Weatherford

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Weatherford

Weatherford Thanks to its groundbreaking technology, oil services giant Weatherford has found itself at the forefront of Africa's ultra-deep drilling boom.

Back in 2007, Brazil's Petrobras uncovered

vast reserves of crude oil hidden under a

thick layer of salt off the country's

coastline. Buried at depths of 20,000 feet,

the two largest basins have now been

estimated to hold 50 billion barrels of

recoverable oil.

These are no small numbers. These

reserves are twice that of the largest

offshore field in the Gulf of Mexico, while

the salt crust can itself be up to 6,500 feet

thick. At the same time, this has helped

spark a wave of interest around offshore

Angola, where the pre-salt plays appear to

be analogous to Brazil's giant Santos and

Campos Basins.

Given the challenges of operating in these

conditions, innovative solutions are required. The

consistency of the salt layer, together with the fact

that it is constantly moving, means that holes often

fill in on themselves after drilling. At the same time,

both temperature and pressure are hugely

changeable.

To solve these issues, Weatherford has looked to

Closed-Loop Drilling (CLD) technology. They add

additional equipment to the rig that enables the

rig's circulating system to be pressurizable, allowing

for increased safety, much greater control of the

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well while drilling, and the ability to detect

and deal with well-kicks instantly. CLD also

enables Weatherford to deal with the “Total

loss of returns” by means of their ability to

switch to Pressurized Mud-Cap Drilling

(PMCD) instantly.

Speaking to Essential Business, Huub Gans,

Weatherford's vice president for sales and

marketing for Sub-Saharan Africa, said that

now,“there's significant interest from

operators for the Closed-Loop Drilling

(CLD) variant of Managed Pressure Drilling

(MPD) in the sub-salt prospects offshore

West Africa, we have three projects going

in Angola as we speak”.

While this market is undoubtedly huge, the

company is also looking to other areas for

the technology, with onshore projects also

becoming a focus.

“We will be looking at CLD in order to avoid

nuisance gas in depleted fields and to

manage the pore-pressure/frac-gradient

uncertainties” Huub continues, referring to

the increased stability and safety by

reducing mud-losses and kicks using MPD.

However, despite the success of CLD in US

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shale plays such as the Eagle Ford, as it

stands Huub says that unconventional

projects, for CLD deployment in South-

Africa, are so far not on the cards.

Much of this is down to the opportunities

instead of the technology. South Africa,

which is thought to hold 485 trillion feet of

shale gas resources, the eighth largest in

the world, lifted an 18 month long

moratorium on the issuing of shale

licenses a year ago, but since then, no

permits have been granted.

Given that the country represents the

continent's best bet for shale-gas

production, the outlook — in the short-

term at least — is mixed. At the same time,

there are further challenges involved. The

vast majority of reserves lie in the semi-

arid Karoo region, which is largely 3

uninhabited.

“It's initially all about the likelihood that

South Africa is able to monetize the gas,”

says Huub.“This requires pipeline

infrastructure and LNG facilities which are

super-costly. Unlike the USA too, you'll

need an abundance of heavy drilling rigs

because the Karoo shale gas horizon is at a

great depth. The local consumption market

in the Karoo is negligible due to its sparse

population.”

Moving forward, the company is looking to

improve its workforce even further – by

means of tapping into the local skill-sets in

order to contribute to the sustainable

development of the countries we operate

in.

“Building up our local talent pool is a key

challenge,” says Huub. “We need to be able

to bring more African talent to the table

and we are continuously recruiting to

achieve this.”

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At the same time, the recent drastic fall in

oil prices is certain to make for a more

testing environment. As the market

adjusts to the new price levels – and so

far, it is not yet clear what this may be –

some turbulence should be expected.

“The African oil industry will be affected

by the current low oil prices too,” says

Gans. “Some governments have based

their National-budgets on prices above

$80 per barrel. They will be adjusting

their figures as we speak.”

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Weatherford

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