n September 2020, Weatherford International named Girish Saligram the new CEO. Officially taking over a month later, Saligram heads one of the world’s largest oilfield service companies. Weatherford’s offerings include tools and systems for drilling, completions, production, formation evaluation, tubulars, interventions and abandonment.

Before joining Weatherford, Saligram served Exterran Corp. as COO and previously as president of Global Services after joining the company in 2016. Prior to Exterran, Saligram spent 20 years with GE as a business leader in industry sectors across the globe, including his last position as general manager of Downstream Products & Services with GE Oil & Gas. Prior to that, Saligram led the GE Oil & Gas Contractual Services business based in Florence, Italy. Before his eight years in the oil and gas sector, Saligram spent 12 years with GE Healthcare in engineering, services, operations and other commercial roles.

he cost of hydraulic fracturing on a tight gas or oil well in North America is the single largest item in a well’s AFE and proppant delivered is the largest single component of the fracturing invoice. PropX has developed a method to cut total delivered cost of proppant while reducing an operator’s or service company’s environmental impact.

This new method (patent pending) involves a system to store and deliver wet sand to the frac blender. Skipping the drying process after mined sand is washed saves significant energy and the CO₂, VOCs, Nox and silica dust emissions are reduced or eliminated.

n June 2020, ChampionX Corp. completed the merger of the businesses of Apergy Corp. and ChampionX Holding Inc., the former upstream energy business of Nalco Champion. Apergy then changed its name to ChampionX Corp. Now ChampionX has a team of nearly 7,000 people globally, and the company offers chemical, artificial lift, drilling and digital technologies for the reservoir, production, midstream and water treatment markets.

“The creation of ChampionX through the merger of Apergy and the Nalco Champion upstream chemicals business has been transformative and a complementary combination in strategic, operational and financial dimensions,” President and CEO Soma Somasundaram told E&P Plus. “Our combination created a global leader in production optimization and an essential player in the oil and gas market with a strong portfolio, global customer base and footprint, and strong financial profile.”

ew research from DNV GL reinforces the message that pressure on the global oil and gas industry to decarbonize its value chain to maintain its social license to operate will continue to increase in a rapidly changing world.

The 2020 Energy Transition Outlook estimates that fossil fuels will account for 74% of world energy-related CO₂ emissions in the mid-century and more than 80% of combined emissions of CO₂ and methane (measured as CO₂ equivalents). While global energy-related emissions will be roughly halved between 2018 and 2050, emissions from the entire oil and gas value chain will fall by a third.

he U.S. oil, gas and chemicals (OG&C) industry brought the country to an era of energy security on the back of its nearly 1.5 million-strong workforce. This talent enabled the upstream shale boom and downstream energy renaissance in the country, and the industry in turn rewarded its workforce generously with large paychecks. In fact, the U.S. energy and utility sector had the highest median salary of any industry in the S&P 500 in 2018.

However, supply from this boom started running ahead of oil demand. The result? Oil started its longest and deepest downturn in 2014, and the growth narrative changed into mass layoffs of about 200,000 employees between 2014 and 2016. The COVID-19-led lockdowns and the resulting oil price crash to negative levels exacerbated the situation, leading to the fastest layoffs in the industry: about 107,000 workers were laid off between March and August 2020.

xpert knowledge resides in individuals, but data belong to everyone. The petroleum industry is adopting a more integrated team approach to well planning and drilling, with software technology bringing engineering and geoscience closer together for better well trajectory designs. The ability to integrate all available geological and geophysical (G&G) data and related interpretations, and also identify the locations and paths of planned and existing wells, optimizes well planning in unconventional and fractured reservoirs.

A collaborative team of technical experts with access to all relevant data can provide benefits in terms of safety, efficiency and delivery cycle times, and help maximize the project’s return on investment. Software advances that support the integration of engineering planning and geoscience data will assist these new collaborative teams to function effectively.

he oil and gas industry is facing an unprecedented challenge to operate more efficiently and sustainably than ever before. The industry will be unable to meet this challenge without using disruptive technological innovations. More specifically, the well construction domain needs to transform and can do so by leveraging intelligent and autonomous systems.

An autonomous and self-steering bottomhole assembly (BHA) that is supported via a fully integrated data architecture eliminates siloed and independent workflows and harmonizes all aspects of well construction operations. The end result is an autonomous system that can drill wells for any field, rig or trajectory in the most efficient and consistent manner possible. Through increased efficiency and consistency, operators can deliver better drilling outcomes and economics, which enables optimal equipment and power utilization, minimized HSE risks and a reduction of the carbon footprint.

he evolution of frac plugs has been a key enabler in the economic development of unconventional reservoirs in the U.S., according to John Ray, vice president of completions with Innovex Downhole Solutions.

“The industry has experimented with a variety of different completion technologies over the last 10 years, but we are firm believers that frac plugs are the simplest, most robust way to complete horizontal wells.”

here are a variety of triggers that can lead to surface and underground blowouts on oil and gas wells. Drilling and workover operations that exhibit a compromised hydrostatic barrier can permit formation fluids to come to surface. Additionally, a surface barrier may fail on a production well. In both cases, these events could lead to a surface blowout.

On the other hand, underground blowouts can happen if there is formation flow from a high-pressure reservoir to a formation with lower integrity. This is typically the result of some type of downhole failure.

A particularly severe event can occur if loss of well control barriers follows. The crucial factor in the ability to cap a surface blowout, or reenter and concentrically kill an underground blowout, is the well control specialist’s ability to gain access to the wellhead.

he Marine Well Containment Co. (MWCC), which was established in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, has designed a comprehensive emergency response program to contain compromised deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM). In an exclusive interview with E&P Plus, MWCC CEO David Nickerson discussed how the company remained continuously ready to respond to a deepwater well control incident in the GoM amid a global pandemic and higher than average tropical storm activity.

volution is underfoot in the 160-year-old oil and gas industry. It’s a slow change spurred on by digitalization, and the efficiencies and opportunities it creates, as well as a call to action for our climate. The energy sector is responding by turning its attention toward a sustainable future.

Vessel-deployed subsea wellhead cutting system to reduce carbon emissions

Baker Hughes has released its Terminator vessel-deployed subsea wellhead cutting system. The system can reduce fuel consumption with its 100-hp motor and is also smaller and lighter compared to the original 1,000-hp abrasive water cutting system typically used on similar types of vessel-based operations. The Terminator technology affirms Baker Hughes’ commitment to energy transition by helping customers decarbonize oil and gas operations. Using a mechanical wellhead removal method, the system has already proven its capabilities by successfully cutting a subsea wellhead from an abandoned exploration well owned by Wintershall DEA in Norway. Baker Hughes worked with Wintershall DEA to cut the subsea wellhead from an abandoned exploration well in 360-m water depth in only 35 minutes. By comparison, alternative abrasive cutting methods could take as long as 5 to 6 hours for the cut alone. The Terminator system can be deployed from a vessel and uses a mechanical cutter, rather than water jet cutting methods of conventional systems, to eliminate associated risks with high pressures.

he Midland Basin region of the eastern Permian Basin has seen a steady amount of new E&P since 2011.

The Midland Basin underlies an area approximately 250 miles wide and 300 miles long, and it includes the West Texas counties of Borden, Dawson, Martin, Midland, Upton, Reagan, Glasscock and portions of Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ector, Terry, Lynn Howard and Irion counties.

The Midland Basin is bounded to the east by the Eastern Shelf through a series of north-south trending fault segments, to the north by the Northwest Shelf and to the west by uplifted areas of the Central Basin Platform. Southward, Midland Basin formations thin out into the Ozona Arch, an extension of the Central Basin Platform, which separates the Delaware and Midland basins.

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istorically, there has been a correlation between rig counts and oil prices driving capital spending in the upstream sector of the energy industry. Likewise, this has typically been an indicator for the performance of the oilfield services (OFS) sector as well.

The onset of 2020 began with an active rig count of 796, down from the peak of 1,075 in January 2019. Post-COVID-19, the rig count declined to 247 and has since rebounded slightly to 269. Pre-COVID-19, the disconnect between rig counts and oil prices was evidenced by the change from 2019 to 2020. Post-COVID-19, the lowest WTI closing price was $16.94/bbl; however, the WTI crude price has since rebounded from historic lows to hover at approximately $40/bbl.