s an energy technology company, Baker Hughes’ portfolio spans across oil and gas, alternative and renewable energy, as well as other industrial sectors, making it well positioned to respond to various market opportunities.

Lorenzo Simonelli, chairman and CEO of Baker Hughes, recently provided E&P Plus with an exclusive video interview in which he shared his views on the way forward for oilfield service companies in a post-pandemic future.

In addition, the Q&A below delves into even more details on Baker Hughes’ plans and strategies presently and looking ahead.

he holy grail of optimizing well completions is the ability to design in real time a hydraulic fracturing operation. Slowly fading are the days of “pump and pray,” replaced in part by the technological leaps made in the collection and analysis of millions of datapoints. With these datapoints, it is now possible to recreate the subsurface to better visualize the movement of fluid, the length of fractures and more.

With the commercialization of sealed wellbore pressure monitoring (SWPM), completions engineers can monitor fracture growth and the fluid volumes between treated wells by tracking the pressure response in a nonperforated wellbore. As fractures approach the sealed wellbore, a pressure response is generated. Engineers are able to use the response to determine fluid volumes quickly using pressure gauges mounted at the surface.

dditive manufacturing (AM) involves the technologies that build 3D objects by adding layer upon layer of material (e.g., plastic, metal or concrete), and the process involves making objects from 3D model data.

In this exclusive Q&A with E&P Plus, Andreas Graichen, group manager for digitalization and industrialization of additive manufacturing with Siemens Energy, discusses the Siemens AM Monitor—a 2020 Offshore Technology Conference Spotlight on New Technology award winner.

s the world grapples with the dreadful human cost of COVID-19, the global economy is also coming to terms with the scale of the pandemic. While the impact on oil markets was swift and dramatic, the gas and LNG sectors have also been hit hard by coronavirus.

Even before the coronavirus pandemic, oil price crash and ensuing economic upheaval, 2020 was already shaping up to be one of oversupply for global gas markets. Last year was a record year for new capacity additions, with nearly 40 MMtonnes of supply added in 2019—supply that was poised to put downward pressure on prices in 2020.

The events of early 2020 are impacting the gas market this year. The impact on gas demand was immediate as countries around the world went into lockdown. However, as restrictions loosen, demand is already showing signs of recovery.

ynamic reservoir data are a key enabler for oil and gas operators to prove reserves and maximize hydrocarbon recovery. However, traditional well testing approaches, where a job is planned, executed and interpreted in a linear fashion, can limit operators from obtaining the optimal amount of data during the well test. Furthermore, this approach is inefficient and rigid, significantly increasing the time operators spend between acquiring data and making key field development decisions.

For many decades, the linear well testing approach remained unchanged until the introduction of wireless telemetry about 10 years ago. Wireless telemetry enables acoustic data to be transmitted across downhole repeaters from the downhole gauges to surface in real time. Prior to this innovation, the only way to gather real-time data was through a wireline deployment during the drillstem test (DST), which increases risk and cost.

emote and automated drilling capabilities are nothing new for the oil and gas industry. Its roots can be traced back more than 20 years, but adoption has accelerated with the evolution of digital and machine learning technologies throughout the past decade.

Now, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote operations are playing an increasingly important role in the industry. In this exclusive video interview with E&P Plus, Paul Madero, vice president of drilling services with Baker Hughes, discusses why these technologies are so important in the oil and gas industry today.

ovel use of diverless connections in construction of a shallow subsea tieback offshore Malaysia cut costs by approximately 20% while improving safety and reducing the project’s carbon footprint. A key project component was a Stinger Deployed Diverless Connector (SDDC) developed in a partnership between AFGlobal and pipeline contractor Cortez Subsea.

Deployed as part of Vestigo Petroleum’s Tembikai Non-Associated Gas (TNAG) field development program, the project integrated new and proven technology to connect the pipeline to two flexible risers and to connect pipeline sections without the need for divers and welding. AFGlobal and Cortez Subsea developed the SDDC system to connect the pipeline to the host facility.

il and gas production and delivery to midstream refiners consumes significant amounts of energy in the form of onsite generation and utilization of equipment fueled primarily by diesel or natural gas. The costs associated with this energy routinely rank as a top LOE for operators. As producers look for options to reduce costs, energy-related LOE offers an opportunity for significant savings through conversion to electrical power or improvements to existing electrical infrastructure.

Reducing LOE can often be accomplished while achieving other benefits, such as reductions in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, improved resiliency and all-around de-risking of operations.

echnology often drives industry disruption and is a foundational element to support and react to any changes in the business. But for industries experiencing the ripple effects of disruption brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic this year, adopting advanced technologies and a digital-first strategy have become critical for many companies to merely survive.

While energy organizations were among the first to adopt digitization, Deloitte emphasized in a recent report that many are now taking the necessary next steps to embrace the power of analytics, collect and integrate troves of HSE and security (HSSE), operations, supply chain and finance data, as they recognize the opportunity to make their “$3.4 trillion asset base smarter and more efficient.”

t would be no exaggeration to say that artificial lift has made a tremendous contribution to increased production in oil fields. More than 50% of oil wells use artificial lift techniques, such as pumps and injection methods, to boost production. It is estimated that the artificial lift equipment market amounts to almost $10 billion annually, enabling $800 billion of oil production per year.

Despite these impressive results in the oil segment, artificial lift has gained relatively little traction in gas wells, both conventional and unconventional. This is largely because until now there have been no artificial lift tools that can directly induce energy into the gas to increase production and recoverability. While operators have been able to get positive results using wellhead compressors, experience has shown that these devices can accelerate liquid loading, especially in unconventional wells, due to higher critical lifting velocity and lower production fluid density within the wellbore. The result is decreasing productivity and premature abandonment.

atural gas producers along the Texas-Louisiana border will play leading roles in the upstream sector’s recovery from the depths of its 2020 market disruptions. That positive news ranks as a key takeaway from the FundamentalEdge report published Sept. 9 by data services leader Enverus.

Producers nationwide dramatically trimmed 2020 spending plans as commodity prices fell alongside dropping demand, one notable result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rig activity was cut and production declined nationwide as oversupply overtook the market, particularly in oil-directed plays. In turn, associated gas production dropped – and the so-called “dry gas plays” made up the difference as natural gas prices rose to multi-year highs this summer.

s the oil and gas industry continues to weather the storm of the downturn, South America’s upstream sector is preparing for a wave of new growth and opportunity.

Across the globe, operators have slashed capex and reduced activity after the worst price crash in decades wreaked havoc on the sector. The current state of the market has put the U.S., Europe and Africa in a dire state, offsetting a potential 2021 recovery by two or more years.

Although the outlook for the sector remains uncertain, South America is expected to lead the recovery among regions given its attractive onshore and offshore prospects, the political resolve in Guyana and Argentina’s hydrocarbon production, according to Wood Mackenzie analysts.

ugmented reality (AR) is having a transformative impact on the oil industry, especially now during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is playing an evolving role in managing critical asset malfunctions and breakdowns on remote sites while assisting in maintaining social distancing through audio/visual-based virtual communication.

Asset management

The oil industry is asset-intensive, and downtime presents major challenges. Whether on land, offshore or in deep water, remote and oftentimes hostile locations make managing assets logistically complicated. Keeping qualified staff is harder, and downtime is costly and can develop into HSEQ issues.

Alliance provides integrated, open architecture software to maximize asset potential

Halliburton and Honeywell announced a collaboration to maximize asset potential, reduce execution risk and lower the total cost of ownership for oil and gas operators. The collaboration will leverage Halliburton Landmark’s DecisionSpace 365 E&P cloud applications and the Honeywell Forge industrial analytics software to deliver insights about oil and gas assets. Together, the companies bring deep domain expertise in subsurface and surface operations with the latest digital innovations to help operators address operational efficiency, asset productivity and risk across their business. Operators will be able to maximize asset value by creating a digital twin on an integrated and open architecture that connects and models the supply chain from reservoir to point of sale. They will also be able to increase production, minimize opex/capex and reduce operational risks by streamlining processes from downhole to surface controls, including digital solutions for improved subsurface insight. Additionally, the collaboration can offer optimization of total asset and enterprise performance using real-time monitoring and remote operations.

GoExpedi, an e-commerce, supply chain and analytics company, has named Noel Connolly senior vice president of digital strategy.

The Plaza Group, an international petrochemical marketing firm, has promoted Jose Flores to executive vice president.

BCCK Holding Co., a provider of in engineering, procurement, fabrication and field construction services, has appointed Thai Pham, P.E. senior process engineer. Pham will be located in BCCK’s office in The Woodlands, Texas, and will be responsible for supporting proposals and technology developments across the company.

emand from the global community for our industry to employ a more sustainable method of providing access to energy continues to grow. While the global pandemic prompted a drastic change in the way we work, our industry was already undergoing a significant transformation. We have been working to answer the global call to action introduced by the U.N. with the Sustainable Development Goals. We have moved beyond simply meeting an expectation—we are committed to building sustainable operations across the entire E&P value chain.

Meeting this challenge requires embracing innovation and driving high performance, and doing so more safely and sustainably than in years past. Schlumberger is focused on creating technology that unlocks access to energy in this new environment. Customer centricity, digital enablement and sustainability are all elements of our strategy. We see the intersection of the three as an opportunity to steer a transformational change to our industry’s operational footprint.