Exploration Tools and Methods

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Из курса от партнера Duke University

Oil & Gas Industry Operations and Markets

1044 оценки

Duke University

Oil & Gas Industry Operations and Markets

1044 оценки

The oil and gas industry has an enormous impact on all aspects of daily life. Individuals, corporations, and national governments make financial and policy decisions based on the cost, use, and availability of these two natural resources. This two-week course looks at the two most fundamental aspects of the oil and gas industry, its operations and markets, each of which is addressed as a separate module in the course. In the operations module, the course provides an overview of the production of oil and gas, from initial exploration to final transport. The second module focuses on the forces that drive the industry's operations, the oil and gas markets, including the cost of wells, seasonal impacts on prices, and the role of oil reserves. After every lesson, learners will take short quizzes to test their newly acquired knowledge, participant in crowd-sourced discussions about global markets, and complete a final project.

Из урока

Oil and Gas Operations and Technology

In this module, you will learn about the core activities that the Oil and Gas Industry executes to bring natural gas and petroleum products to market. We will look at the exploration and production of oil and gas, the processing and refining of the oil and gas into useable fuels and other valuable commodities, and finally the transport of oil, gas, and petroleum products from wells to refineries to retail outlets.

Oil and Gas Sources2:27

The Hydrocarbon System6:23

What Makes for a Good Reservoir Rock3:54

Exploration Tools and Methods3:45

Aquiring Mineral Rights8:16

The Drilling Process10:22

Познакомьтесь с преподавателями

Lincoln Pratson
Gendell Professor of Energy & Environment
Nicholas School of the Environment

An ideal world for an exploration geologist would be one like this 3D model

of subsurface strata, a world in which the geologist could move freely into and

around the earth's subsurface, looking for oil and gas.

However, they like the rest of us,

are stuck at the earth's surface most of which is covered by water.

Thus, in order to find oil and gas, geologists first rely on geophysicists

to collect and process indirect images of subsurface earth properties.

The broadest of these images are provided by satellites, which among other things,

can measure subtle changes or anomaly in the Earth's gravity and

magnetic fields, caused by sub surface variations in rock type and structure.

This for example, is a satellite derived gravity anomaly map.

The bright red to purple regions reflect sub surface features that in some

instances might trap oil or gas.

Once a subsurface feature of interest has been identified, geophysicists will

conduct more detailed mapping over it using energy or seismic waves.

This is done in marine settings with a survey ship equipped with energy sources,

known as guns, that repeatedly fire pressure waves into the water column.

Over land,

the mapping is done with trucks specially equipped with energy sources on their

undersides in the form of plates that vibrate the ground beneath the trucks.

In both cases the energy waves produced by the source travel down into the sub

surface reflecting off interfaces where rock type properties change.

These reflections are then recorded by rays of pressure sensors or

geoforms that extend away from the seismic source.

The images produced by seismic reflection mapping differ from what the rock type

actually looks like.

What the geologist is after is understanding where potential

reservoirs for oil and gas might be.

Which, in this cross-section of sedimentary strata,

would be the sandy white beds.

The seismic reflection profile of the strata looks like this.

You can make out the bedded nature of the strata, but in this image the bedding is

much coarser and often does not correspond with actual bedding in the strata.

Furthermore, there is no apparent indication of where the sand beds are.

While the geologist skilled in interpreting seismic data could already

begin to develop a model of where the sands are, their model will be much more

accurate if there is an existing well that the seismic profile crosses.

Whether the well produced oil or gas, or came up dry, chances are that it was

logged, meaning that one or more geophysical sensors were lowered down and

then raised back up the drill hole, recording the surrounding rock types.

And in some instances there might even be core samples of the actual rock.

Note, though, that both the well logs and any core samples are for

a small lateral area, while the seismic profile can extend for tens of kilometers.

Therefore, the geologist will supplement the data he has access to with experience,

studying the makeup and

geometry of analogous sedimentary systems exposed at the Earth's surface.

These range from modern river and

coastal environments to ancient rocks originally formed in a similar setting to

their exploration area, but which now outcrop above ground.

Given this collection of information, the geologist can develop a detailed model of

the subsurface feature structure and rock composition, and

make an educated guess as to the location of potential oil and gas reservoirs.

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