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Offshore Northern Seas or ONS as it's more commonly known in Stavanger is one of my personal favourite events in the calendar. Occurring every two years, ONS is a must attend for anyone working in the oil industry in Europe and beyond. The last time I visited I could not help but be impressed by the spirit of innovation and the positive buzz around Stavanger for the duration of the show. Indeed, it is so popular that many locals leave the city for vacations and rent out their houses to visiting oil professionals in order to accommodate all the exhibitors and delegates who travel to the city for the show.

This year's event does not show any signs of being hit by the depressed oil price with 1,392 exhibitors confirmed and an additional conference arena being added this year. So why is it that the world's oil and gas industry home in on this event as a must attend in the calendar? Here are four reasons it should be on your agenda.

Topics: oil & gas, Events, Upstream

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A Tracerco Diagnostics™ FCCU study allows refiners to identify operational and mechanical issues while the Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit is still online. The use of Tracerco’s sophisticated scanning and tracer technologies allows refiners to improve productivity, maximise throughput, and plan any maintenance effectively. The insight provided from the study will lead to greater unit efficiency and higher profitability across the units run cycle. In this blog post we will discuss the top three questions we are asked with regard to a Tracerco Diagnostics™ FCCU study. 

Topics: plant processing, Process Diagnostics, tracerco diagnostics, fcc unit, fccu unit refinery, FCCU, fcc diagnostics, fccu studies, fcc riser, fcc troubleshooting, fcc unit process, fluid catalytic cracking diagnostics, fluid catalytic cracking services, fluid catalytic cracking unit, fcc cracking, fcc process

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It's a nightmare scenario no one wants... You run a PIG and it becomes stuck in the line. You now have an unsuccessful pigging campaign, a subsea pipeline blockage, and a missing PIG to deal with.

The cost of a shutdown due to a PIG stuck in a subsea pipeline can run into tens of millions in lost production, which is why it is absolutely critical to remedy the situation as quickly as possible. In this post we will examine the first step to remedying a blocked subsea pipeline due to a stuck PIG; that is locating the stuck PIG.

Topics: pipeline inspection, subsea flowlines, Flow assurance, Subsea Technology, pipe bundles, pipe in pipe, Explorer, scanning technology, Flowlines, subsea pipelines, pipeline blockage, pigging, stuck pig

Detecting and identifying small leaks in heat exchangers can be an extremely difficult and time consuming task for many operators and plant personnel. Product quality, process efficiency and the time and cost associated with maintenance and potential shutdowns caused by a leaking vessel can have a significant and detrimental impact on production and process operating margins.   

Topics: optimising plant processing, chemical tracers, Process Diagnostics, exchanger, Gamma Scanning, Tru-Scan, leak testing, plant performance, heat exchangers, leaking exchangers, small leaks

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In the challenging market conditions that we face today, reducing lift costs is paramount. One area where this can be achieved is through stimulation optimisation, ensuring reduce spend on stimulation activities and maximum  oil or gas flow for a particular field. 

In this post we examine five steps to achieving savings of as much as 20% in reservoir stimulation costs by using accurate flow data to optimise stage stimulation in individual wells and development of unconventional fields.

This is based on our vast experience across numerous fields and the insights and figures are taken from real projects conducted over the last few years.

 

Topics: unconventional wells, reservoir, reservoir analysis, reservoir characterisation, drilling, technology enabling cost savings, reservoir stimulation

Tracerco is tailoring our offering to meet the needs and challenges of our customers with five brand new tracer labs to analyse reservoir samples.

Topics: Tracerco innovations, chemical tracers, unconventional wells, reservoir, fracking, controlled release, flow profiling, reservoir analysis, tracer analysis, interwell

There are a number of problems that can cause a loss of efficiency and lead to loss of production in a distillation column, including tray damage, flooding, weeping, and foaming. Gamma scan technology available from Tracerco can be utilised to locate the origin and/or severity of these problems. A Tru-Scan™ across the active area of a fractionation tray can provide hydraulic conditions and/or mechanical status of the active area, such as weeping and tray froth heights. FrothView™, a new methodology developed by Tracerco, provides a quantitative analysis of tray capacity as the total froth height on a tray that is measured using Tracerco's new detector technology and software interpretation.

In this latest blog post we will discuss how a Tru-Scan™ and FrothView™ technology was used to provide the % tray space to show the amount or percentage of available tray spacing that is occupied by froth or aerated liquid. Knowledge of the actual process conditions inside a vessel, provides engineers with the ability to make process adjustments accordingly. 

Topics: Process Diagnostics, Gamma Scanning, Tray Capacity, Tru-Scan, Column Performance, FrothView

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In this blog post we will highlight and discuss the top five questions we are asked with regard to our controlled release tracer technology.  

Topics: reservoir, controlled release, reservoir analysis, reservoir characterisation, fluid inflow

Topics: pipeline inspection, pipeline integrity, Flowlines, Asset Integrity, Subsea Technologies, new technology

The oil and gas industry is faced with difficult trading times and low oil prices are predicted to continue. Operators and service companies are faced with lower margins and less capital available when making decisions on reservoir production strategies. Working with reduced resource is difficult enough, but production targets still must be met.

In order to meet these challenges a number of different innovative technologies have been developed and tested in the field that assist with reservoir production optimisation at reduced costs when compared to conventional methods. As an example, the use of speciality chemical technologies can eliminate the need to carry out costly production logging and gain critical data on fluid flow which in turn can be used to optimise development plans.

The technologies can measure clean out efficiency, pinpoint areas of fluid flow, and ultimately log production rates from various zones. All of this data can be obtained throuhg reservoir tracers without the need for intervention the cost of which can run into the hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars when looking at a sub-sea development. What’s more, this data can be taken on-stream and over several years, saving on rig time as the technology is integrated  down hole when running the lower completion into the well.

Below we will examine the steps you can take applying this alternative technology to make significant savings on rig time.

Topics: reservoir characterisation, technology enabling cost savings, fluid inflow, reservoir production modeling, tracers