Page 6: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Dec/Jan 2015)

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For OE December 2015. Section: Voices. Words: 895

As the industry continues to push the boundaries with deepwater technologies, an area I see ripe for advancement is Voices enhanced completion techniques for low permeability reservoirs. At BHP

Billiton, we are exploring ways that we

Back to the future. Despite the current down market, OE asked: can apply the complex hydraulic frac- turing techniques used in our onshore unconventional plays to greatly improve the productivity of lower quality rock

What do you think will be the biggest in some of the new deepwater plays. breakthroughs next 1-2 years?

Success would help unlock new oppor- tunities across the Gulf of Mexico, both in the US and Mexico, much like what we have seen in the Lower 48 and would

The realization that we need to

Whilst sustained low oil help lower the economic threshold for act now to kill complexity will prices will keep capital development.

be the biggest breakthrough and operational spend

David Purvis, Vice President, for the future survival of the down, production must

Engineering, BHP Billiton Petroleum industry. We have systemati- be maintained or even cally added layer upon layer of increased to cover complexity and this is the core costs – placing assets reason why projects have regularly failed to stay under strain. Survival requires more than within budgets and timetables. just cutting costs. Producers need to In the current

At US$50/bbl there is no margin, and worse, it adapt to smarter ways of working. Key to environment is below internal cost level. In reality, it is unsus- this will be the adoption of online monitor- drilling contrac- tainable and the industry will not be saved even if ing technologies to gather ? eld data and tors and service the oil price picks up. We must direct our ingenuity deliver it to a centralized decision making companies are towards less complexity – a creation of a ‘smarter’ unit. These systems have the proven under immense space. This calls for collaboration across the value potential to transform operational deci- pressure from chain – from pore to pipeline, from feasibility to sion making quality – saving money and clients to cut costs by bringing e