decades. Currently, ice coring experts are working to choose the optimal
surface location in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet
from which to drill into 1.5 millionyear-old ice.37
Proxy records from such an ice core may help
solve the mystery behind a climate transition
that analyses from marine sediments indicate
took place between 900,000 and 1.2 million years
ago. Before this Middle Pleistocene event, the
time between Earths warming periods and ice
ages was about 41,000 years; since the climate
change during the Pleistocene, the time between
these temperature extremes has been about
100,000 years. To this date, the cause of this transition is unknown, and scientists hope the answer
is in the air bubbles and chemistry of this now
reachable ancient ice.
RvF

15

Seeking the Sweet Spot: Reservoir and

Completion Quality in Organic Shales

Karen Sullivan Glaser

Camron K. Miller
Houston, Texas, USA
Greg M. Johnson
Brian Toelle
Denver, Colorado, USA
Robert L. Kleinberg
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Paul Miller
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Wayne D. Pennington
Michigan Technological University
Houghton, Michigan, USA
Oileld Review Winter 2013/2014: 25, no. 4.
Copyright 2014 Schlumberger.
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Alan Lee
Brown, Raj Malpani, William Matthews, David Paddock
and Charles Wagner, Houston; Helena Gamero Diaz, Frisco,
Texas; and Ernest Gomez, Denver.
sCore is a mark of Schlumberger.
1. Boyer C, Kieschnick J, Suarez-Rivera R, Lewis RE
and Waters G: Producing Gas from Its Source,
Oileld Review 18, no. 3 (Autumn 2006): 3649.
Boyer C, Clark B, Jochen V, Lewis R and Miller CK:
Shale Gas: A Global Resource, Oileld Review 23,
no. 3 (Autumn 2011): 2839.
2. Nelson PH: Pore-Throat Sizes in Sandstones, Tight
Sandstones, and Shales, AAPG Bulletin 93, no. 3
(March 2009): 329340.
3. System permeability refers to the overall permeability
of the effective reservoir volume and is the sum of
contributions from matrix permeability and natural
fracture permeability. Matrix permeability in shale
reservoirs ranges from 0.1 to 1,000 nD. Natural and
induced fractures are necessary for wells in these
formations to be economically productive.
4. Miller C, Waters G and Rylander E: Evaluation of
Production Log Data from Horizontal Wells Drilled in
Organic Shales, paper SPE 144326, presented at the
SPE North American Unconventional Gas Conference
and Exhibition, The Woodlands, Texas, USA,
June 1416, 2011.
Cipolla C, Lewis R, Maxwell S and Mack M: Appraising
Unconventional Resource Plays: Separating Reservoir
Quality from Completion Effectiveness, paper
IPTC 14677, presented at the International Petroleum
Technology Conference, Bangkok, Thailand,
February 79, 2012.

16

Placement of horizontal wells in shale reservoirs can be a costly and risky business
proposition. To minimize risk, operators acquire and analyze surface seismic data
before deciding where to drill.

In the late 20th century, E&P geoscientists

began to consider shales in a new light. Although
production from shales had been established in
the early 1800s, operators considered shale formations mainly as source rocks and low-permeability seals for conventional reservoirs.
However, during the 1980s and 1990s, operators
showed that the proper application of horizontal drilling combined with multistage hydraulic
fracturing could make organic shales productive, spurring the exploitation of organic shales
as self-sourced reservoirs.1 Despite the successful development of the Barnett and Haynesville
shales in the US, the industry quickly realized
that not all shales are viable targets for economic hydrocarbon production, and operators
sought technologies that could identify appropriate targets for development.
Shale formations that offer the best potential
require a unique combination of reservoir and
geomechanical rock properties; such formations
are relatively rare. Organic shales have extremely
small pore size and ultralow matrix permeability,
which makes these unconventional resource
plays fundamentally different from most conventional reservoirs.2 Furthermore, because hydrocarbon migration paths tend to be short,
productive zones of shale reservoirs may be conned to a certain area within a basin or restricted
to a stratigraphic interval.
The two factors that determine the economic
viability of a shale play are reservoir quality and
completion quality. Good reservoir quality (RQ) is
dened for organic shale reservoirs as the ability
to produce hydrocarbons economically after
hydraulic fracture stimulation. Reservoir quality is

a collective prediction characteristic that is largely

governed by mineralogy, porosity, hydrocarbon
saturation, formation volume, organic content and
thermal maturity.
Completion quality (CQ), another collective
prediction attribute, helps predict successful reservoir stimulation through hydraulic fracturing.
Similar to RQ, CQ largely depends on mineralogy
but is also inuenced by elastic properties such as
Youngs modulus, Poissons ratio, bulk modulus
and rock hardness. Completion quality also incorporates factors such as natural fracture density
and orientation, intrinsic and fractured material
anisotropy and the prevailing magnitudes, orientations and anisotropy of in situ stresses.
To be successful in todays shale plays, operators drill horizontally within reservoir strata that
possess superior RQ and CQ. Stimulation treatments are most effective when the induced fractures remain propped open, thereby exposing the
reservoir to a large fracture surface area and
allowing uids to ow from the reservoir to the
wellbore, effectively raising the reservoirs system permeability.3
Operators judge the quality of a hydraulic
fracture completion design based on a postjob
evaluation of data from sources such as microseismic monitoring of hydraulic fracturing,
flowback tests and initial production to determine how effectively and efficiently the reservoir was stimulated.
Ideally, an operator places horizontal wells
within shale intervals with favorable geologic
characteristics and high RQ and CQ and without
geohazards.4 Retrospective studies have demonstrated that this strategy would have resulted in

Oileld Review

Winter 2013/2014

17

as much as a tenfold increase in production

(below).5 Determining where the best RQ and CQ
coincide is therefore an exploration effort, and
the best technique to enhance the exploration
effort, before drilling the initial well, is interpretation of surface seismic data. Recent studies
have indicated that seismic interpretation is useful for dening production sweet spots within
organic shale plays.
In this article, we describe a systematic and
strategic approach for using surface seismic
data to identify reservoir sweet spots in shale
resource plays, starting with basinal and
regional RQ and progressing toward local RQ
and CQ. Case studies from the Arkoma, Delaware
and Williston basins in the US demonstrate how
reection seismic data provide the key to deter-

mining where a resource play may exist and

where RQ and CQ are highest.
Mudstone Characteristics
Geologists dene shales as mudstones that
exhibit ssilitythe ability to split easily, like a
deck of playing cards, into individual laminae.
The oil and gas industry typically considers
resource plays as gas- or liquid-producing
shales. However, it would be more accurate to
call them mudstones or mudrocks, because these
shales often are not ssile.
Mudstones dominate the sedimentary record
and make up roughly 60% to 70% of Earths
sedimentary rocks.6 They are ne-grained sedimentary rocks composed of clay- and silt-size particles with diameters of less than or equal to

600

Gas production, MMcf

520

440

360

280

200

N
120

0
0

km

2
mi

> Best 12-month production results. This 50-mi2 [130-km2] area of the Barnett
Shale play in northwest Tarrant County, Texas, USA, shows the rst years
gas production for more than 650 horizontal wells. Black dots represent
surface locations of well pads, which may service multiple wells. Areas of
warm colors (top of scale) are production sweet spots and areas of cool
colors (bottom of scale) are not. (Adapted from Baihly et al, reference 5.)

5. Baihly JD, Malpani R, Edwards C, Han SY, Kok JCL,

Tollefsen EM and Wheeler CW: Unlocking the Shale
Mystery: How Lateral Measurements and Well
Placement Impact Completions and Resultant
Production, paper SPE 138427, presented at the SPE
Tight Gas Completions Conference, San Antonio, Texas,
November 23, 2010.
6. Aplin AC, Fleet AJ and Macquaker JHS: Muds and
Mudstones: Physical and Fluid-Flow Properties, in
Aplin AC, Fleet AJ and Macquaker JHS (eds): Muds
and Mudstones: Physical and Fluid-Flow Properties.
London: The Geological Society, Special Publication 158
(1999): 18.
7. A micron, or micrometer, is equal to one millionth of a
meter or one thousandth of a millimeter. Its abbreviation

18

is , m or mc. In Imperial units, a micron equals

3.937 105 in.
8. For more on the sCore classication scheme:
Gamero-Diaz H, Miller C and Lewis R: sCore: A
Mineralogy Based Classication Scheme for Organic
Mudstones, paper SPE 166284, presented at the
SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition,
New Orleans, September 30October 2, 2013.
9. Loucks RG and Ruppel SC: Mississippian Barnett Shale:
Lithofacies and Depositional Setting of a Deep-Water
Shale-Gas Succession in the Fort Worth Basin, Texas,
AAPG Bulletin 91, no. 4 (April 2007): 579601.
Passey QR, Bohacs KM, Esch WL, Klimentidis R and
Sinha S: From Oil-Prone Source Rock to Gas-Producing
Shale ReservoirGeologic and Petrophysical

62.5 micron [0.00246 in.].7 These small particle

sizes result in low permeability; poor sorting
the mixing of various grain sizescan further
reduce both permeability and porosity.
Mudstones have a complex mix of organic matter and clay mineralsillite, smectite, kaolinite
and chloritealong with quartz, calcite, dolomite,
feldspar, apatite and pyrite. Geologists with
Schlumberger recently introduced the sCore ternary diagram mudstone classication scheme,
which is built on relationships established
between core and log, using clay, QFM (quartz,
feldspar and mica) and carbonate as the corner
points. The sCore diagram denes 16 classes of
mudstones and can classify a sample as an argillaceous (clay-rich), siliceous or carbonate mudstone. This classication scheme allows geologists
and engineers to examine empirical relationships
between mineralogy and factors that inuence the
RQ and CQ of mudstones by overlaying points that
include indications of RQ, CQ or both (next page).8
Productive mudstones most sought by oil companies tend to be dominated by nonclay minerals,
principally silicates and carbonates, and therefore
lie in the lower part of the diagram, away from the
clay point; higher RQ and CQ rocks are near the
edges of the triangle.9
Several factors control the physical properties of mudstones: the mineralogy and proportions of grains, the fabric of the originally
deposited muds and the postdepositional processessuch as resuspension, redeposition, diagenesis, bioturbation and compactionthat
convert mud into rock.10 Mudstones tend to be
highly heterogeneous, and this heterogeneity can
vary horizontally and vertically, originating from
the sequence of depositional environments and
tectonic regimes that prevailed as the mud strata
stacked up through geologic time.
An individual layer of mud, called a lamination, is typically about a millimeter thick.
Laminations stack up to form laminae sets, called
beds. Beds in turn stack up to form bed sets that
group together into members and then into geologic formations. The mineral and organic composition of each layer depends on the sequence
Characterization of Unconventional Shale-Gas
Reservoirs, paper SPE 131350, presented at the CPS/
SPE International Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition
in China, Beijing, June 810, 2010.
Lash GG and Engelder T: Thickness Trends and
Sequence Stratigraphy of the Middle Devonian
Marcellus Formation, Appalachian Basin: Implications
for Acadian Foreland Basin Evolution, AAPG Bulletin
95, no. 1 (January 2011): 61103.
10. Aplin AC and Macquaker JHS: Mudstone Diversity:
Origin and Implications for Source, Seal, and Reservoir
Properties in Petroleum Systems, AAPG Bulletin 95,
no. 12 (December 2011): 20312059.

Oileld Review

Clay
10

Clay
10

Claydominated
lithotype

20

80

i l l a S ilic a
ceo -ri
us ch
mu
dst
o
arg

Marcellus
Haynesville

ceo C lay-r
us ich
mu
dst
one
sili

10

QFM

Mixed
mudstone
Mixed
siliceous
mudstone

Carbonatesiliceous
mudstone

Carbonate-rich
siliceous mudstone

Mixed
carbonate
mudstone

50

Wolfcamp Shale

Wolfcamp

20

Carbonatedominated
lithotype

Silica-rich
carbonate mudstone

20

80

Clay

20

80
10

Carbonate

10

QFM

10

20

50

0.150

20

Increasing RQ

50

50

Minimum stress gradient, psi/ft

0.62

20

0.65

80

0.090
0.061
50
0.031

Carbonate

10

0.120

80

80

Clay

Effective porosity, fraction

10

High RQ

50

50

Eagle Ford

ch one
y-ri dst
Cla te mu
a
bon

Silicadominated
lithotype

Argillaceouscarbonate
mudstone
(marl)

car

80

Fayetteville

50

50
Argillaceoussiliceous
mudstone

80

Barnett

h
-ric one
ate dst
bon mu
C ar ceous
illa

ne

arg
Mixed
argillaceous
mudstone

20

Shale plays

50

Increasing CQ

sCore Classification

0.68
0.71

High CQ

0.74

0.001

0.77
80

20

80

20

10
10

20

50

80

Carbonate

QFM

10

20

50

Clay

Eagle Ford Shale

80

Clay
Effective porosity, fraction

Minimum stress gradient, psi/ft

0.080

10
20

80

50

0.83

10
20

0.064

Increasing RQ

50

Carbonate

80

0.85

0.048
0.033

50

50

Increasing CQ

QFM

10

0.88
0.90

0.017

0.93

0.001
80

High RQ

20

0.95
80

20

QFM

10

20

50

80

Carbonate

High CQ
10

10

QFM 10

20

50

80

Carbonate

> sCore classication tool. In the clockwise direction, the corners of the sCore ternary diagram (top left) are clay, carbonate and quartz plus feldspars plus
micas (QFM). The diagram denes 16 classes of mudstones based on mineralogy. The mudstones (top right) sought by oil companies tend to have less than
50% clay. In the Wolfcamp Shale (middle), siliceous mudstones exhibit high RQ and CQ. In the Eagle Ford Shale (bottom), carbonate mudstones have high
RQ and CQ. In these examples, RQ is directly proportional to effective porosity and CQ is inversely proportional to the stress gradient of the minimum in situ
principal compressive stress.

Winter 2013/2014

19

or history of geologic conditions of the area

through time. Geologists use the principles of
stratigraphy to decipher this geologic history.11
Layering has a particular effect on some rock
properties: It is a fabric that causes anisotropy.12
A rock is anisotropic if its properties vary with
direction.13 A consequence of layering is that the
composition, size, shape, orientation, packing
and sorting of the particles in the layer tend to
vary more quickly perpendicular to, rather than
parallel to, layers. As a result, rock properties
tend to vary with direction. They are different if
measured layer parallel than if measured layer
perpendicular. Another aspect of rocks that can
lead to anisotropy is the presence of roughly parallel open fracture networks, which can control
the efciency of reservoir stimulation. Because
anisotropy is observable in seismic data, geophys-

icists are able to characterize it for geologists

and engineers to use in their various geologic,
geomechanical and uid-ow models of the prospective reservoir (below).
Mudstones play an important role in a
petroleum system. Their small grain sizes and
sorting characteristics contribute to their characterization as low-porosity rocks with low to
ultralow permeability and high uid-displacement entry pressures. Consequently, when mudstones are in the correct stratigraphic and
structural location and conguration, they form
the seals that cap and delimit conventional
hydrocarbon reservoir geometries.
Some mudstones are characterized as organic
rich, and these have been viewed historically as
the source rocks that, through secondary migration, supply hydrocarbons to adjacent and remote
Plain Light
0

conventional and unconventional continuous reservoirs. These same organic-rich mudstones have
also proved to be self-sourcing reservoirs, yielding
hydrocarbons that have been expelled and undergone primary migration to be stored within the
source rocks themselves.14 For example, the Eagle
Ford Shale in south Texas, USA, is a mudstone
that sources the prolic Austin Chalk fractured
reservoir, which has been explored and produced
for more than 80 years. Now, operators recognize
the Eagle Ford Shale itself as a reservoir capable
of producing oil, condensate, wet gas and dry gas
that simply never left the source rock.15
Not all mudstones contain sufcient hydrocarbons to be considered potential reservoir
rocks. Mudstones are dened as organic rich if
their total organic carbon (TOC) concentration is
greater than 2 weight %.16 The preservation and

Ultraviolet Light

226

0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7

Core length, ft

0.8

ft

1
3

0.9
1.0

227

1.1
1.2
0

mm

1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
1.7
0 mm 0.5
1.8
1.9
2.0

> Mudstone layering at many scales. Layering may be observed in photographs of outcrop, core and thin section. The Eagle Ford Shale outcrop (left) is in
Lozier Canyon in Terrell County, Texas. The images of core (plain and ultraviolet light, center) and thin section (original and close-up, right) are of lower
Eagle Ford Shale from the BP-Schlumberger Lozier Canyon number 1 well. The 2-ft [0.6-m] core length was cut from depths 226 to 228 ft [68.9 to 69.5 m].
The thin section is of fossiliferous siliceous-calcareous mudstone and has a mineralized fracture running along its right side, which has been stained with
potassium ferricyanide and alizarin red S dye to distinguish carbonate minerals. In the close-up view from the thin section, there is evidence that the
fracture propagated, stopped and restarted along a different path. (Outcrop photograph courtesy of Karen Sullivan Glaser. Core and thin section images
courtesy of Schlumberger and BP America Incorporated.)

20

Oileld Review

richness of organic matter depend on the relative

rates of its production, dilution and destruction
(right).17 Inorganic matter deposited at the same
time as organic matter will dilute organic matter
concentration. Destruction of organic matter
occurs through bacterial consumption, by oxidation reactions at shallow depths and by deeper
thermally activated reactions, which transform
part of the organic matter into oil and gas before
it ultimately changes to graphite, or dead carbon.
The primary portion of organic matter in source
rock is kerogen, which is insoluble in common
organic solvents; the other portion is bitumen,
which is soluble.
Kerogen has petrophysical characteristics that
differ signicantly from those of the mineral constituents in shale, and these characteristics affect
the overall bulk properties of the reservoir rock.
For example, depending on kerogen type and
maturity, the density of kerogen can vary from 1.1
to 1.4 g/cm3, considerably less than the bulk density of its shale host rock.18 Consequently, the bulk
density of organic-rich shales appears lower (as if
the shale has a higher porosity) than that of shales
containing lower concentrations of kerogen.
The distribution of kerogen varies from isolated particles dispersed through the mudstone
matrix to lenses and sheets aligned with mudstone laminae. Investigators have found that
kerogen particles contain secondary porosity
that likely formed during thermal maturation.19
This organic porosity occurs as nanopores,
dened as less than 1 micron in diameter.
11. Neal J, Risch D and Vail P: Sequence Stratigraphy
A Global Theory for Local Success, Oileld Review 5,
no. 1 (January 1993): 5162.
12. Fabric refers to the spacing, arrangement, distribution,
size, shape and orientation of the constituents of rocks,
such as minerals, grains, organic matter, porosity,
layering, bed boundaries, lithology contacts and
fractures. Fabric elements contribute to the anisotropy
of materials when the elements have preferential
orientation along crystallographic axes, fractures and
elongated and at particles.
13. For more on permeability anisotropy: Ayan C, Colley N,
Cowan G, Ezekwe E, Wannell M, Goode P, Halford F,
Joseph J, Mongini A, Obondoko G and Pop J:
Measuring Permeability Anisotropy: The Latest
Approach, Oileld Review 6, no. 4 (October 1994):
2435.
For more on elastic anisotropy: Armstrong P, Ireson D,
Chmela B, Dodds K, Esmersoy C, Miller D, Hornby B,
Sayers C, Schoenberg M, Leaney S and Lynn H:
The Promise of Elastic Anisotropy, Oileld Review 6,
no. 4 (October 1994): 3647.
For more on the anisotropy of electrical properties:
Anderson B, Bryant I, Lling M, Spies B and Helbig K:
Oileld Anisotropy: Its Origins and Electrical
Characteristics, Oileld Review 6, no. 4 (October 1994):
4856.
14. Primary migration refers to the ow of newly generated
hydrocarbon uids within source rocks. Secondary
migration refers to the ow of free hydrocarbon uids
away from source rocks toward adjoining or distant
reservoir rocks.

Winter 2013/2014

0 m 200

mm

> Organic matter. The thin section (left), which has been stained with potassium ferricyanide and alizarin
red S dye on its left side, is of calcareous pelletal mudstone. In the close-up view (right), the layer is
composed of planktonic foraminifera (white and pink), attened fecal pellets (reddish brown) and organic
matter (black). (Core and thin section images courtesy of Schlumberger and BP America Incorporated.)

Kerogen fabric affects the physical properties

of organic-rich mudstones. When the organic content is high and the kerogen forms interconnected
layer-parallel networks through the mudstone

frame, the organic porosity may be sufcient for

hydrocarbon storage and for providing permeability to gas and liquid hydrocarbon in an otherwise
extremely low-permeability matrix.20

15. Martin R, Baihly J, Malpani R, Lindsay G and

Atwood WK: Understanding Production from
Eagle FordAustin Chalk System, paper SPE 145117,
presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition, Denver, October 30November 2, 2011.
16. Boyer et al (2006), reference 1.
Loucks and Ruppel, and Lash and Engelder, reference 9.
The bulk volume fraction or percent of TOC in rock is
roughly twice its weight fraction or percent. A
concentration of 2 weight % [0.02 kg/kg] TOC in rock is
approximately equivalent to 4 bulk volume % [0.04 m3/m3]
TOC. The exact calculation depends on the density and
maturity of the organic matter and the bulk density of the
host rock.
17. Bohacs KM, Grabowski GJ Jr, Carroll AR,
Mankiewski PJ, Miskell-Gerhardt KJ, Schwalbach JR,
Wegner MB and Simo JA: Production, Destruction,
and DilutionThe Many Paths to Source-Rock
Development, in Harris NB (ed): The Deposition of
Organic-Carbon-Rich Sediments: Models, Mechanisms,
and Consequences. Tulsa: Society of Sedimentary
Geology, SEPM Special Publication 82 (2005): 61101.
For more on source rock geochemistry: McCarthy K,
Rojas K, Niemann M, Palmowski D, Peters K and
Stankiewicz A: Basic Petroleum Geochemistry for
Source Rock Evaluation, Oileld Review 23, no. 2
(Summer 2011): 3243.
18. The density of kerogen increases as organic carbon
matures from immature, generative organic carbon to
overmature, nongenerative organic carbon. For more on
kerogen: Jarvie DM, Jarvie BM, Weldon WD and

Maende A: Components and Processes Impacting

Production Success from Unconventional Shale
Resource Systems, Search and Discovery Article
40908, adapted from an oral presentation at the 10th
Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition,
Manama, Bahrain, March 47, 2012.
Okiongbo KS, Aplin AC and Larter SR: Changes in
Type II Kerogen Density as a Function of Maturity:
Evidence from the Kimmeridge Clay Formation,
Energy & Fuels 19, no. 6 (November 2005): 24952499.
19. Loucks RG, Reed RM, Ruppel SC and Jarvie DM:
Morphology, Genesis, and Distribution of NanometerScale Pores in Siliceous Mudstones of the Mississippian
Barnett Shale, Journal of Sedimentary Research 79,
no. 12 (December 2009): 848861.
Curtis ME, Cardott BJ, Sondergeld CH and Rai CS:
Development of Organic Porosity in the Woodford
Shale with Increasing Thermal Maturity, International
Journal of Coal Geology 103 (December 1, 2012): 2631.
20. Wang FP and Reed RM: Pore Networks and Fluid Flow
in Gas Shales, paper SPE 124253, presented at the
SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition,
New Orleans, October 47, 2009.
Ambrose RJ, Hartman RC, Diaz-Campos M, Akkutlu IY
and Sondergeld CH: Shale Gas-in-Place Calculations
Part I: New Pore-Scale Considerations, SPE Journal 17,
no. 1 (March 2012): 219229.
Curtis ME, Sondergeld CH, Ambrose RJ and Rai CS:
Microstructural Investigation of Gas Shales in Two and
Three Dimensions Using Nanometer-Scale Resolution
Imaging, AAPG Bulletin 96, no. 4 (April 2012): 665677.

21

In addition, kerogen fabric affects the elastic

and mechanical properties of reservoir rocks.21
Generally, mudstones that contain interconnected kerogen within their frame are characterized by lower elastic moduli and higher ductility
compared with those mudstones that have isolated kerogen particles dispersed through their
matrix. Kerogen content distributed parallel to
the laminae may profoundly affect the anisotropic elastic and mechanical properties of mudstones.22 These effects will be enhanced if, in
addition to creating secondary porosity within
kerogen, hydrocarbon generation and charging of
the kerogen-rich laminae cause overpressuring, a
condition that is conducive to creating layer-parallel microcracks, which strike parallel to layers
and open perpendicular to them.23 Because
matrix permeability in shale reservoirs is exceptionally low, ranging from 107 to 103 mD, natural fractures play a signicant role in reservoir
completions and hydrocarbon production.
Natural fractures contribute to the performance of hydraulic fracture stimulations by providing planes of weakness and conduits for uid
ow.24 As planes of weakness, natural fractures
may dictate the propagation and development of
induced fracture networks, especially if the in
situ stress anisotropy is low.25 As conduits for
uid ow, these fractures may enhance the
extent of effective reservoir volume drained by
the wellbore, and they may admit high-pressure
uids, which could cause permanent shear slippage along their fracture planes and increase
fracture aperture and conductivity.
Local RQ sweet spots in prospective mudstone reservoirs often contain natural fractures
that provide ow pathways connecting matrix
porosity and storage to hydraulic fractures and
the well. Natural fractures may also affect CQ
through the geometry of stimulation-induced
hydraulic fracture networks, which tend to
become more widespread and complex when preexisting natural fracture networks are oriented
at an angle to the present-day principal horizontal stress.26 When mudstone reservoirs lack natural fractures, operating companies must rely on
hydraulic fracture stimulations to create induced
fracture networks that connect production from
the reservoir matrix to the wellbore. Therefore,
natural fractures, which can increase both RQ
and CQ, are a seismic exploration target in the
hunt for sweet spots in shale reservoirs.
Through the analysis of seismic attributes, geophysicists detect and characterize fracture networks.
This process takes advantage of the volume-averaged
response from the entire reservoir interval containing an open natural fracture system.27

22

Numerous fracture detection methods use seismic attributes. When natural fractures align in a
consistent strike orientation, they cause elastic
properties and seismic attributes to vary with azimuth, including velocity and reection amplitude.28 Geophysicists observe these variations from
analysis of 3D surface seismic surveys that have
been acquired along multiple azimuths.29
Azimuthal analysis of shear waves (S-waves) has
proved to be a good fracture detection method.30
Analysis of seismic waveform scattering, which
was often treated as noise in the past, may also
reveal information about fracture orientation and
spacing through frequency analysis.31 In addition,
combinations of attributes such as reection
strength and seismic variancethe variation
between seismic samplesmay be blended, or
superimposed, to expose subtle structural features
that have fracture systems associated with them.32
Regional- or Basin-Scale Sweet Spots
During the initial years of the current surge in
activity in shale plays, some operators were able
to develop shale plays on the basis of hydrocar21. Surez-Rivera R, Deenadayalu C and Yang Y-K:
Unlocking the Unconventional Oil and Gas Reservoirs:
The Effect of Laminated Heterogeneity in Wellbore
Stability and Completion of Tight Gas Shale Reservoirs,
paper OTC 20269, presented at the Offshore Technology
Conference, Houston, May 47, 2009.
22. Vernik L and Landis C: Elastic Anisotropy of Source
Rocks: Implications for Hydrocarbon Generation
and Primary Migration, AAPG Bulletin 80, no. 4
(April 1996): 531544.
Vernik L and Milovac J: Rock Physics of Organic
Shales, The Leading Edge 30, no. 3 (March 2011):
318323.
Sayers CM: The Effect of Kerogen on the Elastic
Anisotropy of Organic-Rich Shales, Geophysics 78,
no. 2 (MarchApril 2013): D65D74.
23. For more on layer-parallel microcracks: Lash GG and
Engelder T: An Analysis of Horizontal Microcracking
During Catagenesis: Example from the Catskill Delta
Complex, AAPG Bulletin 89, no. 11 (November 2005):
14331449.
24. Miller C, Hamilton D, Sturm S, Waters G, Taylor T,
Le Calvez J and Singh M: Evaluating the Impact of
Mineralogy, Natural Fractures and In Situ Stresses on
Hydraulically Induced Fracture System Geometry in
Horizontal Shale Wells, paper SPE 163878, presented at
the SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference,
The Woodlands, Texas, February 46, 2013.
25. Weng X, Kresse O, Cohen C, Wu R and Gu H: Modeling
of Hydraulic Fracture-Network Propagation in a
Naturally Fractured Formation, SPE Production &
Operations 26, no. 4 (November 2011): 368380.
Kresse O, Cohen C, Weng X, Wu R and Gu H:
Numerical Modeling of Hydraulic Fracturing in
Naturally Fractured Formations, paper ARMA 11363,
presented at the 45th US Rock Mechanics/
Geomechanics Symposium, San Francisco,
June 2629, 2011.
26. Miller et al, reference 24.
27. For more on fracture detection using reection
seismology: Aarre V, Astratti D, Al Dayyni TNA,
Mahmoud SL, Clark ABS, Stellas MJ, Stringer JW,
Toelle B, Vejbk OV and White G: Seismic Detection of
Subtle Faults and Fractures, Oileld Review 24, no. 2
(Summer 2012): 2843.

bon shows on mud logs that were recorded in

shales encountered while drilling conventional
reservoirs within a basin. The regions within
these basins where organic shales are thermally
mature were already known to the industry;
therefore, for many of the shale plays in North
America, it was unnecessary for operators to
investigate the plays thermal maturity.
Because of the successful development of the
Barnett Shale in the Fort Worth basin in northcentral Texas, operators widened their search for
shale gas beyond North America to basins that
are less explored. In certain basins around the
world, few wells have been drilled, and operators
lack the level of understanding of the stratigraphic and structural framework to anticipate
where potential shale resource plays exist. In
these basins, initial exploration for potential
shale reservoirs relies on evaluating preexisting
2D seismic surveys and additional structural data
from remote sensing analyses and outcrop studies of surface geology.
Geoscientists evaluate these data to establish
the structural framework of the major basinal
28. For more on elastic anisotropy: Armstrong et al,
reference 13.
29. For more on azimuthal seismic anisotropy analysis:
Barkved O, Bartman B, Compani B, Gaiser J, Van Dok R,
Johns T, Kristiansen P, Probert T and Thompson M:
The Many Facets of Multicomponent Seismic Data,
Oileld Review 16, no. 2 (Summer 2004): 4256.
30. Hardage B: Fracture Identication and Evaluation Using
S Waves, Search and Discovery Article 40792, adapted
from ve Geophysical Corner columns by B Hardage in
AAPG Explorer 32, no. 48 (AprilAugust 2011).
31. Burns DR, Willis ME, Toksz MN and Vetri L:
Fracture Properties from Seismic Scattering,
The Leading Edge 26, no. 9 (September 2007): 11861196.
32. High seismic variance occurs where seismic data vary
rapidly, such as when crossing faults or stratigraphic
boundaries.
33. For more on petroleum system modeling: Al-Hajeri MM,
Al Saeed M, Derks J, Fuchs T, Hantschel T, Kauerauf A,
Neumaier M, Schenk O, Swientek O, Tessen N, Welte D,
Wygrala B, Kornpihl D and Peters K: Basin and
Petroleum System Modeling, Oileld Review 21, no. 2
(Summer 2009): 1429.
Peters KE, Magoon LB, Bird KJ, Valin ZC and Keller MA:
North Slope, Alaska: Source Rock Distribution,
Richness, Thermal Maturity, and Petroleum Charge,
AAPG Bulletin 90, no. 2 (February 2006): 261292.
Peters K, Schenk O and Bird K: Timing of Petroleum
System Events Controls Accumulations on the North
Slope, Alaska, Search and Discovery Article 30145,
adapted from an oral presentation at the AAPG
International Conference and Exhibition, Calgary,
September 1215, 2010.
Higley DK: Undiscovered Petroleum Resources for
the Woodford Shale and Thirteen Finger Limestone
Atoka Shale Assessment Units, Anadarko Basin,
Denver: US Geological Survey Open-File Report
20111242, 2011.
34. Boyer et al (2006), reference 1.
35. US Department of Energy Ofce of Fossil Energy and
National Energy Technology Laboratory: Modern Shale
Gas Development in the United States: A Primer,
Washington, DC: US Department of Energy, April 2009.
36. The shorter wavelength portions of the seismic signals
are scattered enough to become incoherent and cancel
themselves out.

Oileld Review

18 MMcf

61 MMcf

Strong

23 MMcf

Untested
anomaly

Frequency anomaly

stratigraphic units, including the locations of

major fault zones and other tectonic features.
Once they complete this analysis, basin analysts
can use the structural framework as input to
petroleum system modeling to determine if
organic shale formations might be thermally
mature, and if so, where in the basin these may
occur.33 When this information is combined with
regional mapping of available TOC data, regionalor basin-scale sweet spots may be identied,
enabling operators to select optimal locations for
drilling initial vertical pilot wells in the next
phase of exploration.

22 MMcf

80 MMcf

372 MMcf

Weak

Local or Operating Area Sweet Spots

Petroleum system modeling predicts the location
and characteristics of basin-scale sweet spots,
including the distribution of kerogen content, its
thermal maturity and the pore pressure within
the prospective interval. However, these predictions can be conrmed only by drilling a pilot
well. Core and logging measurements from the
vertical pilot well provide data to update the
modeling and determine whether the pilot well
has intersected a sweet spot. Engineers can categorize local sweet spots by analyzing RQ and CQ
using the newly acquired core and log data.
Local sweet spots of high RQ have one or
more of three properties. Local sweet spots may
have high matrix porosity that contains signicant amounts of free gas, which may be produced
at high rates during initial production, allowing
for rapid payout of a horizontal appraisal well.
In addition, sweet spots may have signicant
concentrations of kerogen. Kerogen-rich sweet
spots also contain large volumes of adsorbed gas,
which is stored mainly on kerogen surfaces.34 This
adsorbed gas contributes to sustained production
as pressure drops during reservoir depletion,
long after the free gas has been consumed.
Local RQ sweet spots may also have dense
networks of open microfractures. Similar to highporosity sweet spots, densely fractured sweet
spots contain free gas that is produced during the
early production of a well. In addition, microfractures also increase the system permeability
within a shale reservoir.
The best RQ sweet spots include all three
propertiesincreased porosity, kerogen and
microfracturingwhich in turn affect various
attributes of seismic data through their effect on
rock properties. Increased porosity and the presence of fractures typically cause decreases in seismic velocity and increased attenuation of high
frequencies. Concentrations of kerogen can also

Winter 2013/2014

0
0

km

2
mi

> Reservoir quality sweet spots in a shale reservoir. Six vertical wells (red
dots) were drilled into the Woodford Shale in the Arkoma basin in southeast
Oklahoma. Their cumulative gas production after approximately 2.5 years
through June 2009 varied widely. Interpretation of a 3D seismic dataset
revealed faulting (black). However, the wells proximity to faults, which often
is associated with fracture density in the faults damage zone, did not explain
the production variation. An analysis of seismic frequencies in the dataset
revealed a frequency attribute that interpreters identied with RQ sweet
spots (dashed red outlines) when this attribute was strong. Gas production
correlated with the size and strength of the seismically identied sweet spots.

lower the elastic moduli and density of mudstones, but to a lesser degree. Changes in certain
seismic attributes associated with these rock
properties may be used to identify RQ sweet spots.
Correlating Frequency Anomalies to
Production Behavior
In the Arkoma basin of southeast Oklahoma,
USA, gas production has been established from
the Woodford Shale, a Late DevonianEarly
Mississippian age organic-rich mudstone. Its
mineralogy is primarily quartz and illite, with
small quantities of pyrite and dolomite. Porosity
ranges from 3% to 9% and TOC ranges from
1 to 14 weight % [0.01 to 0.14 kg/kg].35
An operator targeting Woodford Shale gas
production had drilled six vertical wells within a
4-mi2 [10-km2] area. The wells production rates
varied widely. In a 2.5-year period, cumulative
gas production per well ranged from 18 to
372 MMcf [0.51 to 10.5 million m3] with average
cumulative production from the ve lowest producing wells of 40 MMcf [1 million m3]. The
operator had acquired a 3D seismic survey over
the eld and requested that Schlumberger analysts interpret the data to determine why the
production was so variable and to locate areas
of potentially higher production.

The 3D seismic data provide far greater coverage of the reservoir interval than could be
achieved by vertical or horizontal well data. The
3D seismic data were initially interpreted to
locate faults and any other geohazards within the
area, but the observed faulting and fracturing
associated with fault damage zones could not
explain the production history or the well-towell variability.
Geophysicists analyzed the data for seismic
attributes that would reveal RQ sweet spots. They
identied a seismic frequency attribute that at
certain frequencies corresponded with areas of
higher production. These seismic sweet spot
anomalies were areas in which the dominant
seismic frequency proved to be relatively low,
apparently the result of scattering of waves from
networks of natural fractures or microfractures.36
The anomalies appeared as isolated patches
within the eld, and the team interpreted them
to represent areas of increased porosity and
microfracturing within the shale reservoir.
Productive wells were located within these
anomalous areas, while the underperforming
wells were not. The well with the highest production is situated within a large anomaly (above).
At the time of the study, this well had produced
nine times the average production of the other

23

Seismic fence diagram

Well C

Well B

Well A

28 MMcf

64 MMcf

Frequency anomaly

Strong

7 MMcf

Weak

Anticlinal
crest

No faults
High variance
fault indicator

Frequency
anomaly

Horizon along top

of next deeper
formation

Variance
Low

High

> Fracture detection with seismic frequency attributes. A seismic fence diagram composed of seismic
cross sections and a horizon slice shows a frequency-related seismic attribute. The horizon slice is
also blended with the seismic variance attribute (grayscale); only high variance values are shown.
The fence diagram (inset) is formed from seismic sections along the trajectories of Wells A, B and C
(dark blue). The horizon slice, which is taken along the top of the formation immediately below the
shale reservoir, is curved by a gentle anticline. Along the anticlinal crest, the seismic variance and
frequency attributes are high. Average monthly gas production rates, shown above each wells lateral,
illustrate how each wells production rate corresponds to its proximity to strong frequency anomalies.

Strong shows

Weak shows

Mud log
gas shows
Farther from
anomaly

Frequency
anomaly highs

Close to
anomaly

Frequency anomaly

Strong

Weak

> Gas shows encountered during the drilling of Well A (black line). A seismic section (background) is shown
in a perspective view looking down and into it. The section is parallel to the trajectory of Well A and cuts
through the 3D volume of the frequency attribute. High values of the frequency attribute (red and pink)
appear as clouds coming out of the section. Gas chromatograph readings (blue curve), obtained from the
mud log, are shown along the horizontal portion of Well A. Perforation cluster locations (cyan diamonds)
align with the mud log depth points (small red triangles below the log curve). Gas shows from the mud log
were strong when the wellbore was near high values of the seismically derived frequency attribute.

24

ve wells combined. This observation is in line

with the tenfold increase observed in the Barnett
Shale for wells located within sweet spots.37
In another shale play, an operator was developing a combination fractured carbonate and gas
shale unconventional reservoir in the Delaware
basin of southern New Mexico and western Texas,
USA. The company had drilled a number of horizontal boreholes at the interface between the
carbonate and the underlying shale. Production
from these wells varied signicantly.
Schlumberger geophysicists analyzed a 3D seismic volume to help determine the location and
extent of potential RQ sweet spots and dene their
geologic nature. The geophysicists performed
prestack azimuthal inversion and several frequency-related studies. The results of these separate investigations converged on the same locations
within the shale reservoir as potential RQ sweet
spots. These sweet spots manifested themselves
through specic frequency-related seismic attribute anomalies that were also coincident with
zones of S-wave anisotropy. The team interpreted
these areas to be volumes of enhanced microfracturing in the upper portion of the gas shale (left).
The operator drilled three horizontal wells
along the carbonate/shale interface in the hope
of encountering fractures within the carbonate
formation and zones of high gas content in the
shale. Production rates from these wells appeared
to be directly related to the magnitude and size of
the frequency anomalies and S-wave anisotropy.
Well A was drilled across the top of a gentle anticlinal feature, where high seismic variance indicated the presence of faulting along the crest of
the fold. At the time of the study, Well A was the
best producer, with an average production rate of
64 MMcf [1.8 million m3] of gas per month. Well B
was drilled near a smaller seismic frequency
anomaly and its monthly production rate was
28 MMcf [0.79 million m3], less than half that
from Well A. Well C did not penetrate a frequency
anomaly and its monthly production rate was a
poor 7 MMcf [0.2 million m3].
The team believed that the frequency anomalies highlighted zones within the shale that contained more microfractures than other locations.
The concentration of microfractures at the crest
of the anticline is consistent with the tectonic
extension the layers experienced during anticline formation. Other evidence suggests that
this fracturing did not extend through the full
shale thickness. Zones of enhanced microfracturing within the shale were encountered by Well A
and, to much lesser degree, by Well B, and
resulted in the improved production observed in
both wells compared with that in Well C.

Oileld Review

Frequency anomaly

Strong

Weak

N
W

E
S

> Comparison of microseismicity and frequency attribute anomalies indicating zones of good CQ. This perspective view looks
down into a west-to-east seismic section. The seismic section is fully opaque, showing all values of the frequency attribute. Two
horizontal wells (black curves) were kicked off from a vertical pilot well in the east. Strong values of the seismic frequency
attribute within the 3D seismic volume and limited to the upper portion of the shale reservoir are shown as clouds (tan to red).
Microseismic events (dots), color-coded by stimulation stage, tend to occur where values of the frequency anomaly are high
(white ovals). This relationship suggests that strong values of this frequency attribute may also indicate zones of good CQ.

Examination of the gas shows encountered

during the drilling of Well A also supported this
interpretation (previous page, bottom). The strongest gas shows coincided with strong seismic frequency anomalies. Where the frequency anomalies
were weaker, gas shows were not as strong.
In another location within the same Delaware
basin study area, the operator drilled two horizontal wells from a vertical pilot well. The wells
were drilled from east to west, hydraulically stimulated in multiple stages and monitored for
induced microseismicity. The team was able to
correlate the microseismic event locations to
areas where seismic frequency anomalies were
strongest (above). It was evident that high levels
of frequency anomaly corresponded to RQ sweet
spots or, more specically, to zones of high porosity and increased microfracture density. In addition, these zones appeared to have favorable CQ.
Associating Anisotropy to Production Patterns
The Bakken Formation is an oil-producing petroleum system. Its stratigraphy represents deposition in a restricted, shallow water environment
that existed throughout most of the Williston

Winter 2013/2014

basin, which covers portions of Alberta,

Saskatchewan and Manitoba in Canada and
Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota in the
US.38 The Bakken Formation is of Late Devonian
Early Mississippian age and lies unconformably
above the Late Devonian Three Forks Formation
and conformably below the Early Mississippian
Lodgepole Limestone.39 The Bakken Formation
has been subdivided into lower, middle and upper
members. The middle member is the reservoir
and is a mixed clastic-carbonate interval consisting of dolomitic sandstones, dolomites and limestone. The upper and lower members are
organic-rich shales that serve as the seal and
source for hydrocarbons.
The model for the Bakken Formation is one of
a continuous petroleum system.40 The organicrich upper and lower Bakken shale members
have 8 to 10 weight % [0.08 to 0.1 kg/kg] TOC and
are source rocks that generated oil that had
migrated locally into reservoirs hosted by the
adjacent middle Bakken member and the underlying Pronghorn, which includes the Sanish Sand
member of the Three Forks Formation. Because
of the relatively closed nature of this petroleum

system, overpressuring occurs in deeper parts of

the basin, where the most hydrocarbon generation has taken place. Pore space and fractures
within the upper and lower Bakken shale members also provide reservoir storage.
37. Baihly et al, reference 5.
38. Sturm SD and Gomez E: Role of Natural Fracturing in
Production from the Bakken Formation, Williston Basin,
North Dakota, Search and Discovery Article 50199,
adapted from a poster presentation at the AAPG Annual
Convention and Exhibition, Denver, June 710, 2009.
39. Pitman JK, Price LC and LeFever JA: Diagenesis and
Fracture Development in the Bakken Formation,
Williston Basin: Implications for Reservoir Quality in the
Middle Member, Denver: US Geological Survey
Professional Paper 1653, 2001.
Pollastro RM, Roberts LNR and Cook TA: Geologic
Assessment of Technically Recoverable Oil in the
Devonian and Mississippian Bakken Formation, in US
Geological Survey Williston Basin Province Assessment
Team (ed): Assessment of Undiscovered Oil and Gas
Resources of the Williston Basin Province of North
Dakota, Montana, and South Dakota, 2010, Denver: US
Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS69W (2011):
5-15-34.
40. A continuous petroleum system is one that displays little
if any buoyancy, or gravity, segregation of the reservoir
uids. Generated oil or gas migrated directly into
reservoir storage within the source rock or adjacent
formations. This contrasts with conventional petroleum
systems in which generated oil or gas migrated from
source rocks into traps that lie beneath a reservoir seal.
Conventional reservoirs display distinct uid contacts,
which are products of gravity segregation.

25

Isotropic Stress Field

Anisotropic Stress Field

Incident S-wave
Incident P-wave

SW

NE

Hmin

P-wave velocity

Fast P-wave, NS
North

South

East

West

Slow P-wave, WE
Azimuth
Slow

Hmax
Incident P-wave

ave,

-w

tS

Fas

ve,

S
N

S-w

V
> Rocks under stress. Randomly oriented softmalleable and yieldingfabrics (top left, blue) within a host matrix (tan) may
open in any direction in an isotropic stress eld; soft fabrics may include pores, kerogen particles and microcracks. Under an
anisotropic stress eld (top right), such fabrics will be preferentially squeezed in the maximum compressive stress direction
(orange arrows) and have their shapes modied less in the other principal stress directions. The NS oriented maximum
compressive stress (Hmax, bottom left) causes incident SWNE polarized S-waves (gray arrows) to split into NS polarized fast
S-waves (brown arrows) and WE polarized slow S-waves (gold arrows). In addition, incident P-waves (green arrows) resolve
into P-waves that are fastest (red arrows) parallel to the NS maximum compressive stress and slowest (blue arrows)
perpendicular to it; the sinusoid (bottom right) shows the full azimuthal P-wave velocity variation.

Natural fractures can occur locally in the

Bakken Formation, and where their intensity is
sufciently high, such as along the Antelope
anticline in North Dakota, they can affect production. In general, the fractures are vertical to
subvertical, bed bounded and partially to totally
lled by quartz, calcite or, rarely, pyrite cements.
Some vertical microfractures appear to be expulsion, or uid release, fractures that form when
uid pressures exceed the prevailing minimum
principal compressive stress, allowing oil to
migrate from the source rocks into adjacent reservoir members.

26

The RQ (porosity and permeability) of the

middle member, along with the degree of overpressuring, plays a large role in determining the
productivity of the Bakken Formation. The ability
to predict where better reservoir quality occurs
dramatically increases the chance of success in
this play.
For this reason, an E&P company operating in
the Williston basin contracted with Schlumberger,
whose geophysicists reprocessed a proprietary 3D
multiazimuth seismic survey over an area within
the Bakken play of North Dakota. The target reservoir horizon was in the middle Bakken member.
The company wanted to base drilling locations on

patterns of initial production and seismic attributes, which are both affected by characteristics
of reservoir geology. The company hoped to move
away from drilling wells based on geometric patternslease boundaries or the Public Land
Survey Systemwhich ignores geologic heterogeneity, and to take a deliberate approach to locate,
orient and drill inll horizontal wells into highly
productive reservoir locations.41
Geoscientists constructed a calibrated geologic model that was constrained by all available
data, including well logs, borehole image logs and
core samples. Geophysicists processed the 3D

Oileld Review

41. Johnson GM and Miller P: Advanced Imaging and

Inversion for Unconventional Resource Plays,
First Break 31, no. 7 (July 2013): 4149.
For more on the Public Land Survey System: US Topo
QuadranglesMaps for America. http://nationalmap.
gov/ustopo/ (accessed January 17, 2014).
42. Johnson GM and Dorsey J: Modeling Overburden
Heterogeneity in Terms of Vp and TI for PSDM, Williston
Basin, U.S.A., Expanded Abstracts, 80th SEG Annual
Meeting, Denver (October 1722, 2010): 40624065.
43. For more on OVT processing: Stein JA, Wojslaw R,
Langston T and Boyer S: Wide-Azimuth Land
Processing: Fracture Detection Using Offset Vector
Tile Technology, The Leading Edge 29, no. 11
(November 2010): 13281337.
44. Johnson and Miller, reference 41.

Winter 2013/2014

Advanced PSDM Migration of OVT

180

Depth

Azimuth, degree

Conventional Migration of OVT

0

Offset

P-wave
velocity, m/s

PSDM OVT Gather

3,800 0
30

330
3,600
3,400

300

Traveltime

seismic data to account for horizontal variability

and anisotropy of seismic velocities in the strata
above the reservoir.42 Seismic processors sorted
the seismic data into offset vector tile (OVT)
gathers, in which traces share similar source-toreceiver offset and azimuth.43 Using high-resolution, multiazimuth OVT tomography, the
processors modeled seismic velocities and
anisotropy and used them for prestack depth
migration (PSDM) of the OVT gathers. If there
was disagreement between seismic picks of formation-top depths from PSDM and those from
well data, the velocity and anisotropy model
parameters were readjusted, and the tomography
and PSDM steps were repeated until there was
acceptable agreement between the geologic
model and PSDM image.
Once the geologic model and PSDM image
matched, subsequent processing could focus on
the seismic anisotropic effects at middle Bakken
reservoir depths that appeared to result from oriented geologic fabrics or stress anisotropy (previous page). The geophysicists used the tted
elliptical anisotropy from traveltimes (FEATT)
workow to nd the fast and slow compressionalwave (P-wave) velocities and directions at the
reservoir level.
The FEATT workow starts by converting the
PSDM OVT gather from depth to two-way traveltime. The analyst or an automated routine picks
residual traveltimes across common offset-azimuth time horizons, converts the traveltimes to
interval velocities and ts an ellipse to the velocities. The ellipses major and minor axes and their
orientations provide estimates of the fast and
slow P-wave velocities and directions (right).
Following application of the FEATT workow,
the geophysicists applied amplitude variation
with offset and azimuth (AVOAZ) analyses to estimate S-wave velocity anisotropy.44 The AVOAZ
analysis of S-waves may provide higher vertical
resolution of the anisotropy variation than P-wave

60

3,200
90

3,000

270

240

120

210

150
180

Input points
Fitted points
Ellipse definition
Major axis 114.24
Aspect ratio 0.974
Offset

> Azimuthal anisotropy. The seismic data were sorted into offset vector tiles (OVTs) and converted to
depth by conventional migration (top left) and by anisotropic prestack depth migration (PSDM) and
tomography (top right). The latter process reduced the waviness in the data attributable to overburden
effects and produced datasets appropriate for azimuthal anisotropy analysis. In both panels, the
yellow zigzag line gives the azimuth distribution in the OVT, and offset increases from left to right. The
PSDM OVT data (cyan box) were converted from depth to time (bottom left), and a horizon (red) was
selected for tted elliptical anisotropy from traveltimes (FEATT) analysis (bottom right). In this example,
the seismic processors selected the minimum number of three points (red) required to t an ellipse; in
practice, processors use many more than three. Processors converted the residual moveout at each
azimuth to P-wave velocity (the radius of the radial plot) and tted a FEATT ellipse (blue points, black
points and radii) to the input points. The ellipse yielded a fast P-wave velocity azimuth of 114.24 with a
slow-to-fast P-wave velocity ratio of 0.974, or P-wave velocity anisotropy of 2.6%. (Adapted from
Johnson and Miller, reference 41.)

27

80,000

First 90 days of oil production, bbl

70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000

N
10,000

Anisotropic

Isotropic

0
0.8

Slow/fast shear velocity ratio

3,000
ft

12,000

1.0

> Production sweet spots. A seismic horizon through the middle Bakken member shows the slow-tofast S-wave velocity ratio derived from AVOAZ inversion. The black arrows represent the relative
magnitude of the estimated S-wave anisotropy; the arrow directions provide the fast S-wave vector
azimuth from the inversion. The colored circles mark the average location of long horizontal wells and
show the initial 90 days of oil production within the mapped area. To the west, the production was low
to moderate, and S-wave velocity anisotropy is weak (blue to purple); the fast S-wave direction tends
to be NWSE. In the east, the production was higher, anisotropy is stronger (yellow to red) and the
fast S-wave direction has a SWNE trend, which is consistent with the present-day regional maximum
in situ principal compressive stress direction. Initial production tends to be higher where the
anisotropy is stronger. Analysts interpret the anisotropy to be associated with production sweet spots
that are potential targets for drilling. (Adapted from Johnson and Miller, reference 41.)

Top of the
upper
Bakken

Top of the
lower
Bakken

4,900 ft
1,500 m

4,9
1,5 00 ft
00
m

Isotropic
1.0

Slow/fast shear velocity ratio

Top of the
middle
Bakken

0.8
Anisotropic

> Volumes of high anisotropy. This view of S-wave velocity anisotropy within the middle Bakken
member is looking down and north. The orange and red clouds are volumes of low ratios of slow-to-fast
S-wave velocity, equivalent to high anisotropy, extracted from 3D seismic data between the upper and
lower Bakken members. The anisotropy is strong in the east and south and weaker in the northwest.
The blue surface underneath the clouds is from within the lower Bakken member and shows the
ant-tracking seismic attribute (black to white), which accentuates traces of faults and fractures.
(Adapted from Johnson and Miller, reference 41.)

28

velocity anisotropy methods because of its sensitivity to interface contrasts rather than to the
average cumulative response of overlying strata.45
The present-day Bakken Formation maximum
in situ principal horizontal compressive stress
direction determined from the hydraulic fracture
stimulations is generally NESW.46 Vertical natural fractures observed in wells within the area of
investigation were oriented NWSE, in the present-day minimum in situ horizontal compressive
stress direction. The fractures tended to be mineralized, had permeabilities in the microdarcy to
nanodarcy range and were not believed to be
contributing to production.47 In addition, the RQ
of the Bakken Formation in the area of investigation was poor to fair, which explains the low production rates.
The team compared the seismic anisotropy
results to the rst 90 days of production from
wells across the eld. Areas of low production
correlated to those having weak P- and S-wave
anisotropy, and areas of high production were
associated with strong anisotropy (left).
Anisotropy was weak to the west and strong in
the east, which helped explain why the eastern
part of the eld was more productive than the
western part. Along with production improvement from west to east in the area of interest, the
anisotropy orientation changed from NWSE in
the west to NESW in the east. An improvement
in matrix properties is one explanation for this
change; in addition, geophysicists speculate that
this change in anisotropy direction represents a
change in natural fracture orientation from one
side of the eld to the other. In the east, NESW
oriented fractures would be parallel to the present-day maximum principal stress direction and
would tend to be open (left).
In addition, anisotropy appeared strong in
close proximity to source and reservoir rock contacts. From bottom to top, strong anisotropy
occurred around the upper Three Forkslower
Bakken contact, the lower Bakkenmiddle
Bakken contact, the middle Bakkenupper
Bakken contact and through the upper Bakken
member into the lower Lodgepole Limestone
(next page). This result indicates that anisotropy
from 3D multiazimuth surface seismic data may
be used to delineate the areal and depth distribution of sweet spots and future drilling targets.
45. Hall SA and Kendall JM: Constraining the Interpretation
of AVOA for Fracture Characterization, in Ikelle L and
Gangi A (eds): Anisotropy 2000: Fractures, Converted
Waves, and Case Studies. Tulsa: Society of Exploration
Geophysicists (2001): 107144.
46. Sturm and Gomez, reference 38.
47. Sturm and Gomez, reference 38.

Oileld Review

Bulk Density
g/cm3

120 m

X,235

0.96
0.94

30 m

0.92

s/ft

147

0.88

Slow-to-Fast Shear
Velocity Ratio

(ft/s)(g/cm3) 60,500 Anisotropic

False Bakken

False Bakken

Scallion

Scallion
Upper Bakken

Isotropic

Middle Bakken
Middle Bakken

0.86
Anisotropic

Middle
Bakken

X,245

X,250 Lower Bakken

Lower Bakken

Bakken

0.84
0.82

24

P-Wave Impedance
15,700

X,240 Upper Bakken

0.90

P-Wave Slowness

Lower
Lodgepole

Slow-to-fast shear
velocity ratio
1.0
Isotropic
0.98

Depth, ft

1.5

X,255

Sanish Sand

Sanish Sand

Three Forks

Three Forks

> Slow-to-fast S-wave velocity ratio near the middle Bakken member boundaries. The S-wave velocity ratio was calculated from an AVOAZ inversion for a
pair of crossing seismic sections. The red rectangle (top) shows the middle Bakken reservoir interval displayed in the main gure (bottom left). The vertical
black dashed line marks the intersection of the inline and crossline seismic sections and the approximate location of a vertical well. The relative shear
velocity ratio within the middle Bakken Formation at this location is higher (blue to purple) in the center and lower (green to yellow) at the formation
boundaries, indicating that anisotropy increases from the formations center to its boundaries. The log plot (bottom right) shows two tracks. Track 1 (left)
displays well log traces of bulk density (pink), P-wave slowness (red), P-wave impedance (blue) and tops of geologic formations and members. Track 2
(right) shows the slow-to-fast S-wave velocity ratio (blue) from the AVOAZ inversion result along the well trace in the main display; it also shows formation
and member tops. There is a difference in resolution between the well logs and the inversion result. Locations of tops are sharp and clear in the well log
display and not as clear in the inversion display because of surface seismic resolution limitations. (Adapted from Johnson and Miller, reference 41.)

The Value of Seismic Data

These examples of using surface seismic data to
understand patterns of production have been retrospective rather than prospective. Operators
continue to test and appraise the identied sweet
spots with new wells.

Winter 2013/2014

An increasing number of operators are acquiring and analyzing 3D surface seismic data during
the early stagesexploration, pilot and appraisal
phasesin the operating cycle of organic shale
plays. Suitably analyzed and interpreted seismic
data have proved to be invaluable for guiding the

placement of initial wells within a frontier shale

basin, appraisal wells within a prospective shale
basin and inll wells as part of a eld development program in a mature basin.
RCNH

29

Rotary Sidewall CoringSize Matters

Abhishek Agarwal
Sugar Land, Texas, USA

A formation sample, acquired from downhole, provides a wealth of information

Robert Laronga
Clamart, France

one alternative for acquiring downhole rock samples, but in the past, the small

about rock properties not readily available elsewhere. Rotary sidewall coring is

sample size often limited laboratory evaluation. A new rotary coring tool, with
Larissa Walker
Shell Appalachia Exploration
Sewickley, Pennsylvania, USA
Oileld Review Winter 2013/2014: 25, no. 4.
Copyright 2014 Schlumberger.
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Chad Albury,
Ryan Chapman, Lenishan Fernando and Farouk Hamadeh,
Perth, Western Australia, Australia; Joe Loman, Dacey
McManus and Chris Tevis, Houston; William Murphy,
e4sciences, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, USA; Tim Sodergren,
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA; and Benjamin Wygal, Natchez,
Mississippi, USA.
CST, FMI, GPIT, MDT, MSCT, TerraTek, TerraTek HRA,
TerraTek TRA and XL-Rock are marks of Schlumberger.
HRSCT and RSCT are marks of Halliburton.
MaxCOR and PowerCOR are marks of Baker Hughes.

30

features that improve sidewall coring operations, addresses core size limitations
by offering larger diameter samples.

Petrophysics is the branch of geology concerned

with determining physical properties and behavior
of reservoir rocks. Some petrophysicists specialize
solely in interpreting remotely acquired measurements in the form of logs; others prefer having a
piece of the reservoir rock along with logs. Those
with a preference for analyzing rock samples prefer large ones over small ones. Using larger rock

samples, geologists and engineers can perform

more experiments and more easily determine geologic, geomechanical and petrophysical properties. Because of the global proliferation of
unconventional resource developments, the option
for taking representative samples without the
expense and loss of efciency associated with conventional coring has arrived at a crucial time.

Oileld Review

Coring Bit

Slabbed Cores
Biscuit Cut

Boxed Cores

1 in.

1 ft

> Conventional coring. Used with a drilling rig, a bit with an open throat (top left) cuts conventional cores. The cores are retrieved at the surface, boxed
(left) and shipped to a laboratory for analysis. At the laboratory, technicians typically cut the core lengthwise (middle), referred to as slabbing, to access
representative rock for testing. Tests, such as compressive strength measurements along the red lines shown on the slabbed core, may be performed at
this stage. After testing the slabbed core, technicians usually cut plugs for additional evaluation. A biscuit cut, which is a slice of core material (right), is an
option to taking core plugs from slabbed sections; these sections of core material provide alternative testing options at the core laboratory. (Photographs
courtesy of Tim Sodergren.)

In the oil and gas industry, operators use two

main methods to acquire rock samples from the
subsurface: cutting whole core with the drilling
assembly and taking sidewall samples from the
borehole. Sidewall cores can be further divided
into percussion and rotary cores. Drill cuttings,
pieces of rock ground up by the drill bit and circulated back to the surface, are another source
of downhole samples, but they may be unreliable for determining downhole rock properties
because of the damage they incur during drilling and because of depth uncertainty related
to circulation.
Whole cores, also referred to as conventional
cores, are continuous sections of reservoir rock
cut with a hollow coring bit (above).1 As the bit
penetrates strata, a cylindrical section of the
rock passes through the bit and remains inside a
core barrel, which is part of the drilling bottomhole assembly. Whole cores are usually cut in
multiples of 9-m [30-ft] lengths. In deepwater
appraisal wells, it is not uncommon to cut as
much as 81 m [270 ft] of core on a single trip in
the well. Longer coring intervals come with the
added risk of jammed core barrels and damaged
core sections.

Winter 2013/2014

After an interval has been cored, the drilling

crew pulls the pipe back to the surface and
retrieves the core barrels; the core barrels can
also be extracted from the downhole assembly by
mechanical means, which allows the bottomhole
hardware to remain downhole for continued
coring. Technicians take great care to avoid damaging the sample inside the carrier after it is
retrieved back to the surface. Conventional coring
operations often provide the best rock samples
for testing, analyzing and evaluating reservoirs.
Compared with normal drilling operations, however, the conventional coring process is time
consuming and expensive.
Sidewall cores (SWCs) are plugs of rock taken
perpendicular to the wellbore; they are usually
acquired by tools attached to wireline. Sidewall
cores can be recovered relatively quickly from
downhole and may cover multiple zones of interest
in the same wireline descent; they provide a costeffective alternative to conventional cores. One
convenience of SWCs is that they are taken after
logs have been run, allowing petrophysicists to be
selectivethey can pick core depths based on
interpretations from openhole logs. Sidewall cores
also offer an alternative means for petrophysicists

to acquire core data should conventional coring

operations fail. Because of their small size relative
to conventional core, there is a chance that SWCs
taken from a heterogeneous formation may not
have properties that are representative of the formation at a reservoir scale. The rock from which
the SWC is taken may also lack crucial features
that geologists need to analyze the reservoir, especially in laminated sand-shale sequences, organic
shales and fractured reservoirs.
Two types of sidewall coring are available
percussion and rotary. Percussion coring tools,
rst introduced in the 1930s, use hollow bullets
red into the formation using an explosive
charge. Rotary SWCs are acquired with a tool
that uses a small bit to cut plugs from the side of
the borehole. Rotary coring tools were developed primarily to address shortcomings of percussion SWCs.
This article focuses on the development of
sidewall coring and reviews developments in the
rotary sidewall coring technique. Case studies
1. For more on whole cores and core analysis techniques:
Andersen MA, Duncan B and McLin R: Core Truth in
Formation Evaluation, Oileld Review 25, no. 2
(Summer 2013): 1625.

31

A
Combo Bullets
B

Hard Rock Bullet

7/8 in.

11/16 in.

11/16 in.

Cutting Rings
0

in.

D
Steel cables

> Percussion sidewall coring. Core bullets are red from a core gun (A) using explosive charges behind each bullet. Various types of bullets are available,
including combo bullets (B), which are for medium hard to soft formations. A groove around the top of the bullet accommodates a cutting ring (C) that is
held in place with a snap ring (not shown). The type of formation dictates which cutting ring is employed. In soft formations, larger cutting rings reduce
bullet penetration. The hardened steel, hard rock bullet does not use a cutting ring. Cables attached to each bullet (D) help extricate the bullet from the
formation after it has been shot. Guns are retrieved to the surface with core bullets attached (E), and technicians remove core samples and place them in
bottles. The bottles are labeled, boxed and sent to a laboratory for analysis. (Photograph of retrieved core gun courtesy of Benjamin Wygal.)

demonstrate the application of the XL-Rock tool,

a recently introduced large-volume rotary sidewall coring service, in an unconventional
resource play in the northeast US and a deepwater well offshore Australia.
Getting the Core
The advent of rotary drilling systems in the 1800s
made possible the practice of whole core drilling.
The origin of core drilling is attributed to French
civil engineer Rudolph Leschot, who mounted
diamonds on a hollow, circular drill bit to acquire
rock samples.2 The practice of core drilling has
remained a mainstay in mineral exploration.
The rst coring operation was performed in
Pennsylvania, USA, in the 1860s to locate coal seams
and measure their thickness.3 Wireline geophysical
loggingintroduced by Conrad Schlumberger in
the 1920swas originally referred to as electrical
coring, and was rst envisioned as a tool for coal
exploration. Geologists consider conventional cor-

32

ing in oil and gas wells, a technique practiced

frequently even today, crucial in the initial phase of
eld development.
Unfortunately, coring can impact drilling efciency because of the time required to cut and
recover whole cores. Depending on the coring
objective and cost limitations, E&P companies
may deem conventional coring nonessential. In
such cases, they may turn to percussion and
rotary sidewall coring to gain valuable reservoir
rock information. Of the two methods, percussion
coring has been the most common; however, in
some environments, especially hard rock reservoirs, deepwater exploration and unconventional
resource plays, petrophysicists prefer rotary coring tools. Petrophysicists use SWCs to validate log
responses and provide empirical petrophysical
and geophysical properties. Core points are
determined based on interpretation of logging
data, and gamma ray or spontaneous potential
(SP) logs are used for depth correlation between
openhole logs and core depths.

The rst percussion coring tool was introduced in the 1930s.4 Today, all major wireline service companies offer percussion coring tools, also
referred to as core guns. Core guns such as the
Schlumberger CST chronological sample taker
appear similar to the original percussion coring
tools introduced almost a century ago; however,
improvements to core gun hardware have
resulted in the reliable and cost-effective systems in use today.
Core guns have hollow, barrel-shaped bullets
mounted on a carrier (above). The bullets are
forcefully ejected from the carrier into the borehole wall by means of an explosive charge. Each
bullet is red sequentially by application of electrical power from the surface after the tool is positioned at the desired zone. Bullets are attached to
the gun body by means of steel cables, which facilitate extraction of cores from the sidewall. After a
bullet is embedded in the formation, the wireline
operator uses the weight of the gun and the force
applied by the logging winch to work the core free.

Oileld Review

The engineer selects core bullet geometries

and explosive charge strength according to the
properties of the formation to be cored. Hard formations, those with porosity less than 15%, generally require hard rock bullets and larger explosive
charges. Cores taken in hard formations tend to
shatter on impact from the bullet, potentially
resulting in empty core barrels when the gun is
retrieved at the surface. Soft formations are easier to sample, although in unconsolidated formations, the barrels may become so deeply embedded
that they cannot be extracted. Samples taken
from unconsolidated formations have a tendency
to wash out of the bullet because of the turbulent
effects of the mud on the exposed core barrels as
they are retrieved through the mud column. For
sampling in unconsolidated formations, the wireline operator attaches cutting rings to the bullets,
which help decrease bullet penetration; the use of
smaller explosive charges may also help improve
sample recovery.
Cutting rings decrease penetration for bullets
shot into soft formations and create a hole that has
a larger diameter than that of the bullet; the larger
diameter hole facilitates core extraction. The ring
is designed to snap off and remain in the newly
created hole. If the bullet embeds too deeply in the
formation and cannot be worked free, the operator
can break the retaining cables by applying tension
with the logging winch. Hard formations do not
normally require cutting rings because depth of
penetration is rarely a concern, and the rings may
impede penetration and limit sample length.
After the cores are shot, the gun is pulled to
the surface, where eld technicians free the
core barrels from the carrier by removing the
cables; then they separate and sort the barrels.
A technician uses a plunger press to push each
sample from the barrel into a sample bottle,
seals each bottle and marks it with the sample
depth. The sealed cores are then transported to
a laboratory for analysis. Prior to shipping the
cores, operators may use UV lights on location to
identify the presence of hydrocarbons in the
core samples.
Although percussion core guns offer a costeffective and rapid means of acquiring samples
from the formation, the process lends itself to
potential problems. The impact of the bullet with
the formation can, and usually does, damage the
core.5 Both hard and soft rocks tend to shatter
upon the bullets impact, which alters the rock
properties of the sample. Cores taken in unconsolidated formations may be compacted by the
impact of the bullet, and mudcake from the inner
borehole wall may be injected into the rock
matrix of the sample, altering rock properties.

Winter 2013/2014

Percussion SWCs provide reliable information

on grain size distribution, mineralogy, sedimentary features and hydrocarbon residuals.6 However,
material alterations caused by the impact of the
core bullet may distort porosity measurements.
Such distortion is well documented, and laboratories that specialize in analyzing SWCs have developed empirical relationships to correct for some of
these effects; nal analyses, however, are often an
approximation.7 Permeability is not typically measured in percussion core samples but is empirically derived from porosity and mineralogy.
Taking percussion SWCs may also create
operational issues. Because of the potential for
leaving cutting rings, broken cables and core barrels in the wellbore during coring, many operators attempt no further logs after cores are taken
without rst making a cleanout, or conditioning,
trip. In addition, the bullets may damage the
borehole wall, which can affect measurements
made by pad contact tools. Debris from percussion cores is not much of a concern when cores
are taken on the last logging trip in the well
because the debris can be ground up and circulated out of the well during the cleanout and
before casing operations commence.
In many parts of the world, high-angle and
horizontal wells are becoming more common than
conventional vertical wells.8 In these types of
wells, gravity no longer assists the extrication of a
core from the sidewall, and conveyance of core
guns in these types of wells relies on drillpipe,
tractor or coiled tubing. The use of explosives in
percussion coring further complicates operations
with these conveyance techniques. Despite wellestablished safety procedures, service companies
must consider the fact that percussion SWCs are
explosive devices and must be handled with care.
Because radio silence is required during parts of
the operation, use of explosives in deepwater
exploration makes percussion sidewall coring prohibitive as well. For these reasons and others, percussion sidewall coring is almost never attempted
in high-angle and horizontal wellbores or in deepwater applications.
Frequency of percussion sidewall coring varies geographically; for many wells in the southeastern US, geologists take SWCs whenever and
wherever logs indicate potential hydrocarbons.
In other regions, especially in hard rock reservoirs where sample recovery is usually poor and
properties measured on percussion cores are
unrepresentative of actual rock properties, sidewall coring is rarely attempted. Operators and
service companies recognized the limitations
imposed by percussion sidewall coring but for

> Rotary coring bit. A diamond-tipped, circular bit

is used for cutting rotary cores from the borehole
wall. When the bit reaches its maximum depth,
the assembly is canted upward, which breaks
the core from the formation. After the core is
pulled back into the tool, the operator repositions
the tool to cut the next core.

almost fty years accepted these limitations.

The situation changed in the 1980s when the
rst rotary coring tools were introduced.
Rotary Cores to the Rescue
Rotary sidewall coring tools have miniature, diamond-tipped drill bits, which are small versions
of those used for conventional coring operations
(above). Just as various bit designs are available
for drilling and conventional coring, engineers
can select from a variety of rotary sidewall coring
bits based on expected formation and rock type.
The bit cuts a round plug of formation material
directly from the borehole wall. The tool then
snaps off the core and pulls it into a core holding
area inside the tool body. Depending on the tool
design, this process is repeated until the core
catching apparatus is full.
2. Bowman I: Well-Drilling Methods, Washington, DC:
US Government Printing Ofce, Water-Supply Paper 257,
1911.
3. Collom RE: Prospecting and Testing for Oil and Gas,
Washington, DC: US Government Printing Ofce,
August 1922.
4. Leonardon EG and McCann DC: Exploring Drill Holes by
Sample-Taking Bullets, Transactions of the AIME 132,
no. 1 (December 1939): 8599.
5. Webster GM and Dawsongrove GE: The Alteration of
Rock Properties by Percussion Sidewall Coring, Journal
of Petroleum Technology 11, no. 4 (April 1959): 5962.
6. Fiedler FJ: Toward Integrated Formation Evaluation,
Transactions of the SPWLA 29th Annual Logging
Symposium, San Antonio, Texas, USA, June 58, 1988,
paper Q.
7. Fertl WH, Cavanaugh RJ and Hammack GW: Comparison
of Conventional Core Data, Well Logging Analyses, and
Sidewall Samples, Journal of Petroleum Technology 23,
no. 12 (December 1971): 14091414.
8. Amer A, Chinellato F, Collins S, Denichou J-M, Dubourg I,
Grifths R, Koepsell R, Lyngra S, Marza P, Murray D and
Roberts I: Structural SteeringA Path to Productivity,
Oileld Review 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 1431.

33

Tool,
Service Company

Core Diameter,
in.

Core Length,
in.

Core Capacity

XL-Rock tool,
Schlumberger

1.5

2.5, 3.0, 3.5

50, 44

MSCT tool,
Schlumberger

0.92

2.0

20, 50, 75

MaxCOR tool,
Baker Hughes

1.5

2.5

60

PowerCOR tool,
Baker Hughes

1.0

1.8

60

RSCT tool,
Halliburton

15/16

1.75

30

HRSCT tool,
Halliburton

1.5

2.3

36

> Rotary coring tools offered by major service companies.

1.5 in.

3 in.

> XL-Rock rotary coring tool. The XL-Rock tool (left) is lowered on wireline and positioned across from
the zone to be sampled. A hydraulic arm anchors the tool at the desired depth; the bit pivots into a
horizontal position and then begins coring. Up to 50 cores can be taken during each tool descent. The
cores shown (inset) are samples taken from test blocks at the surface.

34

Rotary sidewall coring offers several advantages over percussion sidewall coring. The
mechanical distortion of the rock sample caused
by the impact of percussion sidewall cores is
eliminated when drilling rotary SWCs, and rotary
coring preserves the rock pore structure. Unlike
for percussion cores, laboratories can perform
accurate porosity, permeability and capillary
pressure measurements on rotary cores.9 Routine
core analysis (RCAL) measurements are signicantly better for rotary cores compared with
those performed on percussion cores.10
A signicant limitation of older generation
rotary coring tools is the diameter and length of
the core plugs taken from downhole formations.
Insufcient core volume may cause substandard
core analysis results. For conventional cores, routine core analysis is performed on plugs or slices
selectively taken from a slabbed portion of the
core. Geologists routinely take plugs from a whole
core at 0.6-m [2-ft] intervals, although variations
in lithology as well as formation heterogeneity
may require more frequent sampling. Laboratorycut plugs typically measure about 6.4 cm [2.5 in.]
in length by 2.3 to 3.8 cm [0.9. to 1.5 in.] in diameter. Although some rotary coring tools can
deliver samples comparable in size to plugs cut
from conventional cores in the laboratory, cores
from older generation rotary coring tools are less
than 2.5 cm [1 in.] in diameter (above left).
In addition, early rotary coring tools lacked
control over the coring process. One crucial coring parameter, weight on bit (WOB)the pressure applied to the coring bit as the core is being
cutis set at the surface prior to running into
the well. If the WOB is set too low, coring time is
unnecessarily long; if it is set too high, the bit
may stall and stop coring prematurely.
Building on many years of experience with
the MSCT mechanical sidewall coring tool, design
engineers at Schlumberger began developing a
next generation tool. The rst limitation they
addressed was core size. The traditional 15/16-in.
diameter core bit was replaced with a 11/2-in.
diameter version, which delivers cores that are
similar to industry-standard plugs taken from
whole cores in the laboratory. Compared with the
smaller diameter cores from the MSCT tool, the
larger cores provide more than three times the
volume for the same core length. The XL-Rock
large-volume rotary sidewall coring service offers
three options for core length: standard 7.6-cm
[3.0-in.], and optional 8.9-cm [3.5-in.] or 6.3-cm
[2.5-in.] lengths (left). The eld engineer running the tool can optimize the coring process by
adjusting parameters such as WOB in real time.

Oileld Review

Because of the larger size of the XL-Rock drill

bit, this control contributes to successful coring. Stalling can be reduced, and coring time
can be minimized.
Design engineers next looked at upgrading
the mechanical components and ruggedizing the
electronics of the XL-Rock tool. The redesigned
tool offers improved reliability and features
greater operator control than did earlier generation tools. Lessons learned developing LWD tools,
high-pressure, high-temperature wireline tools
and the MDT modular dynamics tester, as well as
years working with the MSCT tool, helped engineers design a tool that is more robust than previous generation tools.
The standard tool is rated to 177C [350F]
and 173 MPa [25,000 psi]. An optional version is
rated to 200C [400F] and 207 MPa [30,000 psi.]
At 11.3 m [37 ft] in length, the XL-Rock tool is the
shortest sidewall coring tool in the industry. The
shorter length greatly reduces the operational
risk of sticking the tool while coring. The surfacecontrolled bit release, which can be actuated in
the event the bit becomes stuck, also reduces
operational risk.
At each core point, a hydraulic arm anchors
the tool in place, and the core bit assembly pivots
from its recessed transport position in the tool to a
position perpendicular to the tool body. The
hydraulically powered rotary bit provides high
torque at low rotary speed and is effective in a
wide range of rock types. After the full length of
the core has been drilled, a core catcher ring holds
the core within the bit assembly; the assembly is
then canted upward to break the end of the core.
For additional depth correlation, a core marker is
inserted between samples inside the tool after
each core is retracted. Up to 50 samples can be
collected per descent (above right).
The larger cores from the XL-Rock tool also
enable core laboratories to perform moreadvanced geomechanical studies. In the past,
because of core-size limitations, these studies
were usually reserved for plugs taken from conventional cores.11 After the XL-Rock cores have
been retrieved, they can be subsampled into
miniplugs at angles parallel, perpendicular and
at 45 to observed bedding planes to characterize
anisotropic mechanical properties (right). The
9. Fiedler, reference 6.
10. For more on conventional coring and RCAL: Andersen
et al, reference 1.
11. For more on geomechanical measurements on cores:
Cook J, Frederiksen RA, Hasbo K, Green S, Judzis A,
Martin JW, Suarez-Rivera R, Herwanger J, Hooyman P,
Lee D, Noeth S, Sayers C, Koutsabeloulis N, Marsden R,
Stage MG and Tan CP: Rocks Matter: Ground Truth in
Geomechanics, Oileld Review 19, no. 3 (Autumn 2007):
3655.

Winter 2013/2014

> Rotary core recovery. After the cores are cut, they are pulled into the XL-Rock tool body and stored in
a handling tube. At the surface, the tool operator removes the tube from the tool, separates the cores
and seals them inside individual sample bottles (top left). The bottles are labeled and packed for
shipping (top right) to the laboratory for analysis. (Photographs courtesy of Chris Tevis.)

> Subsampled XL-Rock cores. Because the 11/2-in. diameter cores from the
XL-Rock tool (left) are larger than conventional sidewall cores, they can be
subsampled into miniplugs (right) at angles parallel, perpendicular and at 45
to observed bedding planes. Technicians then use these smaller samples to
make measurements that characterize anisotropic mechanical properties.
The ruler is scaled in inches and decimal inches.

35

TerraTek Geomechanical Laboratory Center of

Excellence in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, offers a
fast track geomechanics full anisotropic charac-

terization, which is available exclusively for

XL-Rock cores. This service provides mechanical
properties, including static and dynamic Youngs

Borehole End

Side View

1.5 in.

3 in.

Rock End

> Sample cores. An XL-Rock tool took these core samples from a variety of rock types in the same
well. Formations included soft sandstone (top) and dense limestone (bottom). The cores ranged in
length from about 1.6 to 3 in. [4 to 7.6 cm] and are of excellent quality for laboratory analysis.
(Photographs courtesy of William Murphy.)

36

modulus, static and dynamic Poissons ratio, compressional and shear velocities and horizontal
stress proles. Completion quality assessment of
shale samples is included in the analysis.
Laboratory RCAL analysis is most often performed on traditional cores. The laboratory testing of cores retrieved by the XL-Rock tool may
offer additional benets over those for whole
cores because the samples can be transported
and tested at the laboratory within hours or days
of having been cut. Analyses of conventional
cores are often conducted many weeks after
acquisition, and some rock properties may be
affected by the delay. The TerraTek TRA tight
rock analysis technique, which is used for shale
characterization, can be performed more quickly
and efciently with the larger volume cores.
Smaller core volume often requires that multiple
samples be acquired at the same depth and combined for analysis.
The larger size of the XL-Rock cores also
enables laboratory technicians to perform special core analysis (SCAL) measurements (left).12
The small total pore volume of a 1-in. by 1-in.
plug after trimming, typical of older generation
rotary coring tools, results in a high uncertainty
on saturation measurements. The signicantly
larger volume of an XL-Rock core reduces the
uncertainty by a factor of four. For this reason,
1.5-in. plugs are the industry standard for most
SCAL, and the majority of SCAL laboratory
equipment is designed to accept this size plug
but may not be able to accommodate 1-in. and
smaller plugs.
Typical measurements and techniques performed on XL-Rock cores include the following:
absolute and relative permeability
mineralogy (X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscope image and isotopic analysis)
petrographic description
source rock and oil characterization
log calibration [grain density, porosity at reservoir conning pressure, resistivity, m and n
exponents, dielectric permittivity, nuclear magnetic resonanace analysis, T2 cutoffs, total
organic carbon (TOC) and acoustic properties]
reservoir storage and ow capacity
capillary pressure characteristics
formation damage and sensitivity tests.
Operators rely on many of these measurements to
make decisions regarding reservoir development.
The TerraTek HRA heterogeneous rock analysis service, another core analysis option, is a
rock typing workow that can identify optimal
sampling depths using openhole log data.13

Oileld Review

Empirical data derived from various tests, and

from the TerraTek TRA service, may then be
used to optimize the modeled output from the
TerraTek HRA service, especially for unconventional resource plays.
Unconventional Resource Application
Operators have taken various approaches to analyzing samples from shale resource plays.
Acquiring conventional cores using a drilling rig is
expensive and time consuming, but during the initial evaluation phase, conventional coring may be
necessary. Geologists and engineers view rotary
cores taken on wireline as a cost-effective alternative, but the small sample size may inhibit extensive petrophysical analysis and full anisotropic
mechanical properties studies. Also, limited sampling in heterogeneous formations may produce
samples that are not representative of the majority
of the rock. These were a few of the situations
faced by Shell Appalachia Exploration in northcentral Pennsylvania, USA, while developing a
Marcellus Shale play (right).
To evaluate shale cores, Shell geologists follow the Gas Technology Institute protocols for
crushed shale analysis.14 Typical core evaluation
includes source rock evaluation, porosity, permeability and saturation, in addition to X-ray
diffraction. To perform all of these measurements requires a minimum sample mass of 200 g
[0.25 lbm] (right). Previous attempts to perform these techniques on rotary cores had
required consolidating multiple cores from
around the same point or nearby points to have
a sufcient sample volume. Reservoir heterogeneity observed in the Marcellus Shale had
resulted in some of these combined samples
introducing uncertainties in measured properties, even if the cores were separated by as little
as 0.15 m [0.5 ft]. Because of the need for a
sample size of large volume, Shell turned to the
XL-Rock rotary coring tool to acquire sufcient
core material to permit single-sample recovery
and analysis.
12. For more on SCAL: Andersen et al, reference 1.
13. For more on the TerraTek HRA technique: SuarezRivera R, Deenadayalu C, Chertov M, Hartanto RN,
Gathogo P and Kunjir R: Improving Horizontal
Completions on Heterogeneous Tight Shales,
paper CSUG/SPE 146998, presented at the Canadian
Unconventional Resources Conference, Calgary,
November 1517, 2011.
14. For more on the Gas Technology Institute (formerly Gas
Research Institute) methodology for crushed shale
sample evaluation: Guidry FK, Luffel DL and Curtis JB:
Development of Laboratory and Petrophysical
Techniques for Evaluating Shale Reservoirs, Chicago:
Gas Research Institute Report GRI-95/0496, April 1996.

Winter 2013/2014

Marcellus Shale

Pennsylvania
UNITED STATES

0
0

km

300
mi

300

> Marcellus Shale exploration. Several operators are currently exploring the Marcellus Shale (blue) in the
eastern US. Production from this prolic formation has exceeded experts estimates, and as of October
2013, the US Energy Information Administration estimated production at 12 Bcf/d [340 million m3/d].

Core Length, in.

0.92-in. Diameter
Core Mass, g

1.5-in. Diameter
Core Mass, g

1.0

26

69

1.2

31

82

1.4

36

96

1.6

41

110

1.8

46

123

2.0

52

137

2.2

151

2.4

165

2.6

178

2.8

192

3.0

206

> Sample size masses. Conventional cores are typically taken in the exploration phase of eld
development; however, conventional coring can be expensive. Because core data are important for
calibrating openhole logging measurements and determining rock properties, many operators rely on
SWCs. Shell Appalachia Exploration geologists determined that a minimum of 200 g was required to
ensure sufcient quantity of rock for proper analyses. Assuming a 2-in. [5-cm] core length cut with a
0.92-in. [2.34-cm] diameter bit, typical of older generation rotary coring tools, the operator would have
needed four cores per depth to obtain 200 g (left, pink). A single 1.5-in. by 3-in. [3.8-cm by 7.6-cm] core,
which can be cut with the XL-Rock tool, would provide at least 200 g of sample (green). The photograph
(right) illustrates the size difference between a single XL-Rock core and four cores cut with an older
generation 0.92-in. bit.

37

directional tools such as the GPIT general purpose inclinometry tool, which measures tool orientation at the core point.
In addition to petrophysical evaluation, Shell
Appalachia is currently conducting geomechanical studies of the cores to determine rock elastic
properties. Shell engineers have included multiple in situ stress, or minifrac, well tests in well
evaluation programs using the MDT tool.16 Data
from these tests and mechanical properties from
core evaluations are used in fracture stimulation
designs and drilling optimization.17

FMI Image

Core point

1.5 in.

> Marcellus Shale cores. These four cores, acquired in the Marcellus Shale using the XL-Rock tool,
are examples of the high-quality rock samples taken during rotary coring operations. (Photographs
courtesy of Larissa Walker.)

In one recent exploration well, the Shell

geologist chose 100 core points, which required
two coring trips. From the 100 sample points, 96
high-quality samples from the shale reservoir
section were brought to the surface (above).
The average time for drilling each core was
5.3 min.
Another potential challenge with sidewall sampling is determining whether the sample is representative of the surrounding resource rock. For
whole cores, geologists in the laboratory have the
luxury of visually identifying the best rock for taking plugs. The points for taking rotary cores cannot
be visually selected in advance unless an image
log is run prior to cutting cores; however, the rock

38

section from which the rotary cores have been

acquired can be veried after core acquisition.
After the cores have been cut and retrieved
from the well, the operator may elect to run an
FMI fullbore formation microimager to determine the exact depth of core acquisition.15 The
diameter of a retrieved XL-Rock core is 3.8 cm,
but the bit has a larger diameter and leaves a
6.35-cm [2.5-in.] hole in the borehole wall. These
holes can be clearly seen in an FMI image log
(right). Geologists are able to correlate the core
depths with openhole log data. As a standard
practice, many operators who employ the
XL-Rock service use the FMI tool after rotary coring runs. The XL-Rock tool is combinable with

> Core depth conrmation. This FMI image log run

after the rotary coring operation clearly indicates
where cores were taken. Geologists can use
this information to conrm that samples are
representative of the formation being examined.

Oileld Review

Deepwater Coring
Deepwater exploration and development projects
introduce considerations for coring operations
that may not be applicable to other drilling environments. The high hourly costs for rigs capable
of drilling in deep water necessitate efcient and
reliable operations. Conventional coring may not
be economically viable in these situations.
Percussion cores can be acquired quickly and
provide selectivity, but the quality of cores offers
operators little more than basic rock property
analysis. If coring objectives can be met, selectively sampling with large-diameter rotary coring
tools offers operators an alternative to conventional coring.
The ability to acquire plugs as large as those
taken from whole core affords the opportunity to
collect high-quality rock samples and perform a
greater variety of petrophysical and rock analyses. By using rotary coring tools to acquire samples, petrophysicists can have condence that
mechanical damage to the sample that might
affect measured properties is minimized.
The reliable acquisition of representative rock
samples ultimately determines the practicality of
replacing conventional coring with rotary cores.
Reliability includes both properly functioning
equipment and the ability to cut, recover and
bring cores to the surface. In some rock types,
recovering samples can be difcult regardless of
the method used. Many deepwater reservoirs are
in sandstone formations of varying strength.
Acquiring rotary cores in rocks with unconned
compressive strength (UCS) less than 1,000 psi
[6.9 MPa] is especially challenging.18 This was one
of the concerns BHP Billiton Petroleum faced
when developing a coring strategy for evaluating a
deepwater well offshore Australia.
BHP had successfully tested the XL-Rock coring tool in a deepwater Gulf of Mexico well and
achieved good recovery. The objectives of this
15. Adams J, Bourke L and Buck S: Integrating Formation
MicroScanner Images and Cores, Oileld Review 2,
no. 1 (January 1990): 5265.
16. For more on in situ stress testing and minifracs:
Desroches J and Kurkjian AL: Applications of Wireline
Stress Measurements, SPE Reservoir Evaluation &
Engineering 2, no. 5 (October 1999): 451461.
Carnegie A, Thomas M, Efnik MS, Hamawi M, Akbar M
and Burton M: An Advanced Method of Determining
Insitu Reservoir Stresses: Wireline Conveyed
Micro-Fracturing, SPE paper 78486, presented at the
Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and
Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE, October 1316, 2002.
17. Laronga R, Tevis C, Kaiser B, Lake P and Fargo D:
Field Test Results of a New-Generation Large-Bore
Rotary Coring Tool, Transactions of the SPWLA 52nd
Annual Logging Symposium, Colorado Springs, Colorado,
USA, May 1418, 2011, paper TTT.
18. For more on geomechanics and UCS: Cook et al,
reference 11.

Winter 2013/2014

1 in.

> Core recovery in a challenging deepwater environment. During coring operations in a deepwater
well offshore Australia, rotary cores were taken with the XL-Rock tool from rocks with UCS values
ranging from 500 to 5,000 psi and from several formation types. The operation resulted in 100% recovery
of the cores attempted; these examples are representative of the quality of the samples taken.

earlier coring program, which were achieved with

the large cores, involved several types of studies,
including sedimentology, biostratigraphy, geomechanical properties analysis and validation of
interpretations of petrophysical logs.
For the deepwater well offshore Australia, the
coring objectives were similar to those of the Gulf
of Mexico wells, and traditional rotary cores were
deemed too small to provide representative samples for analysis. Because of the successful acquisition of large cores in the Gulf of Mexico, BHP
geologists and engineers elected to use the
XL-Rock tool and acquire 1.5-in. [3.8-cm] by 3.0-in.
[7.6-cm] cores.
Geologists interpreted the petrophysical log
data and selected core points based on the coring
objectives, which included routine core analysis,
geomechanical studies, geochemistry testing and
biostratigraphic studies. They then used acoustic
data from the well to estimate UCS. These data
were incorporated in the decision process for
determining rotary core depths. The sampling
program covered several formation types, and
samples were taken in rocks with a UCS range of
500 to 5,000 psi [3.4 to 34.4 MPa].
Even in the challenging low-UCS intervals,
the coring operation achieved 100% recovery
(above). The ability to acquire large-diameter
cores led to a revision of the coring program; BHP
eliminated some originally planned conventional
coring. Large-diameter core recovery and operational efciencies compared to those in conventional coring resulted in signicant cost savings
without sacricing coring objectives.

Routine Coring Operations

Rotary coring tools were introduced to overcome
some of the limitations of percussion cores, but
geologists wanted still more core volume. Early
reports indicate that large-diameter rotary cores
provide a viable alternative for geologists who
have had to accept smaller cores provided by conventional sidewall coring tools or for operators
that found conventional coring operations too
inefcient and expensive.
The option of taking representative rock samples without the expense and loss of efciency of
conventional coring operations has arrived at a
crucial time in the industry. Geologists and engineers have the option to use large cores to evaluate unconventional resource plays and also
determine mechanical properties in consolidated
formations. With more core material for analysis,
operators chances for successful development of
these plays are greatly improved.
TS

39

A New Platform for Offshore Exploration

and Production

Peter Carragher
Rose & Associates, LLP
Houston, Texas, USA
Graham Hine
Liquid Robotics, Inc.
Sunnyvale, California, USA
Patrick Legh-Smith
Gatwick, England
Jeffrey Mayville
Rod Nelson
Houston, Texas
Sudhir Pai
Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas
Houston, Texas
Iain Parnum
Curtin University
Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Paul Shone
Chevron Energy Technology Company
London, England
Jonathan Smith
Shell Exploration and Production Company
Houston, Texas
Christian Tichatschke
Total E&P Uruguay BV
Montevideo, Uruguay
Oileld Review Winter 2013/2014: 25, no. 4.
Copyright 2014 Schlumberger.
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Joanne
Masters and Jona Steenbrink, Liquid Robotics Inc.,
Sunnyvale, California.
DART is a mark of the US National Oceanographic and
Atmospheric Administration.
Wave Glider is a registered trademark of Liquid Robotics, Inc.

40

Accurate data are essential for developing climate models and weather forecasts
used in planning offshore E&P operations. A new remotely controlled, autonomous
marine vehicle has been developed to carry a variety of sensors for conducting
detailed meteorological and oceanographic surveys across vast distances and under
extreme conditions. The role of this new sensor platform is expanding to support an
even broader range of missions.

The oceans cover more than 70% of the Earths

surface and have played a dominant role in its
geologic history. Although the oceans contain a
substantial portion of our planets natural
resources, their depths remain largely unexplored. Long-term monitoring over vast expanses
of ocean may lead to better understanding of
processes that continue to shape the planet
while helping scientists discover new resources
and predict the impact of ocean forces that
could disrupt commerce or alter the course of
everyday life.
Forces of nature, such as hurricanes and
typhoons, pose a recurring threat to thousands of
communities along the coast; earthquakes and
tsunamis occur less frequently but often cause
more damage.1 Sweeping events and weather patterns inuenced by the ocean not only menace
coastal dwellers but also impact industry and
commerce around the world. The oil and gas
industry feels the effects of weather in seasonal
demand uctuations. In the offshore environment, the effects of weather translate into concessions that operators must make: Is it prudent
to mobilize a drilling rig, are the waves too high
to ofoad equipment, or are the winds too strong
for helicopter operations? Meteorological and
oceanographic, or metocean, dataespecially
height of waves and period of swells, speed and
direction of wind and surface or subsurface currentsprovide crucial input for planning rig
moves and placement. Geophysical survey crews
must assess the effects of tides and currents on

the feathering of seismic streamers as they are

towed through the water.2 Wave height is a key
parameter used in designing production platforms, and pipelines must be installed to withstand subsea currents. Ocean monitoring plays
an integral role in risk assessment and management by providing information that helps forecasters, planners and eld personnel assess the
degree to which they must accommodate forces
of nature.
But monitoring is often a costly proposition.
Conventional sensor platforms such as buoys,
ships, aircraft and satellites are expensive and
require extensive lead time for planning, procurement and construction. Personnel to support these
platforms and their missions must also be trained
and managed. Satellite-mounted sensors and
storm-chaser aircraft evaluate the air column and
ocean surface but are limited in their on-scene
endurance, real-time sampling data rates and
capability to measure conditions at or beneath the
sea/air interface. Oceanographic ships can range
over great distances while taking a variety of measurements, but vessel and crew are not meant to
withstand extreme conditions and also must
return to port for replenishment after a limited
time. Ocean-observation buoys can also be outtted with sensors but are anchored in place, so they
measure conditions within only a relatively xed
location.3 The cost to build, deploy or crew a metocean survey platform often starts in the millions
of dollars and increases with the intricacies, risks
or ambitions of the mission.

Oileld Review

One complement, and in some cases alternative, to satellites, planes and ships is an unmanned
mobile sensor platform for monitoring ocean conditions. This concept is part of a progression that
led to development of remotely operated vehicles
(ROVs), which have become essential inspection
and intervention devices for deepwater oileld
operations.4 With one or two skilled pilots at the
surface, the ROV can wield the tools and power to
carry out complex tasks in a forbiddingly dark, cold
and high-pressure environment. Some ROVs eventually dropped their command and control umbilicals to take commands through subsea telemetry;
now autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are
routinely used in subsea surveys. These unmanned
vehicles have helped expand the envelope of deepwater operations and have been instrumental in

increasing productivity and safety in one of the

most hostile environments on Earth. These vehicles, however, require support from the surface.5
The Wave Glider autonomous marine vehicle
(AMV), developed by Liquid Robotics, Inc., is a
hybrid sea-surface and underwater vehicle that has
taken the concept of autonomy beyond that of the
AUV.6 This wave-powered sensor platform enables
collection and transmission of data gathered at sea
on missions lasting up to a year. It is capable of
crossing thousands of kilometers of ocean to gather
oceanographic data, taking meteorological readings while maintaining a stationary position, or circling a rig at a preset distance to provide early
warning of security or environmental threats.
Once deployed, it uses no crew, requires no
fuel and produces no emissions, thus eliminating

both risk to personnel and impact on the environment. For much less than the cost of a moored
buoy or a vessel and crew, the Wave Glider vehicle
provides mobility and long-range endurance for
extended ocean monitoring missions. It has already
carried out hundreds of missions ranging from the
Arctic region to Australia and from the Canary
Islands to Loch Ness in Scotland.
This article discusses the development of this
multimission, autonomous sensor platform and
describes its applicationsfrom measuring metocean parameters to detecting oil seeps. Examples
from the Gulf of Mexico and other areas demonstrate how persistent, unmanned mobile monitoring platforms have proved benecial to offshore
exploration and production efforts.

1. Bunting T, Chapman C, Christie P, Singh SC and Sledzik J:

The Science of Tsunamis, Oileld Review 19, no. 3
(Autumn 2007): 419.
2. Feathering is the lateral deviation of a seismic streamer
away from its intended towing direction as marine
currents push the streamer off course.
3. The exact diameter of that xed location is dened by the
watch circle of the buoys anchor system, which is a
function of the length of chain attaching the anchor to the

buoy. To withstand extremes in tides and wave height,

the buoy is anchored with steel chain whose length is
typically three to ve times the water depth. Although this
extra chain serves to reduce shock loading on the ground
tackle used to anchor the buoy, it also means that the
exact position of a buoy will vary with the tides, winds
and currents.
4. For more on ROVs in deepwater applications: Downton G,
Gomez S, Haci M, Maidla E and Royce C: Robots to the
Rescue, Oileld Review 22, no. 3 (Autumn 2010): 1627.

5. Manley JE and Hine G: Persistent Unmanned Surface

Vehicles for Subsea Support, paper OTC 21453,
presented at the Offshore Technology Conference,
Houston, May 25, 2011.
6. In 2012, Liquid Robotics, Inc. and Schlumberger created a
joint venture known as Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas to
extend autonomous marine vehicle services to the oil and
gas industry.

Winter 2013/2014

41

Weather station
Location marker light
Solar panel

Command and control

electronics

Payload electronics

Payload electronics
Lift point

Aft payload bay

Forward payload bay

Surface Float

Umbilical
Power and
communications

Rudder
Wings
Subsea payload attachment points

Submerged Glider

> Wave Glider system design. This autonomous marine vehicle is divided into three primary subsystems:
surface oat, umbilical and submerged glider. Each subsystem can be congured to meet client needs.

Vehicle Design
The Wave Glider AMV uses wave energy for thrust,
while solar energy powers its rudder motor, navigation system and payload electronics. This AMV
consists of a surface oat and a submerged glider
connected by an electromechanical umbilical
(above). Each of these parts can support an array
of sensors to create a custom payload for each
mission. The oat weighs about 68 kg [150 lbm]
including a typical payload.
The oat measures 208 by 60 cm [82 by 24 in.].
Its deck supports antennae for GPS, satellite com-

Sea State
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Wave Height, m
0
0 to 0.1
0.1 to 0.5
0.5 to 1.25
1.25 to 2.5
2.5 to 4
4 to 6
6 to 9
9 to 14
More than 14

munications and collision avoidance systems, as

well as a mast to support a position marker light and
ag for increased visibility. Its surface also holds
two photovoltaic panels that continually replenish
the lithium-ion batteries used to power the vehicles
navigation, communication systems and sensor payloads. Seven smart battery packs housed within the
oat are each electrically isolated with separate
discharging and monitoring circuitry that permits
only two batteries to be in use at a time.7 Two payload bays support a total of 18 kg [40 lbm] of sensors
and equipment.

Ocean Surface Characteristics

Glassy calm
Rippled
Smooth or with wavelets
Slight
Moderate
Rough
Very rough
High
Very high
Phenomenally high

> Table of sea states. The World Meteorological Organization categorizes the
force of progressively higher seas according to wave height. The Wave Glider
AMV can operate in conditions up to sea state 6.

42

The umbilical, about 5.8 m [19 ft] long, provides a exible connection between the surface
oat and submerged glider. This line also serves
as a conduit for transmitting power and steering
commands to the glider.
The submerged glider, or sub, is 2 m [6.5 ft]
long. The sub glides on six pairs of underwater
wings that propel the entire Wave Glider system
forward. The sub frame supports a rudder and its
control package. The frame weighs about 68 kg
and can support a variety of sensors.
The low-prole surface oat, high-strength
umbilical and sturdy sub allow the vehicle to
carry on through high winds and waves of the
open ocean. The sub is sheltered from surface
weather conditions and acts as a drift anchor to
counter the effects of wind and wave on the surface oat. The current model, the Wave Glider
SV2 platform, has survived ve hurricanes and
three tropical cyclones and has logged more than
560,000 km [300,000 nautical mi] since 2009.
Ocean Locomotion
The Wave Glider propulsion system is passive and
mechanical; it converts energy from wave motion
into thrust.8 This propulsion system exploits the
natural difference in wave motion between the
surface oat and the submerged glider.
Articulating ns, or wings, attached to the sub
convert wave energy to generate more than
1.3 kN [300 lbf] of thrust as they pivot vertically.
The vehicle produces forward thrust independent of wave direction as its oat moves up and
down with each wave and the sub tows the oat
forward (next page, top).
Forward speed is dependent on the overall
buoyancy force provided by the oat when tethered to the weight of the sub. The vehicles mass
and buoyancy vary with payload, so the oat,
umbilical and sub must be balanced and tuned to
provide optimal propulsion performance. The
AMV is designed to operate in variable conditions, ranging from sea state 0 to state 6 (left).
The vehicle can achieve speeds up to 1 m/s
[2 knots] and in typical wave conditions of 0.3 to 1 m
[1 to 3 ft] reaches 0.5 to 0.75 m/s [1 to 1.5 knots].9
At this rate, it is able to travel about 1,000 km
[620 mi, 540 nautical mi] in a month. It can also
harvest energy from high-frequency, low-amplitude wavessuch as wind ripplesso that even
under calm conditions, its speed rarely drops
below 0.25 m/s [0.5 knots].10
This AMV has demonstrated its capability to
perform in extreme sea states. One Wave Glider
vehicle, designated G2, experienced a close brush
with Hurricane Isaac in August 2012. The storm

Oileld Review

Wave
amplitude

> Wave propulsion. The Wave Glider system converts a portion of its vertical movement into forward thrust. As the surface oat rises on the crest of a
wave, it pulls the submerged glider upward by the umbilical. The gliders six pairs of articulated wings are pressed downward as the glider rises, translating
the gliders upward rise into an upward and forward motion, which pulls the oat forward (middle). As the oat moves off the wave crest, the glider wings
tilt upward, which again translates into forward motion (right). Wave motion is greatest at the waters surface and decreases with depth. The magnitude of
forward propulsive force is proportional to the difference between the ocean wave amplitudes at the surface oat and at the submerged glider wings.

winds to transmit weather data in real time as

Hurricane Sandy traveled northward along the
US eastern seaboard.11 In stormy conditions, the

34

100

32

80

30
28
26
24

Winter 2013/2014

40
20
Time

Barometric pressure, mbar

1,020

8
6
4
2
0

60

Time

10
Significant wave height, m

7. Pai S: Wave GliderIntroduction to an Innovative

Autonomous Remotely Piloted Ocean Data Collection
Platform, paper SPE 166626, presented at the SPE
Offshore Europe Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition,
Aberdeen, September 36, 2013.
8. Leroy F and Hine G: Persistent Unmanned Surface
Vehicles for Well and Field Support, paper OTC 22545,
presented at the Offshore Technology Conference Brazil,
Rio de Janeiro, October 46, 2011.
9. A knot, or nautical mile per hour, is equivalent to
1.151 statute mile/h [1.852 km/h].
10. Dalgleish FR, Ouyang B, Vuorenkoski AK, Thomas JC
and Carragher PD: Towards Persistent Real-Time
Autonomous Surveillance and Mapping of Surface
Hydrocarbons, paper OTC 24241, presented at
the Offshore Technology Conference, Houston,
May 69, 2013.
11. Pai, reference 7.

vehicles performance is boosted by increased

wave energy, which allows it to maintain its
intended course.

Wind speed, knots

Sea surface temperature, C

passed within 100 km [60 mi] of G2s location in

the Gulf of Mexico. When the hurricane veered
toward the vehicle, its pilotwho monitored the
situation from the operations support center
(OSC) in Sunnyvale, California, USAissued a
course change that took the vehicle out of danger.
Outtted with sensors to measure water speed,
air and water temperature, wind speed and barometric pressure, G2 transmitted data despite its
proximity to the storm (right). More recently, in
October 2012, a different Wave Glider AMV successfully piloted through 130-km/hr [70-knot]

Time

1,010
1,000
990
980
970

Time

> Sensor readings from a storm. As Hurricane Isaac veered toward the Wave Glider G2, the AMVs
sensors recorded a dramatic drop in water temperature with sustained winds of 40 knots [74 km/h],
gusting to 74 knots [137 km/h] as barometric pressure fell to 988.3 mbar [14.3 psi].

43

> Station keeping capability. An open ocean observation buoy (right) was moored next to a bottom
pressure recorder (BPR) on the seaoor to relay data from the BPR to scientists on shore. Although it
was moored beside the BPR, winds and currents tended to push the buoy to the southeast quadrant of
its 3,400-m [11,000-ft] watch circle. A Wave Glider AMV (left) was tested for its feasibility as a relay
station for the BPR data.

The Wave Glider propulsion system also

allows it to hold station on one location, even in
tidal or eddy currents. It simply steers to a designated waypointa programmed set of geographic coordinates. When it approaches the
limits of a predened watch circle, it turns
around and heads back to the same point repeatedly. The AMV can maintain station for long durations with a watch circle diameter down to 50 m
[164 ft], depending on currents and sea state. By
contrast, the mooring systems of deep-ocean
buoys employ ground tackle that produces a
much wider watch circle (above).
The Sensor Platform
The Wave Glider AMV can accommodate a broad
range of off-the-shelf or custom sensors to t the
needs of the mission. A GPS receiver not only
determines vehicle position, it provides a precise
time stamp for all data recorded on the mission.
Photovoltaic panels keep lithium-ion batteries
charged to support WiFi, cellular or satellite communications systems, onboard data processing
and various payloads.
Additional sensor payloads can be congured
according to client specications:
meteorological sensors to record barometric
pressure, air temperature and wind direction,
speed and gusts

44

wave sensors to record wave height, period and

direction
acoustic modems to harvest data from sensors
mounted on subsea structures or the seaoor
bathymetry sensors to map water depth
current sensors to record direction and speed
water salinity and temperature sensors
uorometry systems to detect the presence of
oil, turbidity and chlorophyll in the water
magnetometers to measure the magnitude and
direction of magnetic elds
cameras to provide realtime imaging; also used
to monitor ice proximity or to verify the presence of surface oil sheens
passive acoustic recorders to detect and analyze marine mammal vocalizations.
Clients can monitor vehicle status and data in
real time. An account-based credentialing scheme
provides security for communicating with the vehicle using the Internet. Updates are generally carried out at client-specied intervals ranging from
1 to 15 min. An onboard hard drive records higher
resolution sampling rates.
Piloting by Remote Control
The Wave Glider AMV can be programmed to
travel directly from one location to another or to
follow a specic route dened by multiple sets
of geographic coordinates, or waypoints. The
onboard GPS guides the vehicle from one waypoint to the next. The vehicle uses a 12-channel

GPS receiver as its primary navigation sensor,

along with a tilt-compensated compass with
three-axis accelerometers and a water speed sensor. This system typically provides navigation
accuracy of better than 3 m [10 ft].12
Alternatively, Wave Glider pilots can steer their
charges remotely (next page, top). Command and
control information is relayed via satellite link
with a secure, web-based user interface for directing the units.13 The Wave Glider Management
System allows pilots to issue course commands
using any Internet-enabled computer or cellular
telephone that supports web browsing.14
Collision avoidance is crucial to the success of
autonomous vehicle programs. A key strategy for
the AMV is to see and be seen so that appropriate
steering commands may be executed in time to
avoid accidents. A mast, ag and light are typically installed to visually mark the AMV oat
position. More importantly, the oat carries an
integrated package of electronics to highlight its
position. A radar enhancer produces a distinctive
target on the radar screens of approaching vessels. A satellite communications system, azimuthal heading sensor and GPS are linked to an
automatic identication system (AIS) for tracking vessel movement.
Commercial vessels are required to carry
radar and AIS (next page, bottom). Automatic
interrogation and exchange of position, course
and speed data are provided by the AIS, whose
data are displayed on the radar screen to help
navigators on an approaching vessel track the
course of the autonomous vehicle. Reciprocal AIS
data are automatically relayed from the AMV to
Wave Glider pilots onshore, who also monitor vessel trafc and issue AMV steering commands to
prevent collisions.
E&P Applications
Wave Glider sensor platforms are suited to a variety of scientic missions and applications. Its
persistence and range allow this AMV to gather
time-series data across wide geographic areas,
enabling scientic research that was not practical or economical using data gathered from
buoys, ships or satellites.
Detection of naturally occurring hydrocarbon
seeps is probably the oldest method of oileld
exploration. From a geologists perspective, ocean
surface oil is a good indicator of more reserves
beneath the seabed. Ecologists and oceanographers are also interested in learning how organic
carbon from these seeps might affect neighboring
benthic and bentho-pelagic environments and the
chemosynthetic communities they support.15

Oileld Review

> Pilot control station. At an onshore operations support center, pilots monitor vessel trafc, sea conditions and AMV operating parameters around the clock.

Biological interactions, mixing and dissolution consume or disperse a portion of the hydrocarbons as they rise through the water column,
but some hydrocarbon bubbles or droplets eventually reach the surface. There, they spread out
to form a thin oil patch, or sheen, whose depth
and breadth depend on sea surface conditions
particularly wave agitation, temperature and
evaporation, which affect the rate of dispersion.
These patches occur regularly but are often
short-lived. They can be observed visually or
detected by satellite-mounted synthetic aperture
radar (SAR). However, orbits of SAR satellites
typically permit no more than two passes per day
over a particular site. Unmanned sensor platforms that measure hydrocarbons and other environmental parameters and transmit the data to
shore-based researchers are an effective alternative to satellites or ship-borne measurements.
12. Pai, reference 7.
13. Anderson BS and Beatman L: Autonomous Surface
Vehicle Operations in the Arctic: Regional Baseline Data
Acquisition, paper OTC 23737, presented at the Arctic
Technology Conference, Houston, December 35, 2012.
14. Pai, reference 7.
15. Dalgleish et al, reference 10.

Winter 2013/2014

MV Richard Etheridge
11.4 knots, 139
CPA 0.20 nm, 8 min

MV Nathan Bruckenthal
13.4 knots, 156
CPA 0.14 nm, 2 min

Own
vessel

MV Douglas Munro
8.7 knots, 318
CPA 0.18 nm, 1 min

> Typical AIS display. Vessel position, speed, heading, projected closest point of approach (CPA) in
nautical miles (nm) and estimated time to CPA are displayed on an electronic chart overlay. The AIS
updates this critical vessel information several times a minute. The vessel on which this display
appears (orange, circled) will be passing close by three other vessels (red) if it maintains its present
course and speed.

45

0.268
28.132

0.258

Equivalent hydrocarbon concentration, g/L

28.130

Latitude

28.128

28.126

28.124

28.122

0.249

0.239

0.230
28.120

28.118

0.220
89.148

89.146

89.144

89.142

89.140

89.138

89.136

89.134

89.132

Longitude

> Hexagonal search pattern. Satellite-mounted synthetic aperture radar sensors detected a sheen
(green) resulting from a seep in the Gulf of Mexico. During a Wave Glider sortie, the sensor vehicle
encountered increased hydrocarbon concentrations. The Wave Glider trajectory is color coded to
correspond to hydrocarbon concentration. Detected events, (large dots) in which spikes or sharp
transitions are registered on multiple sensors, show where the AMV encountered higher
concentrations of semivolatile hydrocarbons, thus indicating fresh accumulations.

Weather station

Current profiler

Backscatter
meter
Transmissometer

Water speed
sensor

Water conductivity, temperature,

pressure and dissolved
oxygen sensors

Towfish

> AMV with towsh. This sensor platform obtained baseline measurements of particle suspension in the
water column over a proposed pipeline dredging route. The AMV was congured to obtain surface weather
measurements and current speed and direction, along with dissolved oxygen and water conductivity,
temperature and pressure. Sensors on the towsh obtained turbidity measurements.

46

Wave Glider sensor platforms have been used

during a two-month mission in the Mississippi
Canyon area of the Gulf of Mexico to evaluate
natural oil seeps in the vicinity of salt domes and
mud volcanoes. The AMV science payload consisted of a oat-mounted water speed sensor, a
mast-mounted weather station, a uorometer
that measured low concentrations of semivolatile
hydrocarbons and two optical sensors that measured concentrations of dissolved and suspended
organic material via uorescence.16 Prior to the
AMV deployment, optical sensor response was
calibrated to known concentrations of crude oil
at various stages of weathering in a wave tank
testing facility. The resulting Wave Glider sensor
data helped scientists map the location and
extent of the natural oil sheens (left).
On the other side of the world, Chevrons
Environmental Technology Unit, in collaboration
with the Centre for Marine Science & Technology
at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia,
deployed a unique sensor conguration on two
Wave Glider sensor platforms.17 The AMVs obtained
baseline turbidity data prior to the initiation
of dredging operations for a pipeline offshore
Australia. Deployed in three sorties, the AMV sensor platforms carried out metocean surveys and
obtained measurements to assess turbidity through
areas affected by the dredging.
During the rst sortie, the system obtained a
variety of metocean measurements, including the
direction and magnitude of ocean currents, air
temperature, wind speed and direction, atmospheric pressure and water temperature and
salinity. These data provided valuable environmental baseline information that helped scientists plan for subsequent sorties (next page).
The next sortie, conducted to obtain detailed
particle suspension data, also demonstrated the
towing capability of the Wave Glider sub. An AMV
trailed a towsh sensor module behind the submerged glider to measure turbidity (left). The
towsh measured optical transmission to determine light attenuation and measured backscatter at three wavelengths for calculating
suspended sediment and mean particle size.
Having established a predredge baseline, the
AMVs were deployed again to measure suspended
sediment during the dredging operation.
The third sortie allowed scientists to compare data obtained by towsh sensors during
the second sortie with data obtained from a different optical sensor to track suspended sediment and particle size distribution. This
comparison of results from state-of-the-art sensors helped the operator determine the best

Oileld Review

Current azimuth
0

180

360

Depth, m

20

40

12

24

36

48

60

48

60

Elapsed time, h

Current velocity, m/s

0

.25

.50

Depth, m

20

40

12

24

36

Elapsed time, h

> Current and depth. Offshore Western Australia, a Wave Glider AMV recorded seaoor soundings down to 60 m [200 ft], along with current speed and
direction. Tidal inuence on current direction is pronounced over the shallower depths, with direction changing at about six-hour increments (red and blue,
top). Currents showed irregular variations in speed along the survey path (bottom). All measurements are tied to GPS time and coordinates.

sensor system for future deployments. A nal

survey will be conducted after dredging is complete. These time-lapse surveys will enable scientists to compare proles before, during and
after dredging to evaluate any short- or longterm impacts on the environment.
The AMV has also helped geophysicists design
seismic surveys. Seismic vessels employ several
acoustic streamers, towed in parallel, to acquire
geophysical data. These streamers, thousands of
meters long, do not always follow directly in line

Winter 2013/2014

behind the seismic vessel; instead, they drift laterally in response to the tides and currents they
encounter. Although the streamers are steerable,
this feathering can produce gaps in data coverage
over an area and force the seismic vessel to steam
back over that area to reacquire and inll missing data. To counter the effects of tide and current, survey planners often orient surveys in line
with the direction of the predominant current.
Streamer feathering becomes a bigger problem
when surveying close to xed objects such as buoys,

drilling rigs or production platforms. In support of

a WesternGeco seismic vessel operating in the
Gulf of Mexico, three Wave Glider sensor vehicles
were deployed to report real-time weather and current data in the vicinity of rigs and platforms in the
survey area. Each AMV used an acoustic Doppler
16. Dalgleish et al, reference 10.
17. Pai S and Shone P: Remotely Piloted Ocean Vehicles to
Conduct METOC and Turbidity Pre-Site Survey, paper
presented at the 75th EAGE Conference and Exhibition,
London, June 1013, 2013.

47

5.0

4.0

Cross track current velocity relative to ships heading, knots

3.0
2.0
1.0
0.0
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0

5.0

06:00, Mar 24

Port

Starboard
00:00, Mar 24

18:00, Mar 23

12:00, Mar 23

> Current data. Current velocity across a survey area was transmitted to the WG Columbus (inset) to
aid in predicting seismic streamer positions as the vessel passed close to a production platform and
other potential obstructions.

Satellite

Wave Glider AMV

AUV

ROV

Manifold

> Communications gateway. In support of oileld operations, the Wave Glider AMV will provide a useful
link for relaying data and commands between the seabed and the operators facilities. In this example,
the AMV can handle communications with a submerged AUV, ROV and subsea manifold as well as
platforms, a satellite and surface support craft (from Manley and Hine, reference 5). (Copyright 2008,
Offshore Technology Conference. Reproduced with permission of OTC. Further reproduction prohibited
without permission.)

48

current proler (ADCP) to measure current speed

and direction. The data were sent via secure
Internet service to the party chief aboard the seismic vessel WG Columbus (left). This information
helped the seismic survey party chief determine
how closely the vessel could pass obstructions while
avoiding streamer entanglement.18
In a similar case, Total used ADCPs to aid in
designing seismic surveys offshore Uruguay.
There, geophysicists sought to survey an area
near the conuence of two ocean currents. To
adapt the acquisition to the prevailing currents
on a day-to-day basis and hence to increase operational security, Total deployed a Wave Glider
AMV to measure current strength. The data were
transmitted in real time via satellite as the survey
was underway.
Wave Glider AMVs can also provide a persistent platform to facilitate communication with
subsea sensors and equipment via acoustic
modem, either for operational control or to
assess subsea assets (below left). Shell has used
Wave Glider acoustic modems in benchmark tests
to harvest data from subsea pressure monitoring
transponders in the Gulf of Mexico. In most
cases, such data can be recorded, transferred via
satellite and analyzed anywhere in the world.
Beyond the Oil Field
Events of the past decade highlight the devastation visited upon coastal communities as a result
of offshore earthquakes or major storms. To warn
communities of impending danger, scientists
need relevant data on a real-time basis. In the
case of tsunamis, sensors deployed on buoys can
help locate the epicenter of an earthquake and
measure the magnitude of seaoor displacement. An array of ocean data buoys has been
set up to monitor such data. The US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(NOAA) monitors data from the DART (Deepocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami)
network, established to detect tsunamis and
acquire data for real-time forecasts. NOAA currently has 39 DART monitoring stations in its
network, and stations from other nations contribute data as well. Each DART station consists
of a seaoor bottom pressure recorder (BPR)
with a surface buoy anchored next to it. An
acoustic link transmits data and commands
between the buoy and the BPR, which collects
pressure and temperature readings at 15-s intervals. The data are relayed from BPR to buoy, then
transmitted by communications satellite to tsunami warning centers around the world.19

Oileld Review

Satellite

Tsunami early
warning center
Wave Glider AMV

Bottom pressure recorder

> Tsunami monitoring. NOAA uses bottom pressure readings to detect earthquake activity that could produce a tsunami. A Wave Glider sensor platform has been
employed to relay real-time data from a BPR to an onshore tsunami early warning center.

NOAA scientists recognized that there would

be operational challenges in maintaining some of
the DART stations following their deployment.
When a station experiences a failure, the cost of
mobilizing a vessel to effect repairs can strain the
programs budget. To augment the network,
NOAA has deployed a Wave Glider AMV with a
low-frequency acoustic modem to obtain realtime tsunami observations. This unmanned
mobile tsunameter serves as a communications
gateway for transmitting live seismic data from
the seaoor to the ocean surface then relaying
the data to shore via satellite (above). The AMV,
which also collects real-time meteorological
information, can be programmed to travel to
select locations or return to shore on command.
Accurate storm forecasting is also critical to
protecting lives and assets of coastal communities. Having developed tools to predict the general track a storm might take, NOAA now seeks to
improve predictions of storm intensity. Along the
US gulf and east coasts, the greatest threats come
from hurricanes. In an effort to better understand how hurricanes gain or lose strength,
NOAA is targeting the sea/air interface, where
warm ocean waters transfer heat energy to the
overlying storm system. Weather experts believe

Winter 2013/2014

that temperatures beneath the oceans surface

may contribute signicantly to this energy
exchange as storm winds and waves churn the
waters below the surface.
However, extracting data from the center of
a hurricane can be difcult. Storm-chaser aircraft y into these violent weather systems at
several thousand feet above the ocean. They
probe the storm using radar to gauge conditions
at the ocean surface or they drop sensors from
the plane to obtain a detailed vertical prole of
atmospheric conditions inside the storm.20
Satellites observe surface temperatures from
hundreds or thousands of miles above the ocean,
but these measurements may be obscured by
cloud cover, and they provide no information on
the heat exchanged in storm-churned waters
beneath the surface. Furthermore, they need to
be compared with ground truth measurements
obtained in the actual storm environment. Such
measurements can be gathered only by venturing into the storm itself.
These environments are too turbulent for
manned weather vessels or research aircraft, so
NOAA scientists are testing unmanned mobile
sensor platforms to observe this energy transfer.
NOAA has used the Wave Glider AMV in the

Atlantic Ocean to collect critical data in areas

that would be too difcult or too dangerous to
access by other means. Monitoring an area north
of Puerto Rico, the sensor platform is equipped
with a standard weather station to measure temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and wind
speed, direction and gusts. It also has a directional wave sensor and a thermistor chain to measure the water temperature from the surface
down to 7 m [23 ft] in depth. This sensor platform
demonstrated that high-quality temperature measurements from the upper ocean can be collected
18. Pai, reference 7.
19. Manley and Hine, reference 5.
For more on the DART system: Deep-Ocean
Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART)
Description, NOAA National Data Buoy Center,
http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/dart/dart.shtml (accessed
November 20, 2013).
Green DS: Transitioning NOAA Moored Buoy Systems
From Research to Operations, in Proceedings of the
MTS/IEEE OCEANS 2006 Conference, Boston,
Massachusetts, USA, September 1521, 2006.
20. Dropsondes obtain a vertical prole of conditions as
they fall by parachute through a storm. Temperature,
humidity, pressure, wind speed, wind direction and GPS
coordinates are transmitted to the launch aircraft every
0.5 s. A drop from 7,000 m [20,000 ft] can take 7 min.
For more on dropsonde capabilities: GPS Dropsonde,
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and
National Center for Atmospheric Research Earth
Observing Laboratory, https://www.eol.ucar.edu/
node/3145 (accessed December 6, 2013).

49

> Wave of the future. The current Wave Glider SV3 prototype features an electric propulsion system with a low-drag propeller (black cone beneath the
vertical n). This larger model will accommodate a payload of 45 kg [100 lbm].

by autonomous vehicles in a harsh environment

and telemetered in real time. An AMV also allows
scientists to gather data from various locations as
the vehicle roves through the storm.
Wave of the Future
Having traveled 14 months and 14,800 km
[9,200 mi] across the Pacic Ocean, the
Wave Glider AMV has gained a record of reliability. This autonomous sensor platform has proved
capable of carrying out a variety of important
ocean monitoring functions formerly assigned
to manned vesselsbut over a longer time
frame and at lower cost than traditional methods. Furthermore, its station keeping ability lets
the AMV duplicate the persistence and mea21. Leroy and Hine, reference 8.
22. Leroy and Hine, reference 8.

50

surement functions of a moored ocean-monitoring buoy. In this mode, it signicantly reduces

the expense, time and risk incurred by ships and
crews to deploy, recover and maintain a traditional network of buoys. Its compact size also
permits great exibility and adaptability for
rapid deployment to unforeseen or fast-changing events to monitor conditions on, above or
below the oceans surface.21
As offshore exploration and production move
into deeper and more remote areas of the worlds
oceans, the drilling rigs, production platforms,
vessels and pipelines used in these operations
will increasingly rely on autonomous vehicles for
support. The capability to operate at or below the
sea/air interface will serve the AMV customer in
providing communication relays between surface
and subsurface installations.

A new generation of larger, purpose-built

Wave Glider vehicles will support subsurface well
installations and eld operations. The SV3 model
will be more than 35% longer than previous models and will carry a larger payload. Future systems may be able to generate electricity from
wave motion and may also include auxiliary electric propulsion to enhance maneuvering and collision avoidance capabilities (above).22 The next
generation of Wave Glider autonomous vehicles
will be instrumental in extending the frontiers of
exploration and production.
MV

Oileld Review

Contributors
Abhishek Agarwal is Sampling and Coring Services
Product Champion for Schlumberger Wireline. Based
in Sugar Land, Texas, USA, he manages new product
development and marketing for these services. Prior to
this assignment, which he began in 2013, he has held a
number of positions within Schlumberger in India,
Saudi Arabia and West Africa, primarily related to
wireline operations. He began his career with
Schlumberger in 2004 as a eld engineer in
Rajahmundry, Andhra Pradesh, India. Abhishek holds a
BTech degree in chemical engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology Bombay in Powai, Mumbai.

Geoffrey Hargreaves is the Curator of the US

Geological Survey National Ice Core Laboratory in
Denver. He oversees daily operations, the laboratory
database and cutting and shipment of core samples.
He began his career as a research technician with
Lockheed Ocean Systems in 1981. Since then he has
held engineering, technical and research positions in
the marine industry, including as resident marine
technician for Scripps Institution of Oceanography in
San Diego, California. Geoffrey holds a BS degree in
biological oceanography from Humboldt State
University, Arcata, California.

Mary R. Albert has been a Professor of Engineering at

the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth
College in Hanover, New Hampshire, USA, and
Executive Director of the US Ice Drilling Program
Ofce since 2009. Previously, she was a mathematician
and research mechanical engineer at the US Army
Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in
Hanover, New Hampshire. Mary earned a BS degree in
mathematics from The Pennsylvania State University,
State College, USA, and a BS degree in engineering
and an MS degree in engineering sciences from the
Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College.
She received a PhD degree in applied mechanics and
engineering sciences with an emphasis on computational uid dynamics from the University of California,
San Diego, USA.

Graham Hine serves as Senior Vice President of

Mission Services and Oil and Gas Technical Director
for Liquid Robotics, Inc. (LRI) in Sunnyvale,
California. His experience with the Wave Glider system
began in 2006, when he joined the Jupiter Foundation
Wave Glider program to assist in the development of
prototypes of the oceangoing autonomous surface vehicle. When LRI was formed in 2007, he became CIO and
program manager for its rst major contract and subsequently served in a variety of leadership roles; he is
the primary liaison between LRI and its joint venture
with Schlumberger, Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas. Graham
received degrees in management and software engineering from Claremont McKenna College, California,
and Columbia University, New York City.

Peter Carragher is a Partner at Rose & Associates,

LLP in Houston. He has more than 39 years of experience as an exploration geologist with Amoco and BP in
locations worldwide. He served in a scientic role during the Deepwater Horizon incident and now consults
with the BP Gulf Coast Restoration Organization and
other clients. Peter was involved in two Wave Glider
surveys in the Gulf of Mexico.
Karen Sullivan Glaser is a Geological Advisor and the
Schlumberger PetroTechnical Services (PTS) Director
of Curriculum for geology and geophysics. Based in
Houston, she oversees the xed-step and advanced
training programs for geology and geophysics within
PTS and also designs and teaches advanced geology
courses. She is developing and teaching courses on
unconventional resources and works closely with
experts in technologies and techniques applied to
the exploration and production of unconventional
resources. She joined Schlumberger GeoQuest in 1995
and subsequently worked for WesternGeco, Integrated
Project Management and Data & Consulting Services
in various technical, marketing and management
roles. Before joining Schlumberger, she worked for
Exxon Production Research as a research geologist
focusing on sequence stratigraphy. She has also
worked for Amoco Production Company in the
Permian basin. Karen obtained a BA degree in geology
from Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, USA,
an MS degree in petroleum geochemistry from the
University of Oklahoma, Norman, USA, and a PhD
degree in geology from Rice University in Houston.

Winter 2013/2014

Greg M. Johnson is Principal Area Geophysicist,

Depth Imaging for Schlumberger in Denver and has
produced land and marine seismic imaging solutions
worldwide. He has 31 years of industry experience and
has held various positions within WesternGeco in
Europe, Canada, the US and India, including as manager of depth imaging, earth models and data processing and as senior geophysicist with the Geophysical
Support group. Greg earned a BA degree in environmental science from the University of Colorado
Boulder, USA, and is an active member of the SEG, the
European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers
and the Denver Geophysical Society.
Robert L. Kleinberg is a Schlumberger Fellow at
Schlumberger-Doll Research in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA. His area of interest is unconventional fossil fuel resourcesoil shale, gas shale,
heavy oil and gas hydrates. His other projects at
Schlumberger have focused on ultrasonics, resistivity,
nuclear magnetic resonance and gravimetry and
include several tool inventions. Bob obtained a
BS degree in chemistry at the University of California,
Berkeley, and a PhD degree in physics from the
University of California, San Diego. Before joining
Schlumberger, he spent two years at the Corporate
Strategic Research Laboratory of Exxon Research and
Engineering Company in Clinton, New Jersey, USA.
Robert Laronga heads the Geology and Rock
Sampling Domain for Schlumberger Wireline in
Clamart, France. He advises Schlumberger engineering teams on the development of new borehole imaging and coring technology and related interpretation
software and provides support to Schlumberger geologists and customers who introduce these technologies in the eld. He has held several positions during

his 20-year career with Schlumberger, starting as a

wireline eld engineer and serving in various positions in west Texas, the Gulf of Mexico and aboard
the Ocean Drilling Program drillship. He was the
eld test engineer for the experimental prototype of
the OBMI* oil-base microimager tool and has worked
in sales and marketing positions in Scandinavia and
continental Europe. Rob holds a BA degree in archaeology and geology from Cornell University, Ithaca,
New York.
Patrick Legh-Smith is the Marine Manager, Eastern
Hemisphere for WesternGeco in Gatwick, England. He
has worked in the seismic industry since 1988 and in
marine seismic surveys with WesternGeco since 1992.
He began his career as a navigator before becoming a
party manager, operations manager, eet technical
support manager and WesternGeco HSE manager.
Patrick earned a bachelors degree in geophysical
oceanography and electronics engineering from the
University of Wales, Bangor and a masters degree in
marine resource management from Heriot-Watt
University, Edinburgh, Scotland.
Jeffrey Mayville, who is based in Houston, is the
Marine Manager, Western Hemisphere for
WesternGeco. He began his marine seismic career
with WesternGeco in 1977 as a navigator, then
became an observer and party manager. Starting in
1988, his subsequent positions onshore ranged from
global HSE advisor to marine support and management positions in North America and the Asia Pacic
region, as well as marine manager Schlumberger
electromagnetics and for the Eastern Hemisphere.
Jeffrey has a degree in electronics from DeVry
University, Phoenix, Arizona, USA.
Camron K. Miller is a Principal Geologist for
Schlumberger Production Management and
PetroTechnical Services in Houston; he has global
experience in shale reservoirs, although his current
focus is on the Eagle Ford Shale in the US. He has
more than 10 years of experience with the company
working as a wireline eld engineer, borehole geologist, Data & Consulting Services manager and senior
geologist focused on unconventional resources.
Camron obtained a BA degree in geology from The
College of Wooster, Ohio, USA, and an MS degree in
petroleum geology from The University of Akron, Ohio.
Paul Miller is a Senior Reservoir Geophysicist with
Schlumberger PetroTechnical Services in Kuala Lumpur.
He is responsible for project management and is a
technical lead for the Asia region. He has 15 years of
industry experience and is an expert in seismic inversion and seismically derived fault and fracture mapping. His career has included a wide range of
international postings in Libya, Egypt, India, the UAE,
Nigeria, Argentina, Brazil and the US. Paul received
a BSc degree (Hons) in physics with computing from
the University of Sussex, Brighton, England, and an
MSc degree in exploration geophysics from the
University of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

51

Dave Monk, who holds a PhD degree in physics from

Nottingham University in England, is the Director of
Geophysics and one of only two Distinguished
Advisors at Apache Corporation. Based in Houston,
he is responsible for seismic activity, including acquisition and processing in Argentina, Australia,
Canada, Egypt, the North Sea and the US. He started
his career on seismic crews in Nigeria and has subsequently been involved in seismic processing and
acquisition in locations worldwide. Author of more
than 100 technical papers or articles and a number of
patents, he received best paper awards from the SEG
in 1992 and 2005 as well as one from the Canadian
SEG in 2002 and was recipient of the Hagedoorn
Award from the European Association of Exploration
Geophysicists in 1994. Dave received honorary membership in the Geophysical Society of Houston and
life membership in the SEG and is the immediate
Past President of the SEG.

Sudhir Pai serves as Vice President of Operations and

Technology with Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas in Houston.
He sets the technology vision and is responsible for
worldwide operations for this joint venture between
Schlumberger and Liquid Robotics, Inc. Previously, he
held a number of management positions with
Schlumberger, including vice president and general
manager of completions and general manager of
Schlumberger operations in Mumbai. He has more
than 30 years of experience in oileld services, including roles in corporate planning, supply chain management, human resources, service quality and HSE in the
Middle East, Asia, Africa, India, the UK and the US.
Sudhir earned a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bombay, Mumbai. He is
a member of the SPE and the DeepStar technology
development project and was a technical steering committee member and session chair for the 2013 Clean
Gulf conference and exhibition.

Paul Shone is based in London, where he serves as

HSE Team Lead for Chevron Energy Technology
Company. He has worked for the company for 17 years.

Rod Nelson is a Senior Advisor at Schlumberger and

Managing Director of the Liquid Robotics Oil & Gas
joint venture between Schlumberger and Liquid
Robotics, Inc. He is also Chairman of Schlumberger
Technology Corporation. He was previously vice president of government and community relations for
Schlumberger Limited. He serves on several joint
industry steering committees and boards including the
corporate advisory boards of the AAPG, the Global
Climate and Energy Project at Stanford and the
Advanced Energy Consortium. Active in the community, he is on the board of directors of the Greater
Houston Partnership, Fort Bend Education Foundation
and University of Houston Energy Advisory Board. He
led the technology task group for the National
Petroleum Councils 2007 global oil and gas study
Facing the Hard Truths about Energy. Rod holds a
bachelors degree in engineering from the University of
Wisconsin and an executive MBA degree from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan
School of Management, Cambridge, USA. He joined
Schlumberger as a wireline eld engineer in 1980.

Iain Parnum is a Research Scientist at Curtin

University in Perth, Western Australia, Australia, where
he carries out research and eldwork and teaches
marine acoustics and technology. He has used Wave
Glider technology for marine environmental assessment
since 2012. Iain has an MSc degree in marine science
from the University of Wales, Bangor, and a PhD degree
in marine acoustics from Curtin University.

Brian Toelle, who joined Schlumberger in 1997, is a

Schlumberger PetroTechnical Services Advisor on
exploration and geophysics in Denver. He advises on
projects worldwide and teaches classes on shale reservoir exploration and development, geophysics and
structural geology. He has 32 years of industry experience, specializing in exploration and fully integrated
projects for Texaco and Saudi Aramco. Brian, who is a
20142015 SPE Distinguished Lecturer, earned a PhD
degree in applied geophysics from West Virginia
University, Morgantown, USA.

Wayne D. Pennington is the Interim Dean of the

College of Engineering at Michigan Technological
University in Houghton, USA. He specializes in seismic
petrophysics and provides courses on the subject
through NExT, a Schlumberger company. Before joining
the faculty at Michigan Technological University 20
years ago, Wayne was on the faculty at The University
of Texas at Austin and spent nine years with Marathon
Oil Company at their research facility in Littleton,
Colorado. He served as the rst vice president of the
SEG and as president of the American Geosciences
Institute. He received BA degrees in geology and geophysics from Princeton University, New Jersey, an MS
degree from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and
a PhD degree from the University of WisconsinMadison, USA.

Jonathan Smith, who has worked for Shell since 1985,

is Team Lead, Geomatics Operations for Shell
Exploration and Production Company in Houston. He
supervises the Shell Upstream Americas Geomatics
Operations teams in Houston and Calgary. The teams
provide surveying expertise along with project engineering and management for a wide range of geomatics projects.
Christian Tichatschke is an Exploration Manager for
Total E&P Uruguay BV. He has worked for 10 years
with the Total Group, where he has been assigned to
various positions within headquarters and operational
units. Christian, who is based in Montevideo, Uruguay,
holds a masters degree in geology from the Ludwig
Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.

Larissa Walker is a Senior Petrophysical Engineer

for Shell Appalachia Exploration in Sewickley,
Pennsylvania. She began her career in 2005 as a petrophysical engineer for Shell in Canada, gaining experience in both development and exploration activities
for unconventional reservoirs such as structured carbonate plays, basin-centered gas reservoirs, coalbed
methane and shale gas. As of 2011, her work with Shell
Appalachia has focused on developing Marcellus Shale
resources. Larissa has a BASc degree (Hons) in geological engineering from the University of Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada.
An asterisk (*) denotes a mark of Schlumberger.
A dagger () denotes a mark of Liquid Robotics, Inc.

Coming in Oileld Review

Whipstock Systems. Sidetracking is a common
strategy for bypassing downhole obstructions, drilling
new wellbores in search of more productive zones or
drilling lateral wells to maximize wellbore exposure.
Whipstocks have long been used for sidetracking in
cased holes. Advances in whipstock technology now
give operators more exibility in sidetracking both
cased and openhole wellbores.

Formation Testing. Well test results weigh heavily

in operator decisions for asset development. A new
compact formation test system with bidirectional,
real-time communication and control is helping operators make choices based on more high-quality data
than was previously available using traditional formation test technology.
Global Climate and Energy Project. Universities
play a vital role in energy research and development.
Schlumberger is a founding sponsor of the Global
Climate and Energy Project, a unique industry and
academia partnership housed at Stanford University
and formed to support step-out research into new
technologies to provide affordable energy and reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.

52

High-Denition Spectroscopy Logging. Neutron

capture spectroscopy logging measures relative
elemental yields, which can then be converted to
concentrations of minerals commonly found in hydrocarbon reservoirs. Dry-weight concentration data are
further processed to determine in situ mineralogy,
lithology and geochemical stratigraphy. A new tool
measures, with higher resolution and greater accuracy, more elements than previous generation tools
were able to.

Oileld Review

NEW BOOKS

involved, the gruelling expeditions

undertaken, and the rivalries between
nations as they raced to chart the
continent and claim possession
of it. . . . [E]xcellent account.
Opening Up an Empty Quarter, The Economist
(June 15, 2013), http://www.economist.com/news/
books-and-arts/21579428-opening-up-emptyquarter-south-park (accessed July 16, 2013).

Antarctica: A Biography
David Day
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016 USA
2013. 624 pages. US$ 34.95
ISBN: 978-0-199-86145-3

David Day discusses the history of

Antarctica by focusing on explorer
biographies, whaling and sealing
expeditions, the rivalries between
nations to claim the land and the
eventual adoption of the Antarctic
Treaty, which established Antarctica
as a cooperative base for scientic
discovery.
Contents:
1770s
17801820
18211838
18391843
18431895
18951906
19071912
19121918
19191926
19261928
19291930
19311933
19341936
19371938
19391941
19411945
19451947
19481951
19521956
19571960
19612012
Epilogue, Endnotes, Bibliography,
Index
Solid as a block of Antarctic ice
itself . . . [Days] book draws on ve
years of meticulous research to tell
the story of human endeavour in
Antarctica. . . . It paints a poignant
biographical picture of the characters

Winter 2013/2014

Day has done a remarkable job of

collating information from rich and
varied international sources. He
draws from original accounts, newspaper articles, [and] the recently
released papers of US naval ofcer
and polar explorer Richard Byrd. . . .
[T]hanks to Day, the intrigues and
posturing that saturate the history of
this distant land have now been
exposed.
The dramas, played out in secret
memoirs and in published statements
in newspapers, give the book a slow,
even glacial, pace at times.
Stump E: Frozen Assets, Nature 493, no. 7433
(January 24, 2013): 478479.

Day weaves a masterly tale of

expeditions and their leaders in this
hugely detailed and well-researched
tome. There are some absolute gems
with new insights for even the most
avid readers on the subject.
Turney C: Book Review, Times Higher
Education (February 21, 2013), http://www.
timeshighereducation.co.uk/books/antarctica-abiography-by-david-day/2001714.article (accessed
July 18, 2013).

The author looks at the lives of ve

scientistsCharles Darwin, William
Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling,
Fred Hoyle and Albert Einsteinto
show that even great minds make major
mistakes. The book goes on to explore
how their errors are a part of the fabric
of scientic discovery.
Contents:
Mistakes and Blunders
The Origin
Yea, All Which It Inherit,
Shall Dissolve
How Old Is the Earth?
Certainty Generally Is Illusion
Interpreter of Life
Whose DNA Is It Anyway?
B for Big Bang
The Same Throughout Eternity?
The Biggest Blunder
Out of Empty Space
Coda
Notes, Bibliography, Index
Livio brings the care of a historian
to his nimble narratives, avoiding
heroic clichs.
Hes less adept at explaining why
these great scientists made their
mistakes, too often trotting out pop
psychology to demonstrate why
people stubbornly cling to ideas even
when they see evidence to the contrary. The psychology of bad science
is a fascinating topic, but it requires a
broader look at how the entire scientic community operates. Five scientistsno matter how greatcannot
shoulder that load.
Zimmer C: The Genius of Getting It Wrong,
The New York Times (June 7, 2013), http://www.
nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/brilliantblunders-by-mario-livio.html (accessed
June 14, 2013).

Brilliant Blunders: From

Darwin to Einstein
Colossal Mistakes by Great
Scientists That Changed
Our Understanding of Life
and the Universe
Mario Livio
Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10020 USA
2013. 352 pages. US$ 26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4391-9236-8

Readers with dim memories of

high school physics may sometimes
grapple for comprehension, despite
Livios heuristic talents. But stick with
him. . . . Thanks to Livio, such brilliant
blunders as Einsteins will help guide
our way through the intellectual as
well as the physical cosmos.
Dunlap J: Book Review, Washington
Independent Review of Books (June 12, 2013),
http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.
com/bookreview/brilliant-blunders-from-darwinto-einsteincolossal-mistakes-by-great-scient
(accessed June 18, 2013).

The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and

the Search for the Impossible
Lance Fortnow
Princeton University Press
41 William Street
Princeton, New Jersey 08540 USA
2013. 192 pages. US$ 26.95
ISBN: 978-0-691-15649-1

An unsolved problem in computer

science, P versus NP, or P-NP, asks
whether every problem that can be
veried by a computer can also be
solved by a computer. The author
explores the history of the P-NP problem, gives examples of the problem in a
variety of disciplines, including economics, physics and biology, and describes
the benets and challenges of the
problem.
Contents:
The Golden Ticket
The Beautiful World
P and NP
The Hardest Problems in NP
The Prehistory of P versus NP
Dealing with Hardness
Proving P NP
Secrets
Quantum
The Future
Chapter Notes and Sources, Index
Fortnows book . . . bills itself as a
primer for the general reader, though
you will likely regret not having
paid slightly more attention during
calculus class.
Nazaryan A: A Most Profound Math Problem,
The New Yorker (May 2, 2013), http://www.
newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/
05/a-most-profound-math-problem.html
(accessed July 1, 2013).

Fortnow effectively initiates

readers into the seductive mystery and
importance of P and NP problems.
Book Review, Publishers Weekly (January 28,
2013), http://publishersweekly.com/978-0-69115649-1 (accessed June 18, 2013).

53

DEFINING DIRECTIONAL DRILLING

The Art of Controlling

Wellbore Trajectory
Kate Mantle
Directional Drilling Advisor

90

180

Principles of Directional Drilling

Most directional wells begin as vertical wellbores. At a designated depth,
known as the kickoff point (KOP), the directional driller deects the well
path by increasing well inclination to begin the build section. Surveys taken
during the drilling process indicate the direction of the bit and the toolface,
or orientation of the measurement sensors in the well. The directional
driller constantly monitors these measurements and adjusts the trajectory
of the wellbore as needed to intercept the next target along the well path.

270

The practice of directional drilling traces its roots to the 1920s, when
basic wellbore surveying methods were introduced. These methods
alerted drillers to the fact that supposedly vertical wells were actually
deflecting in unwanted directions. To combat this deviation, drillers
devised techniques to keep the well path as vertical as possible. The
same techniques were later employed to deliberately deflect the well
path to intersect hard-to-access reserves.
The rst intentionally drilled directional wells provided remedial solutions to drilling problems: straightening crooked wellbores, sidetracking
around stuck pipe and drilling relief wells to kill blowouts (below). Directional
drillers used rudimentary survey instruments to orient the wellbore. By the
1930s, a controlled directional well was drilled in Huntington Beach,
California, USA, from an onshore location to target offshore oil sands.
Today, operators use sophisticated drilling assemblies to drill complex
geologic structures identied from 3D seismic data. Previously unreachable
reserves have become accessible and economical to produce.
Directional drilling includes three main specialized applications:
extended-reach drilling (ERD), multilateral drilling and short-radius drilling.
Operators have used ERD to access offshore reservoirs from land locations,
sometimes eliminating the need for a platform. As of 2013, the worlds longest
ERD well is the 12,345-m [40,502-ft] well drilled from Sakhalin Island, Russia,
to the offshore Odoptu eld. Multilateral drilling helps increase wellbore contact with hydrocarbon-producing zones by branching multiple extensions off
a single borehole. The rst multilateral well was drilled in 1953 at Bashkiria
eld, Bashkortostan Republic, Russia. The main borehole had nine lateral
branches that increased penetration of the pay zone by 5.5 times and production by 17-fold, and cost only 1.5 times that of a conventional well. Shortradius drilling produces wells with a curve of 44-m [144-ft] radius or smaller.

Initially, directional drilling involved a simple rotary bottomhole assembly (BHA) and the manipulation of parameters such as weight on bit (WOB),
rotary speed and BHA geometry to achieve a desired trajectory. Changes in
BHA stiffness, stabilizer placement and gauge, rotary speed, WOB, hole
diameter, hole angle and formation characteristics all affect the directional
capability and drilling efciency of a BHA.
By varying stabilizer placement in the drillstring, directional drillers can
alter side forces acting on the bit and the BHA, causing it to increase, maintain or decrease inclination, commonly referred to as building, holding or
dropping angle, respectively (below).
To build angle, the directional driller uses a BHA with a full gauge near-bit
stabilizer, another stabilizer between 15 to 27 m [50 to 90 ft] above the
rst and a third stabilizer about 9 m [30 ft] above the second. This BHA
acts as a fulcrum, exerting a positive side force at the bit.
To hold angle, the directional driller uses a BHA with 3 to 5 stabilizers,
placed about 9 m apart. This packed BHA is designed to exert no net side force.
To drop angle, the directional driller uses a BHA with the rst stabilizer
9 to 27 m behind the bit. This BHA acts as a pendulum, exerting a negative
side force at the bit.
During well planning, the directional driller must consider several factors to determine the required trajectory, particularly dogleg severity
(DLS)the rate of change in wellbore trajectory, measured in degrees per
30 m [100 ft]as well as the capabilities of the BHA, drillstring, logging
tools and casing to pass through the doglegs. Drilling limitations include rig
specications such as maximum torque and pressure available from surface
systems. Geologic features such as faults or formation changes need to be
Fulcrum Assembly

Pendulum Assembly
Stabilizer

Sidetracking

Multiple wellbores

Offshore targets

Relief well

Horizontal well

> Directional drilling applications. Reservoirs that are not readily accessible
from available surface locations can be exploited through directional drilling.
Oileld Review Winter 2013/2014: 25, no. 4.
Copyright 2014 Schlumberger.
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Steven Hough, Stonehouse, England;
and Richard Hawkins, Midland, Texas, USA.

54

Near-bit stabilizer

ing
ild e
Bu angl

g
pin
op gle
r
D an

> Using the BHA to change angle. Bending of the pipe above a bit
inuences borehole deviation. Through strategic placement of drill collars
and stabilizers, the directional driller can increase or decrease exibility
and bowing of the BHA to build or drop angle.

Oileld Review

carefully considered; for example, very soft formations may limit build rates,
and formation dip may cause a bit to walk, or drift laterally. Local knowledge of drilling behavior enables the directional driller to derive the correct
lead angle needed to intercept the target.
The skill of the directional driller lies in projecting ahead, estimating
the spatial position of the bit and, based on the specic circumstances,
deciding what course to take to intercept the target or targets. In the early
days of directional drilling, a manual slide rule device was used to calculate
the toolface angle required to drill from the last survey station to a target.
Today, computer programs perform the same function.

Kickoff p

Hybrid rota
ry st
Conventiona eerable system
l rotary stee
rable system
oint

Directional Drilling Operations

To steer a well to its target, directional drillers employ the following techniques:
JettingA jetting assembly provides directional capability while drilling through loose or unconsolidated formations. Jetting bits are roller cone
bits with either a large extended nozzle in place of one of the cones, or with
one large nozzle and two small nozzles. The large nozzle provides the high
side reference, and the well path is deected by alternately sliding or rotating the drillstring.
NudgingThis technique is often used in tophole sections, where several wellbores in close proximity to one another can pose magnetic interference issues and increase the risk of collision with other wellbores. The well
path is nudged, or deected, from vertical to pass the hazardthen steered
back to vertical when the hazard has been passed.
Kicking offDiverting a well path from one trajectory to another is
called kicking off. The number of KOPs in a single well path depends on the
complexity of the planned trajectory.
SidetrackingDeecting a well path from an existing wellbore, or sidetracking, is performed for a variety of reasons such as avoiding a well collapse, a zone of instability or a section of previously drilled wellbore
containing unretrieved sh (junk or tools left in the well). This technique is
also used to initiate multilateral drilling operations. Operators also drill vertical pilot holes to conrm reservoir true vertical depth (TVD), then sidetrack horizontally to maximize reservoir exposure. They sometimes
sidetrack wells when expected targets are not encountered.
Whipstock operationsA whipstock is a wedge-shaped steel tool
deployed downhole to mechanically alter the well path. The whipstock is
oriented to deect the bit from the original borehole at a slight angle and in
the direction of the desired azimuth for the sidetrack. It can be used in
cased or open holes.
GeosteeringGeosteering uses formation evaluation data obtained
while drillingprimarily through measurements-while-drilling (MWD) or
logging-while-drilling (LWD) sensorsto provide real-time input for steering decisions in horizontal and high-angle wells. Recent improvements in
telemetry allow MWD and LWD data to be transmitted faster and with
greater data density than in the past, greatly increasing the accuracy with
which the well trajectory can be controlled.

can control the wellbore trajectory and steer it in the desired direction. In
rotating mode, the drilling rigs rotary table or its topdrive rotates the entire
drillstring to transmit power to the bit. By contrast, in sliding mode, the bend
and bit are rst oriented in the desired direction, then the downhole mud
motor alone powers the bit, with no rotation of the drillstring above the bit.
Drilling motors and rotary steerable systems (RSSs) presented directional drillers with an efcient way to steer wellsand to do so with greater
accuracy. The RSS enables wells to be drilled directionally while the drillstring continuously rotates. The advantages of this method are improved
well cleaning through rotation, a smoother wellbore and more accurate
directional control. To steer the RSS, the directional driller transmits commands from the surface using pressure uctuations in the mud column.
Today, hybrid RSSs use pads inside the tool to push against an internal
sleeve that pivots and points the bit in the desired direction. These tools can
deliver DLS of up to 18/30 m. Hybrid RSS tools enable directional drillers
to kick off from vertical at greater depths and land, or transition the well to
horizontal, more quickly than was previously possible. This technique
increases wellbore exposure to the reservoir (above).
Advanced steering systems use a system-matched mud motor in combination with an RSS tool below it. This BHA design enables higher revolutions per minute at the bit, enhanced steering control and increased rate
of penetration.

Advances in Directional Drilling

The development of reliable mud motors provided an important advance in
directional drilling technology. Wellbore direction could then be controlled
using a bent motor housing, which was oriented to point the drill bit in the
desired direction. Mud motors use the mud pumped through a rotor and stator
assembly to turn the bit without rotating the drillstring from the surface. By
alternating intervals of rotating mode and sliding mode, the directional driller

Future Developments
The introduction of fully automated downhole control systems is likely
within the near future. Such advances, however, do not herald the removal
of directional drillers from the process; their experience will always be
needed to oversee the full scope of directional drilling operations. The
future promises to be fast moving and technologically groundbreaking for
this highly specialized niche within the oil and gas industry.

Winter 2013/2014

Deeper
kickoff
p

oint
Landing

point
TD

Landing

point

TD

> Directional capabilities. A hybrid system lets the operator kick off from
greater depths, yet land sooner in the reservoir zone than was possible with
conventional rotary steerable systems.

55

Oileld Review Annual IndexVolume 25

ARTICLES
Blowing in the Solar Wind:
Sun Spots, Solar Cycles and
Life on Earth
Arsentiev A, Hathaway DH and
Lessard RW.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 4860.

Bridging the Talent Gap

Al-Abdulbaqi S, Alobaydan A, Chhibber R,
Jamaluddin A, Murphy L, Venugopal K
and Johnson JD.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 413.

Casing Corrosion Measurement to

Extend Asset Life
Abdallah D, Fahim M, Al-Hendi K,
Al-Muhailan M, Jawale R, Al-Khalaf AA,
Al-Kindi Z, Al-Kuait AS, Al-Qahtani HB,
Al-Yateem KS, Asrar N, Aziz SA,
Kohring JJ, Benslimani A, Fituri MA
and Sengul M.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 1831.

Core Truth in Formation Evaluation

Andersen MA, Duncan B and McLin R.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 1625.

Developments in Full Azimuth

Marine Seismic Imaging
Brice T, Buia M, Cooke A, Hill D, Palmer E,
Khaled N, Tchikanha S, Zamboni E,
Kotochigov E and Moldoveanu N.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 4255.

Drilling Through Ice and

into the Past
Albert MR and Hargreaves G.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 415.

Formation Density from a Cloud,

While Drilling

A New Platform for Offshore

Exploration and Production
Carragher P, Hine G, Legh-Smith P,
Mayville J, Pai S, Parnum I, Shone P,
Smith J and Tichatschke C.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 4050.

Rotary Sidewall Coring

Size Matters
Agarwal A, Laronga R and Walker L.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 3039.

Seeking the Sweet Spot:

Reservoir and Completion Quality
in Organic Shales

Ayan C, Corre P-Y, Firinu M, Garcia G,

Kristensen MR, OKeefe M, Pfeiffer T,
Tevis C, Zappalorto L and Zeybek M.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 3241.

56

Williamson D.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 6364.

Dening Production Logging:

Principles of Production Logging

Nolen-Hoeksema R.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 5152.

Asiri KS, Atwi MA, Jimnez Bueno O,

Lecerf B, Pea A, Lesko T, Mueller F,
Pereira AZI and Tellez Cisneros F.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 417.

Mukerji P.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 6364.

Stimulation Design for

Unconventional Resources

Antarctica: A Biography

Ajayi B, Aso II, Terry IJ Jr, Walker K,

Wutherich K, Caplan J, Gerdom DW,
Clark BD, Ganguly U, Li X, Xu Y, Yang H,
Liu H, Luo Y and Waters G.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 3446.

Atmosphere, Clouds, and Climate

Structural Steering
A Path to Productivity
Amer A, Chinellato F, Collins S,
Denichou J-M, Dubourg I, Grifths R,
Koepsell R, Lyngra S, Marza P, Murray D
and Roberts I.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 1431.

Andersen MA.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 1.

New Dimensions in Wireline

Formation Testing

Dening Drilling Fluids: Drilling

Fluid Basics

Stimulating Naturally Fractured

Carbonate Reservoirs

Geomagnetic Referencing
The Real-Time Compass for
Directional Drillers

Aviles I, Baihly J and Liu GH.

Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 2633.

Mantle K.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 5455.

Glaser KS, Miller CK, Johnson GM,

Toelle B, Kleinberg RL, Miller P and
Pennington WD.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 1629.

EDITORIALS

Multistage Stimulation in
Liquid-Rich Unconventional
Formations

Dening Directional Drilling:

The Art of Controlling Wellbore
Trajectory

Dening Hydraulic Fracturing:

Elements of Hydraulic Fracturing

Allioli F, Cretoiu V, Mauborgne M-L,

Evans M, Grifths R, Haranger F, Stoller C,
Murray D and Reichel N.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 415.

Buchanan A, Finn CA, Love JJ,

Worthington EW, Lawson F, Maus S,
Okewunmi S and Poedjono B.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 3247.

DEFININGINTRODUCING
BASIC CONCEPTS OF THE
E&P INDUSTRY

Core Analysis: Combining Expertise

for Insight into the Reservoir

Evolving Revolution

NEW BOOKS
Day D.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 53.
Randall D.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 62.

Fundamentals of Condensed Matter

and Crystalline Physics
Sidebottom DL.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 50.

Global Environment: Water, Air,

and Geochemical Cycles,
Second Edition
Berner EK and Berner RA.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 60.

The Golden Ticket: P, NP, and the

Search for the Impossible
Fortnow L.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 53.

The Great Fossil Enigma: The

Search for the Conodont Animal
Knell SJ.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 50.

Great Inventions That Changed

the World
Wei J.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 61.

Henri Poincar: A Scientic

Biography
Gray J.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 61.

Interop: The Promise and Perils of

Highly Interconnected Systems
Palfrey J and Gasser U.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 62.

Brilliant Blunders: From Darwin to

EinsteinColossal Mistakes by
Great Scientists That Changed
Our Understanding of Life and
the Universe

Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy

of a Scientic Rebel

Livio M.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 53.

Maverick Genius: The Pioneering

Odyssey of Freeman Dyson

Diamondoid Molecules: With

Applications in Biomedicine,
Materials Science, Nanotechnology
& Petroleum Science
Mansoori GA, de Araujo PLB and
de Araujo ES.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 49.

MacGregor C.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 1.

Digital Wars: Apple, Google,

Microsoft and the Battle for
the Internet

Geomagnetic Referencing
for Well Placement

Arthur C.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 61.

Buchanan A.
Vol. 25, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 1.

Earthmasters: The Dawn of the

Age of Climate Engineering

Unconventional Reservoir
Sweet Spots from Geophysics

Hamilton C.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 62.

Monk D.
Vol. 25, no. 4 (Winter 2013/2014): 1.

The Earthquake Observers: Disaster

Science from Lisbon to Richter

Sagan D (ed).
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 59.

Schewe PF.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 49.

The Million Death Quake: The

Science of Predicting Earths
Deadliest Natural Disaster
Musson R.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 59.

Reverse Innovation: Create Far

from Home, Win Everywhere
Govindarajan V and Trimble C.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 60.

Seismic Imaging and Inversion:

Application of Linear Inverse Theory
Stolt RH and Weglein AB.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 60.

Solved Problems in Geophysics

Buforn E, Pro C and Udas A.
Vol. 25, no. 1 (Spring 2013): 60.

Coen DR.
Vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 50.

Oileld Review

Th

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as

Oilfield Glossary
Available in English and Spanish, the Oilfield Glossary is a rich accumulation of more than 5,800 definitions from
18 industry disciplines. Technical experts have reviewed each definition; photographs, videos and illustrations
enhance many entries. See the Oilfield Glossary at http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/.

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