Bulletin 03/2016

SPE SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS

ITALIAN SECTION TECHNICAL BULLETIN 3 / 2016 SPE Italian Section’s 30th Anniversary: a special day

Boosting start-up to upstream operation: corporate venture capital way

Inauguration of a new student chapter at Politecnico di Milano

C O N T E N T S TECHNICAL BULLETIN 3 / 2016

CHAIRMAN’S PAGE

TECHNICAL DIRECTORS

SECTION ACTIVITIES

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Chairman’s Intro

Managed Pressure Drilling goes standard: drilling critical wells in a critical downturn

Alessandro Tiani - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Chairman

MOBILIS IN MOBILI

6 A small-world metaphor to experience a network of excellences Ferdinado Marfella - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Secretary 2016-2017

SPECIAL FOCUS

8 Inauguration of a new student chapter at Politecnico di Milano Claudia Porretta Serapiglia - Eni S.p.A., SPE Italian Section External Relations, Universities Director

10 SPE President visits Geolog headquarters in Milan Gionata Ferroni - Geolog International b.v.

12 Toasts and Awards at the Social Dinner: Let’s Celebrate the 30th Italian Section Anniversary.

Gianna Giudicati - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Technical Director Section Management and Information

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Paolo Allara SPE Italian Section Drilling & Completion Technical Director 2016-2017

Boosting start-up to upstream operations: the Corporate Venture Capital way Ruben Visintin - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Program Chairperson

Nicola Carini - Saipem S.p.A.

SECTION PROGRAM

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A Conversation with Professor Carlo Galimberti Davide Scotti - Saipem S.p.A. SPE Italian Section HSE Technical Director

22 Coping with flexible and umbilical laying: state of art capabilities

Section Program Ruben Visintin - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Program Chairperson

SECTION BOARD

42 SPE Italian Section Board 2016 - 2017

Valerio Bregonzio - Saipem S.p.A. Roberto Raglione - Saipem S.p.A. Andrea Intieri - Saipem S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Projects, Facilities and Construction Technical Director

ITALIAN SECTION DASHBOARD

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26

Report as of 05 October 2016

Naturally Fractured Reservoir, challenging modeling of complex fracture/matrix mechanisms

STYPED

Andrea Lamberti - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Reservoir Technical Director

41 The Young Professionals Journal

INNOVATION

30 The Role of Corporate Venture Capital in the Oil&Gas Industry Stefano Maronese - Eni S.p.A.

A short movie from the past to our days Alessandro Tiani - Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Chairman

The Bulletin is printed in 900 copies and is being sent to all Italian Section Members, to Oil and Service companies operating in the area, to Italian Government bodies related to the petroleum industry and to the main newspapers

TECHNICAL BULLETIN 3 / 2016

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CHAIRMAN’S PAGE

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Chairman’s Intro Dear SPE Collegues, In this issue of our bulletin, you will find many articles describing the celebrations of SPE Italian Section 30th anniversary occurred on September 14th.

What to say, it was an intense day, full of initiatives, meetings, discussions, Alessandro Tiani and events.

Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Chairman We enjoyed the full day presence of SPEI President Nathan Meehan and SPE Regional Director Matthias Meister. We’ve been host in Politecnico di Milano in their wonderful and renewed Aula Magna to kick-off their new SPE Student Chapter (and thanks to all students and professors, mostly Lozza, Guadagnini and Blunt).

We discussed innovation in O&G though Corporate Venture Capital, hosted in Eni headquarter of technology and R&D, Bolgiano Laboratories (and thanks to Eni and Intesa Sanpaolo jointly co-organizing the event). Finally, in the wonderful location of Fortezza Viscontea along the Adda River, we closed with our social dinner, during which we presented three SPE Regional Awards to Italian Section members: Molaschi for Drilling, Petrone for HSE and Cobianco for SPE Service.

We also re-established the Section awards (thanks Rampoldi and Ormezzano for your work), presented to: • Technical Section Award - Alberto Di Lullo • Technical Section Award - Nicola Bona • Young Professional Service Award - Adele Vacca • 30th Anniversary Service Award – Carlo D’Angelo • 30th Anniversary Service Award – in memory of Dario Balistrieri

I have to thank all the Board members and SPE active volunteers that were involved in the organization and devoted a lot of time for having a successful all-day-long celebration. Among them a special thank to Claudia Porretta, Ruben Visintin, Adele Vacca, Valerio Parasiliti and Gianna Giudicati.

Then a big thank you to all the YP team and specially their new chairperson Andrea Tondelli, for the first time elected in a fair but hard competition with another outstanding YP member Luca Cadei. You exposed yourselves to this challenge: also this is SPE, a school of leadership!

Finally, let me introduce, starting from the current issue of our Bulletin, a new editorial, held by Ferdinando Marfella and cryptically named “Mobilis in mobili”, the motto of the Nautilus, the submarine that used to steer in difficult waters, a methapora of our changing world.

But for the most emotional piece of the evening, our Journey through the past, our gift to SPE Italian Section, I leave to the next pages.

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MOBILIS IN MOBILI

A small-world metaphor to experience a network of excellences

Ferdinando Marfella Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Secretary 2016-2017

From this number of Bulletin, I have the honour to present this new section that is a cross navigation of the bulletin contents and related ramblings on the subject.

For those who have not, yet, read “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea” by Jules Verne, “Mobilis in Mobili” is the motto of Captain Nemo and his marvellous submarine Nautilus. For practical people, the length corresponds to a trustable depth for an oil or gas reservoir. The metaphor in itself indicates a moving object in a moving substance. In few words, this is a corner for digressions about arguments and thoughts revolving around themes reported in the Bulletin.

In Internet culture, a lurker is typically a member of a community who observes, but does not actively participate. The exact definition depends on context, for example, lurkers make up a large proportion of all users in online communities.

Anyway, lurking allows users to learn the conventions of an online community before they actively participate, improving their socialization when they eventually de-lurk. They are called including browsers, read-only participants, non-public participants, legitimate peripheral participants, vicarious learners or “not active” member.

The Magic Flute is a very famous opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The opera starts with Tamino, a handsome prince lost in a distant land, who is pursued by a crafty serpent and asks the gods to save him. “Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!”. Times are changed for energy engineers and petroleum professionals.

The ability to manage and share the links that allow people to exchange knowledge and information has always had a profes-

sional importance of high value. The effective management of knowledge has been described as a critical ingredient for organization seeking to ensure sustainable strategic competitive advantage. Moreover, this is increasingly true.

My first experience in SPE Board started few days ago watching the video of SPE Italian Section presented for 30th SPE Italian Section Anniversary. The video was structured as a sequence of interviews recorded for events and dinner. The interviews were edited in a pleasing sequence of a Q&A session to the Founders and Veterans of the Italian Section, retracing the history of 30 years up to now.

Video told that it was in the middle of 80’s when a group of SPE members began to evaluate the possibility to create an Italian Section by constituting a nucleus of petroleum technicians able to build up a dialogue with technicians from other Countries.

For that reason, 23 SPE members met in Milan, on 3rd December 1985, and decided to make a request to SPE International based in Richardson, Dallas, to form a section. On 24th July 1986, the section was officially established, giving the access to some Yugoslavian SPE members and the same possibility to Austrian later.

They chose “Adriatic Section” as name. Interview of veterans of Italian Section spoke about the first newsletter that became a bulletin written first in Italian and then in English to give an international fingerprint to it.

The main aim of SPE is to be a society of professional excellence, providing its members the highest quality lifelong learning, continuous personal and professional growth. Cesare Colamasi, one of Italian Section founders, kindly defined SPE as “a tool for knowledge maintenance”.

Giovanni Paccaloni, our Mentor Chairman, defined it as a “multiplier of rewards”. All features and power of a network of ex-

MOBILIS IN MOBILI

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cellences. My second experience was another video, showed by SPE 2016 President, Nathan Meehan, during his lecture in Polytechnics of Milan, on 14th September.

In a 600 m indoor race of athletics women championship, the favorite runner, Heather Dorniden, took the lead; she was 200 m from the end, last lap. Suddenly she tripped and fell to the ground.

Game seemed to be over, even podium hopes. Heather stood up quickly and restarted to run with all her energy, speed and willingness she had. She recovered and won the race.

The power of reaction against pitfalls and adversity.

It is the time to react. “Be all you can be”. It has to be our way to stand-up and innovate with which we can influence and manage the change, quoting our Chairman, Alessandro Tiani. Innovation, real innovation, takes place in these moments in history, and we have to take the challenge.

I would like to see SPE according to the small-world metaphor: in 1998, Watts and Strogatz, Network Science researchers at Cornell University, discovered smallworld network model. A small-world is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not necessarily neighbors of one another, but most nodes is reachable from every other node by a small number of hops or steps.

Small-world properties exist in many real-world phenomena, including websites with navigation menus, food chains, electric power grids, biochemical processing networks, networks of brain neurons, voter networks, telephone call graphs, flu propagation, and social influence networks.

Hubs’ number of links is the main key performance indicator of the network. If we see SPE under the light of a smallworld network perspective, SPE members act as hubs in which the ability to manage and share links of professional excellence allows to exchange knowledge and information of high value importance.

But not only this. In fact, the act to take the field allows you to go beyond that: a young professional, or a student, can practice and improve with soft skills, as I talked with Mathias Meister, SPE Regional Director for South, Central and East Europe. It is a good way to “be all we can be”.

A warm “Good Luck” to Gianna Giudicati for her new role as Technical Director in Section Management and Information, I replace her as new Italian Section Secretary.

References: • Duncan J. Watts & Steven H. Strogatz - “Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’ networks” - Nature 393, 440-442 (4 June 1998).

• M. Buchanan - “Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Science of Networks”, W. W. NORTON & COMPANY

Ferdinando Marfella Ferdinando Marfella is a production and operations optimization specialist, involved in well problem solving, water and gas management and stimulation in upstream operations. He holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering, with specialization in industrial ergonomics and safety. He won a two-years grant in “Science of hydrocarbons” from the Eni Corporate University, attending PhD scientific courses at Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Then he conducted a research in “Computational Fluid Dynamics for oil and gas industry” in Enitecnologie. He started working for Eni on well performance and problem analysis, in the Drilling dept., in 2008. Since 2010 and for five years, he was employed in Algeria as field production engineer and in the Reservoir dept. Actually, he works in the well water&gas management team, specialized in modeling and problem solving.

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SPECIAL FOCUS

Inauguration of a new student chapter at Politecnico di Milano Report of the event held at Politecnico di Milano to open the celebrating day of the 30th SPE Italian Section anniversary, at the presence of the SPE international president, Nathan Meehan.

Claudia Porretta Serapiglia Eni S.p.A., SPE Italian Section External Relations, Universities Director

Fig.1: : Nathan Meehan, SPE President and Matthias Meister, SPE Regional Chairman, entering the Politecnico di Milano

As Director for External Relations with universities, I am very pleased to broadcast to all SPE members about our exciting full-morning event, organized by the SPE students of Politecnico di Milano and host in the distinguished Aula Magna of Politecnico, overlooking the wonderful Leonardo Da Vinci square.

The event poster, designed by our YPs, quoted Albert Einstein sentence: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world”. I believe this powerful idea is able to describe in few words how students can contribute and enhance the SPE Italian section experience.

Feeding our section activity with the motivation and imagination of professionals of tomorrow means that we are getting ready to face the challenges of the future energy market. In the recent years, as SPE Italy, we did our best to open our section to various industries and organizations at different levels, and one of which is the academic world.

With the aim of contacting various Italian Universities and presenting what

SPE can do for students and with the students, last April we held the 1st event “SPE meets University”. During that streaming event, we reached more than 300 students from 7 different universities and… some of them were from the Politecnico of Milano!

They got quickly in touch with our passionate SPE Young Professionals to create a Student Chapter and on the September 14th they invited SPE to start this co-operation by presenting ideas and possible programs for the year to come.

Students are strongly supported by their Faculty Advisor Prof. Alberto Guadagnini and by the Dean of the School of Industrial and Information Engineering, Prof. Giovanni Lozza, who welcomed the event and described how long and robust is the history of Politecnico of Milano in the energy disciplines.

Antonio Vinciguerra is the first president of the Polimi Student Chapter; during the conference he had the opportunity to present the board and to illustrate how this initiative is aimed to “create an active and cohesive group to assimilate professional and soft skills complementary to our academic prepa-

SPECIAL FOCUS

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Fig. 2: Aula Magna of Politecnico di Milano “Leonardo Da Vinci”

ration”.

As our President Alessandro Tiani noticed during the meeting, it was really amazing to have a student that is a President even before becoming an engineer. This is one of the possibilities that SPE supports, dedicated to motivated and inspired students, who are interested in international experience.

During the morning, Emecheta Kemjika from Politecnico of Torino Student Chapter and Mario Frattarelli from Università La Sapienza Rome Student Chapter, reported their well-based experience as SPE Student Chapter sections. It was great to see students from the three universities sharing experiences and suggestions both during and after the event, in order to create possible future co-operations. We look forward to have a co-organized event during the year!

The agenda of the event also included a typical SPE lecture, given by Alberto Di Lullo, SPE Distinguish Lecturer, member of the Board of Directors of the SPE Italian Section and Flow Assurance Knowledge Owner in Eni. As alternate of Giambattista De Ghetto, he discussed an interesting speech about “Oil & Gas Developments for years to come”. The lecture represented a nice opportunity to discuss the role of technology in the O&G business and the need of a transition scheme from O&G Companies to Energy Companies, in order to accelerate the adoption of more sustainable development systems.

The intense event was closed by the speech of 2015-2016 SPE President Nathan Meehan regarding the “Personal brand”. He introduced nice considerations on “Ways to build your brands”, “Taking risks”, “Describing yourself in 30 seconds”, “Power statement” and “Changing expectations” in an industry that is quickly changing.

My personal thinking during his speech has been “Why nobody told me these golden rules when I was a young student?!?”

and this is my dream now as SPE external director: to give students the opportunities of learning from professionals and experience occasions of soft skills development, thanks to SPE co-operation. Knowledge can be found in the Universities, opportunities can be created through opening up the universities, of course keeping in mind that… imagination encircles the world!

Fig. 3: SPE International President Nathan Meehan during his speech

10 SPECIAL FOCUS

SPE President visits Geolog headquarters in Milan During the second week of September, the Society of Petroleum Engineers celebrated the 30th year of the Italian Section.

Nathan Meehan, President of SPE, visited for the occasion Milan on 13th-14th September. A series of meetings has been held, involving amongst other things an event orGionata Ferroni ganized by the Young Professionals Geolog International BV Organization, a workshop at Saipem (both events are separately reported on this bulletin) and a visit to Geolog’s Headquarters a company very active within SPE and one of the main sponsors of the Italian Section.

Furthermore, Antonio Calleri, President and CEO of Geolog, is in fact one of the founders of the Italian Section. Back in 1986, together with a number of other men of vision from the oil industry, he realized the importance of sharing knowledge and experience with other professionals, in particularly the young, around the industry. This has been the scope of SPE since its beginnings, and this way the Adriatic SPE first and then the Italian Section were formed.

Mr. Meehan met with Geolog management and was introduced to the facilities and to the main technologies developed by the company. Nathan Meehan is a reservoir and geosciences specialist. He is a senior advisor at Baker Hughes, based in Houston. A petroleum engineer with a PhD at Stanford University, who has always worked in R&D, and in Fig. 1: Presentation of the Geobetween the oil industry and acalog activities to the visitors. demia.

Seated from the left, Nathan Geolog presented to a very interMeehan, Baker Hughes, SPE ested SPE President all the efPresident, and Matthias Meister, Baker Hughes, SPE Reforts that are being done to make gional Chairman; in front, from science meet the daily activity on the left, Antonio Calleri, Geolog oil rigs, bringing to the wellsite President, Maurizio Senese, geological analysis, solutions that SPE Director, Alessandro Spinuntil recently were only available etti, Geolog IT Manager.

from remote laboratories. The guests were carried to a tour of the facility before heading to a nearby restaurant for a SPE gathering sponsored by Geolog. The tour comprised a visit to laboratories, machining department and it was capped by a parade of Mr. Calleri’s by now rather famous collection of ancient motorcycles.

Geolog is presently hosting the SPE’s Italy board meetings on a monthly basis, and has dedicated an office to SPE, where memoirs, old editions of the technical bulletin, JPT collections and pictures are kept in display, to keep alive the continuing legacy of the organization.

Fig. 2: SPE president Nathan Meehan and Antonio Calleri, Geolog President, during the visit at the Geolog facility.

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SPECIAL FOCUS

Toasts and Awards at the Social Dinner: Let’s Celebrate the 30th Italian Section Anniversary.

Gianna Giudicati Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Technical Director Section Management and Information

Fig.1: SPE International President, Nathan Meehan is charming the guests of the Social Dinner.

A 13th-century fortress in Cassano d’Adda (MI) has been the location of the social dinner, this year celebrating the 30th anniversary of SPE Italian Section. Honored by the presence of the SPE International President, Nathan Meehan, and the Regional Director for South, Central and East Europe, Matthias Meister, section members had the chance to informally met each other and have networking opportunities with personalities and friends, who built the history and are contributing to the present of the Section.

After the outdoor welcome aperitif, people moved inside the main room where, under the high vaulted ceilings with original frescoes from the Giotto school of painting, SPE Italian Section Chairman Alessandro Tiani welcomed his guests. The dinner opened with a keynote speech on HSE, which has been one of the crucial topics and the fil rouge of SPE activities in 2015-2016. Introduced by the HSE Director Davide Scotti, prof. Carlo Galimberti from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (MI) had a talk on communication and culture when dealing with safety. Various factors have been investigated, also thanks to evocative videos, as crucial elements for safety culture: organizational pro-

cesses, professional practices, written norms but also informal conventions, languages, cognitions, and perceptions and representations of risk.

Dinner courses were then spaced by other two interventions. First, a celebrative video was projected in the main hall, collecting experiences and testimonies within this 30-years long journey by the Section Chairmen, who highlighted the benefit earned from being SPE members. The video concludes the journey through Section life with various sketches on the activities organized within the 2015-2016 program, such as shots from the Open Innovation conference, and vertiginous views during the HSE experience by Young Professionals at the Adventure Park. The projected video is available in the home page of www.speItaly.org.

Second, as last intermission between the two final courses, Alessandro Tiani, together with the SPE International President Nathan Meehan awarded Section members with the 2016 National and Regional Awards. 2016 National Section Awards have been attributed to: Alberto di Lullo (Technical Section Award), Nicola Bona (Technical Section Award), Adele Vacca (Young Professional Service Award), Carlo D’Angelo (30th

SPECIAL FOCUS Anniversary Service Award), and an additional 30th Anniversary Service Award in memory of Dario Balistrieri. Finally, the SPE Regional Director Matthias Meister awarded with the 2016 Regional Awards Claudio Molaschi (Regional Drilling Engi-

neering Award), Annamaria Petrone (Regional Health, Safety, Security, Environment and Social Responsibility Award), and Sandra Cobianco (Regional Service Award). The enlighten courtyard of the fortress hosted the conclusive sweet buf-

Fig 2. Networking opportunities in Fortezza Viscontea court.

Fig 4. Introductory speech on HSE by C. Galimberti.

Fig 5.Awards celebration.

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fet and the final celebration toasts celebrating the anniversary together with all the members of the new 2016-2017 Section Board members, whose detail you find in the relevant section of the bulletin.

Fig 3. Dinnertime in the restaurant historical main hall.

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SPECIAL FOCUS

A short movie from the past to our days When we discussed for the first time the possibility to make a short movie about the history of SPE and our present activities, we ended up arguing “how much short?”

Alessandro Tiani Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Chairman

20 minutes was agreed to be quite too long, but 3 minutes was actually too short. However, the need to fit the story of the Italian section in few minutes was something impossible in my mind.

The fact was that we were not recording a spot, a short appealing statement with nice images.

We were trying to tell a story, and to capture the deep reasons why some people, a lot of people, spent and are still spending a lot of their time doing something that appears useless to others.

We agreed a 3+3 formula, 3 minutes for the past, and 3 minutes for today’s activity.

The result mismatched any prediction: the story developed so well that at a certain point it was not possible to cut anymore, so we got a short movie of 11 minutes total.

I personally attended all the interviews with past Chairmen, at least those that were available and willing to do this

interview. During these moments, I realized that the project was going to be successful.

Since we were lacking helicopter views of offshore platforms and drilling rigs, typically easy winners in any oil&gas promotion video, we were afraid of the format we chose and its final result.

However, listening to those old-fashioned men in that corner of a restaurant at 7pm reviving stories, enlightened with passion, striving force, was a unique experience.

I think we succeeded in our task by capturing the emotions growing from being a member of SPE, an active one, a leading one.

A young engineer, SPE YP, told me after the video: “I had goose skin when I heard talking about thirty years ago going to stick events posters….that’s exactly what I am doing today!”

Enjoy our video at SPEITALY.ORG

SPECIAL FOCUS

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TECHNICAL DIRECTORS

Managed Pressure Drilling goes standard: drilling critical wells in a critical downturn

Paolo Allara SPE Italian Section Drilling & Completion Technical Director 2016-2017

Nicola Carini Saipem S.p.A.

INTRODUCTION Above all academic definitions, Managed Pressure Drilling is the set of hardware, software and procedures, which allows a driller to modify the Bottom Hole Pressure (BHP) without changing the physical mud weight, with all the consequences this possibility opens. If in the early 2000s Drilling Contractors and Operators Community were concerned about its potential, today MPD is a matter of fact, proved on field with concrete positive results widely disclosed in technical literature. Apparently, until late 2014, MPD advantages were so evident to dare and success in burning the “fear-to-change” film which has been constantly surrounding drilling world.

Operators started to require MPD capability in their campaign or at least to picture it as a plus in commercial tenders and, consequently (according to a standard demand-supply model), Drilling Contractors were forced to explore and

familiarize with this new concept. But then, at MPD highest popularity level, the downturn showed up and punched hard the O&G community, which started cutting everything not essential to survive. Which future for MPD in this picture, or better, any future? Well, in contrast to any cheap expectation, while oil price crashed, contracts were cancelled and rigs turned off the MPD appeal among operators withstood. Moreover, this fact is actually pretty reasonable, being MPD not an essential drilling tool but a proved drilling cost cutter (and everything which cut cost, is a god span!).

In this scenario, which conditions are Drilling Contractors requested to cope with to stay at the MPD table? How is MPD market changed and how a Drilling Company should better react? Let’s go through some of a typical MPD project crucial points to analyse how pawns moved (and are moving yet!) and figure out our next best shot.

BEFORE THE STORM (2010-2014) CAPex OPex Fig.1: Saipem 10000 sailing to Egypt, December 2015.

Picture courtesy of Mr Vito Fortunato

Cash Flow

J J

UDW market gives high yields - High level of investment are fostered.

Capital purchase of MPD System or Rig upgrade to “MPD-Ready”

J

No Cash Flow impact onto Drilling contractor by MPD

Operators consider MPD to be a service No OPex chargeable onto Drilling contractor

A potential Drilling Company strategy notes while approaching MPD business case

TECHNICAL DIRECTORS MPD technology.

Most of the MPD market shares were held by two different technologies: Variable Hydrostatic Head (VHH) and Surface Back Pressure (SBP): both philosophies show peculiar points of strength, not only on the operational side but also in terms of retrofitting ease. A detailed comparative analysis was been presented at the MPD-UBD IADC Conference in Dubai, April 2015 [1].

“MPD-ready” concept.

The wording “MPD-ready” has never had a defined boundary but, in the common accepted meaning, a drilling rig was so defined when all the piping/hoses and the electrical, hydraulic and pneumatic services were in places in order to allow MPD equipment to be “plug and play” straight after they were loaded on board. As a guitar player does on stage: he jumps on, plugs in the guitar and all the system is already set up for him to play. This up-front preparation was a pretty standard on almost all drilling floaters built as of 2010.

For already existing drilling rigs to be upgraded to “MPD-ready” level, there was a different opportunity for installation, known as “retrofitting package”. Market, at that time, allowed for this kind on investments even if not directly covered by a firm contract, but intended as a pure asset value enhancement.

MPD service management.

MPD was initially intended to be a service, offered by a Service Company in charge for procurement (if not manufacturing) of the set of equipment, installation on board and actual operations. In this picture, the Operator was managing the MPD Service Company and the Drilling Contractor was only requested to assist during the initial interface between Rig equipment and MPD ones and to secure the day-to-day coexistence on board of “conventional” drilling and MPD procedures with relevant crews and needs.

Highlights from a typical MPD project MPD Equipment Lead Time: around 6 months [2].

Schedule & Location. If the rig was “MPDready” a 2 weeks’ timeframe was enough to plug in all equipment and commission them, offshore. In case of rig not “MPDready” a retrofit could take place either offshore or in a shipyard, latter condition improved schedule optimizing handling and side services. The project duration could be estimated in around two months, with rig operation completely stopped [1].

Personnel dedicated to MPD (during drilling). All MPD activities were intended to be run and supervised by a dedicated MPD service company team (partly on-

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board for rig operation and partly onshore for data monitoring, analysis and project management). Drilling Contractor crew was excluded from MPD operations. (This short-term strategy highly increased OPex level for the Operator while releasing pressure onto the Drilling Contractor) Business model for MPD Equipment provision. Technical details of all components are presented in [1]. Based on Operator activities plan the business model could vary a lot, from a full Capital Sales to a partial Rental. Equipment purchased, in addition to various materials for system retrofitting, were all the surface ones (MPD buffer manifold, dedicated HPU, Automatic Choke Valve + Flow meters (including Coriolis one), Backpressure pump, Mud & gas separator (high flow rate), controls umbilical and relevant reels and winches) plus Riser Joints Cross-Overs. The MPD Riser Joint (mainly made of RCD, Gas Handler, Flow Spools and Cross-Overs) was normally rented, together with topside relevant Control Unit.

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TECHNICAL DIRECTORS

Fig.3: Typical Product Breakdown Structure of a Managed Pressure Drilling project

SINGING IN THE RAIN (2015 - ?)

CAPex

X

UDW market is shrinking – very difficult to fund projects No Capital purchase of MPD System fostered Only light Rig upgrade to “MPD-Ready” achievable

OPex

K

Operators consider MPD as part of the Drilling Vessel equipment MPD rental and personnel costs are charged onto Drilling contractor

Cash Flow

L

Serious Cash Flow impact onto Drilling contractor

A potential Drilling Company strategy notes while approaching MPD business case

MPD technology.

Although both technologies are still commercialised it is not a secret that the SBP MPD [1] is doing the lion’s share [2]. This is reasonably due both to its flexibility in suiting almost all soil formation criticalities and to the number of its field installations track record (and relevant results) which highly increase operator confidence. Moreover, not having any bulky equipment to be stored, handled deployed and retrieved [1], this technology is more affordable also in term of fast retrofitting.

“MPD-ready” concept.

The opportunity to invest, today, in a new UDW drilling floater is unrealistic. The opportunity for a Drilling Contractor to fund the upgrade of an existing asset (by means of a retrofitting to step up to “MPD-ready” level) is very unlucky as well. The only reasonable condition, for a light upgrade to happen, is the award of a contract (for the Rig concerned) which, requiring MPD

services, will partially cover (in the project long run) the initial CAPex. MPD service management.

Due to the increasing number of MPD operations ongoing all over the world, and to the higher availability of “MPD-Ready” Drilling Rigs, operators are starting considering MPD capability as a Drilling Vessel “feature” more than a pure external service. This new attitude completely changed Drilling Contractor role: they are now requested to manage internally the complete MPD project dealing with the MPD provider. This represents a list of additional direct costs (offshore and onshore personnel dedicated to project management, know-how development, contingencies, etc.) and risks to be managed and supported. (Fig. 2) Highlights from a typical MPD project MPD Equipment Lead Time: around 7 months [2].

Schedule & Location. A very aggressive retrofitting schedule, reducing as much as possible permanent installation (and time-consuming activities such as welding on high-pressure piping) can last 3 weeks offshore, two weeks in a shipyard.

Personnel dedicated to MPD (during drilling). Being the MPD project directly managed by the Drilling Contractor, he will be in the position to train and dedicate part of his crew to MPD operations in order to reduce as much as possible MPD service company engineers, being this one of the most important cost item. Anyway, to ensure safe operations and high performance this will not happen since the first day.

Business model for MPD Equipment provision. Now the operator is out of the picture, the Drilling Contractor being in charge for MPD equipment negotiation and provision. To minimize CAPex, the business model will be a full rental, excluding material for system retrofitting materials and Riser Cross-Over. All the remaining equipment will be rented and them, together with the MPD crew, will end up in a daily rate the Drilling Contractor is charged by MPD Service Company.

WHICH FUTURE FOR MPD The picture is not bright at all. What will

TECHNICAL DIRECTORS happen tomorrow? Does exist a chance for Drilling Contractors - MPD relationship? We believe a solution exists.

There are only 3 ways to keep MPD CAPex investment per well affordable: - do not invest; - extra-light investment acting as a quick fix (case by case, no strategy); - Strategic investment with a reasonable guaranty to be able to leverage on such investment during a decent number of future projects.

Only the third way gives MPD a future and this third way is feasible through stan-

dardisation and business integrity. If MPD service equipment will be standardized (at least until a certain level, the surface package [1]), they will be employable in the future with any subsea package [1], coming from any MPD service provider.

This will take the “single project income statement” out of the picture, because the investment will not constrain the Drilling Contractor to that particular MPD provider (and so potentially that particular project). This will grant the opportunity for the investment to be split up on a number of future MPD campaigns, creating this way a profitable (or at least affordable) business case.

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Business integrity is equally relevant.

An example on all to pitch the concept: drilling in MPD mode does not require a dedicated Mud & Gas Separator, while for years MPD providers have been telling us it absolutely did. When it comes to survival, there is no more space for “nice to have”.

References (1) SPE/IADC-SPE-173823-MS - Retrofitting Conventional Drilling Rigs With MPD: A Profitable Challenge Between Available Technologies - Nicola Carini, Paolo Allara, Saipem S.p.A. (2) Market Values, Sept 2016

Nicola Carini Nicola graduated with honors in Mechanical Engineering at Politecnico di Milano in 2012 and after an internship in Techint E&C Business Development Dept. he joined Saipem Drilling Business Unit, in 2013. As part of the Subsea Dept. he has been involved in various activities ranging from asset maintenance and field project management to Drilling Riser Analysis and R&D studies with a particular focus on the Offshore MPD business. He is currently attending a full time MBA at SDA Bocconi.

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TECHNICAL DIRECTORS

A Conversation with Professor Carlo Galimberti

BY DAVIDE SCOTTI, SAIPEM

Hi Carlo! It’s a pleasure for me have this interview after your interesting and engaging speech about safety communication and culture during the last SPE dinner, celebrating 30 years of our Italian section. I would like to ask you to introduce yourself to the readers of our magazine.

Davide Scotti Saipem S.p.A. SPE Italian Section HSE Technical Director

Thanks Davide.

I am a social psychologist: I started with an interest in epistemology and philosophy of science, and then I primarily dealt with communication and interaction with working teams by using the new communication technologies, such as digital enterprise, communication and training on health and safety at work.

An element that is constantly accompanying me in the study of these issues and in the intervention on the related operating segments is the attention to the Dialogic dimension of communication processes, which is reflected in the study of conversations.

In my opinion, doing social psychology today in the field of health&safety in the workplace, means knowing how to articulate research, intervention and planning skills, by always paying attention to the real organizational contexts and experience of the operators.

Today, I am Full Professor of Social Psychology of Communication and Director of the ‘Centro Studi e Ricerche di Psicologia della Comunicazione’ (Centre of Studies and Research into the Psychology of Communication) at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.

Excellent. Let’s start by talking about your personal involvement in issues connected with safety. Why is it important to create an organizational culture?

First of all because that makes business sense. If we want to be hasty, that argument would be enough to close the matter. In my opinion, however, this is only a starting point. In fact, ensuring safety is incredibly valuable, and not just from an economic standpoint. It produces value regarding at least four other assets: thinking strategies, and I am referring to how we perceive risk and how we elaborate strategies to cope with it; communication processes, because safety projects compel us to better qualify the way we plan communication inside our organization and towards the market; individual and group behavior, in the sense that applying safety guidelines asks people to pay more attention to how their own behaviors affect interactions inside their teams; relationships network, because safety projects produce links and networking that literally change interactions at inter-individual, group, organizational, and associative levels.

These are the issues that I have always been passionate about, as well! Let me ask you how, in your experience, do you create this value and this culture?

To do this we must work on at least two levels: sensitizing individuals and training competent leaders, true safety leaders, just like I know you did over the past few years with the LHS Foundation and, of course, the Saipem experience. The dual action within your training model, articulating the horizontal and vertical dimensions, constitutes the basic premise to ensure the reduction of accidents, the ability to open chances of discussion and brainstorming on security issues with a strong connection

TECHNICAL DIRECTORS with the actual work practices. And then, to conclude, you should always use a language that is in tune with the targeted audience, by using humor and emotions when the need calls for it. An interesting example of the kind is the case of a notable airline, who proceeded to give the safety instructions to passengers onboard, with surprising, very unconventional safety videos in order to avoid what almost always happens: nobody is listening to the flight attendants when they talk about safety matters. I would like to share with our readers some of these videos that can be found on Youtube by searching with the following keys: “Men In Black Safety Defenders”, “Safety Old School Style”, “An Unexpected Briefing”.

Yes, many others companies found the courage to revolutionize the way to communicate safety. And what are, in your opinion, the benefits for organizations and corporations?

In addition to the usual economic point of view, the theme of savings, I can think about three other benefits. Firstly, moving from the “bla, bla…” used to communicate content to an effective sharing of behaviors, by creating a real awareness of the issue at hand, that will have effects not only in terms of safety, but also in terms of health and environment. Secondly, enhancing the image and reputation of the Company in the public stage, and finally, ensuring that managers show themselves accountable to their employees and credible with respect to the market. All of this is not of little importance.

I agree. Among other things, we made a similar journey in Saipem with an extraordinary effect of safety engagement, which shows that both employees and managers want to be actively involved in processes of cultural evolution.

Talking about our industry, what do you know about the Oil & Gas sector?

I would say, above all, the men and women who work there.

Twenty years of educational practice with operators, engineers and managers of various companies in the field of Oil & Gas , taught me many things about the way they think, plan, act, relate to delicate processes in which they are involved on a daily basis, experiencing the social responsibility that accompanies their operational decisions.

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What are in your view the main challenges for the future?

I will give you three words for three challenges: culture, communication and experience. It is impossible to conceive of safety training without any actual experience of individuals. Without live experience, nobody listens to you, or if they do, they barely manage to put into practice what you tell them. In order to properly benefit from experience, we must be able to communicate effectively, by managing to appeal emotions to be effective and convincing.

I am thinking, for example, about films made in recent years by the LHS Foundation, but also – just to touch another type of message, advertising, which shares much with safety-related messages – to the recent commercials starring Jose Mourinho and that aim to promote the Champions League and one of its main sponsors.

And finally, this culture results from the fusion of experience and communication practices, and is a heritage that passes through generations to put everyone, but especially young professionals, in a position to start again, not from scratch but from a recognizable and effective basis, in their efforts to promote and maintain safety at work.

True, and we live in the era where the use of videos is really massive. I know you also enjoyed the short documentary produced by our SPE section to celebrate its 30 years of activities.

Oh yes, that was brilliant. A nice moment of our dinner. Well done to those who have contributed to the past and present successes of your associations. I am impressed.

Thanks Carlo, it was a pleasure to have you sharing with us these interesting ideas and especially the values of experience, culture and communication that are crucial for SPE, especially as professional association aiming at actively involving new generations.

My pleasure and keep up the great work in sharing knowledge.

All the best.

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Coping with flexible and umbilical laying: state of art capabilities

Valerio Bregonzio Saipem S.p.A.

Roberto Raglione Saipem S.p.A.

Andrea Intieri Saipem S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Projects, Facilities and Construction Technical Director

Fig.1: Normand Maximus - Laying Systems overview

INTRODUCTION The use of umbilicals and flexible pipes in the Offshore Industry is today a widespread option for the exploitation of oil and gas reservoirs. The increased confidence gained by the Operators with these products, coupled with a clear need to follow the trend for field developments in deep and ultra deep waters, led the URF (Umbilicals, Risers, Flowlines) contractors develop high-tech solutions in order to carry out safe and reliable operations with these products.

This article provides an overview of a typical flexible and umbilical laying system also showing the main characteristics of a state of the art equipment such as the one onboard Saipem’s latest vessel, Normand Maximus.

An overview of Flexible Laying Systems A Flexible Laying System comprises a storage system, a handling system and a laying system either horizontal (HLS) or vertical (VLS).

The function of the storage system is to duly store the product(s) to be laid in the most appropriate manner depending on a number of factors such as product(s) type, size, weight, stiffness, minimum bending radius, storage specifications etc; it is also in charge of the delivery of the product to the downstream laying system through the handling system.

A broad distinction can be made for these types of systems as follows: Reel Hub Drives, Carousels or Baskets. Other minor systems are less important. In the following sections, a more detailed description of the first and second items will be provided.

The handling system has the function to guide and contain the product prior to its ingress in the laying system. It may consist of rollerways with/without friction pads with ramps and bends upon necessity. The guiding system serves to connect the storage system to the laying system making sure the product is transferred safely and efficiently. The need and design of a handling system depends on the deck layout, available spaces and ancillary activities including termination handling, crane, wire rope access etc. To give an example, there are cases where the product is routed through the installation vessel deck and an articulated handling system is envisaged, whereas where removable laying systems are considered, e.g. removable VLS tower and/or carousel, a handling system may not be necessary and the storage system may feed the laying system directly, optionally requiring minor modifications to the carousel spooling tower at the tensioner outlet. (Fig. 1)

TECHNICAL DIRECTORS As said, the laying system can be broadly divided into two categories: horizontal and vertical. A horizontal flexible laying system consists of one or two tensioners arranged in a row horizontally or inclined (roughly up to 45°) and an over-boarding structure, mostly in the form of a chute (but wheels and freeboards may be possible). A chute serves as a mean to launch the product by guiding it from the outlet of the tensioners all the way to a vertical or near-vertical inclination. It is normally designed as a fixed sliding surface with containment edges. It is typical to find systems of 20Te to 75Te capacity, of compact size also featuring removability, allowing higher adaptability to variable deck configurations.

In order to be able to exert higher laying tensions while not loading the product excessively in a radial direction (due to bending forces), a vertical laying system (VLS) is more effective.

The idea is to vertically arrange one or two tensioner(s) in a tower structure equipped with a product inlet chute at the top (alternative designs exist). The tower may be fixed or inclinable normally up to 10° with regards to the vertical position, offering an advantage with stiff products and/ or shallower waters. The tower may be of permanent or removable type, but in the latter case with a lower tensioning capacity (around 100Te maximum): a suitable example is Saipem’s 90Te removable VLS tower, which can be efficiently installed on board of an Offshore Construction Vessel (OCV). Generally speaking, a VLS tower may be installed either on a moon-pool or on a side of the vessel or astern. From this standpoint, industrially, there is a wide variability of combinations of tower configurations, tensioning capacities, number of tensioners and positions. Finally yet importantly, it shall be remembered that tensioners borne to handle flexible products are characterized normally by a 4-track design that allows maximizing contact length vs contact pressure. Being armed with special friction pads, contact lengths range between 1,5m-2m to 4,5m5m depending on capacity and design.

Termination handling and opening/closing most often call for openable tensioners, where one track is mounted on a revolving structure or more simply for retractable tensioners.

There is also a number of ancillary systems, necessary for properly executing

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laying operations that will not be treated in this article: for example, A&R winches, under-tower openable tables, emergency clamps, tower cranes, routing arches.

Focus on storage systems: Reel Hub Drives (RHD) and Carousels Reel drive systems are mobile equipment used for spooling and unspooling of rigid and flexible pipe, umbilicals, risers and other products for offshore applications, stored on multiple vertical reels.

The RHD has a versatility to manage various products, stored in the reels.

The reel drive system consists of two drive/lifting towers that lift the reel from its cradle for spooling. The towers can move along two skid beams, skidding from one spooling position to the next. At this location, it will pick up a reel for unspooling.

Fig.2: Reel with product

The system can be built with various reel interfaces suited for flexible pipes standards. The system is completed by: • level winders to guide the products • control systems to satisfy safety requirements during product handling in operation activities. Control system permit to operate in Speed mode, Torque mode, Tension Mode • measure unit to calculate the products length.

The main design considerations are: type of vessel / operating conditions, deck / system arrangement, available deck area, vessel deck loading capacity, gross weight of reel and product, reel diameter, reel width, interface details, maximum torque, angle or multiple reel handling, power drive: hydraulic / electric.

Saipem is equipped with various of these system, able to manage all offshore products and able to work worldwide for global energy projects.

Fig.3: 20m OD carousel for flexible products

Basically, it consists of a motorized revolving drum of vertical axis: the product is wound and packed under tension around the core assisted by a spooling tower, which acts also as a level winder, between the roof and the floor.

It shall not be considered equivalent to the carousel basket or turntable models, having them different features as reminded above. Baskets (Fig. 4) work in a similar manner to Carousels except that they feature a storing system consisting of external containment walls/beams at the periphery (and in some instances with intermediate separate sectors along the radius) and an open-top design.

The product is deployed into the basket (horizontal layering) from a loading arm allowing it to form a natural catenary under its self-weight and making it easy to manipulate within the basket. On the opposite, on a carousel, the product is spooled on under tension normally due to the high product stiffness, using a spooling unit that traverses vertically (vertical

Fig.4: Basket

layering) between the carousel flanges.

In a carousel the roof can be designed closed with suitable openings (normally 45°), ‘wireframed’ or in some cases may be absent. It has the function to support the product ends (while allowing its access underneath) prior to starting the storage operation and to ease and secure

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the packing operation. Bearing capacity of the roof structure plays an important role and can reach tens of tons. The floor supports the product weight, while transferring it to the drum support structure (the physical interface with the vessel) of which a variety of designs exist. There is vast range of systems and designs available on the market today that offer different features, but normally adjustable core diameter and roof height are common features.

Fig.5: Spooling tower (in foreground) and 20m OD carousel

Smallest carousels range slightly below 1,000Te payload capacity with outer diameters roughly around 10m while largest carousels can reach 5,000Te to 10,000Te and over 30m of outer diameter. Height ranges vary widely as well, but 4m-6m can be considered a good reference. Last but not least, carousels can be permanently installed on a vessel (on deck or inside the ship’s body) or can be of removable type, i.e. they are not permanently installed on- board of a vessel for obvious reasons.

One of the types of the latter model is a socalled “liftable carousel” (reported in Fig. 6), an advantageous model which Saipem has benefitted from since a few years. The

underlying concept is to take advantage of the possibility to do a single lift of the entire (loaded) carousel (Fig. 6) thus avoiding otherwise costly or lengthy trans-pooling operations. The system comes with the additional flexibility to allow alternatively the single lift of the (loaded) drum.

Focus on removable VLS Saipem 90Te Vertical Laying System is a removable piece of equipment where the main components are a Steel framework and a 90Te capacity tensioner.

The steel framework, named the Lay Tower, has the function to accommodate a 90Te Tensioner (complete with top arch and work platforms) to perform umbilical, flexible pipe and cable laying in deepwater.

The whole structure may be divided into three main items: • a fixed 3D base frame bolted to the deck grillage, • a vertical frame hinged at the column base to the base and equipped two tilting cylinders. The frame and the attached tensioner may be tilted from vertical position in the range from 0° to 10° (inboard).

A hydraulic centralizer and an emergency clamp (for emergency cases) are also featured, • a box girder formed in a top circular arch whose function is to accommodate rollers upon which the product will run.

A 4-track pipe tensioner is designed to

State of art capabilities: Normand Maximus’ vertical laying system Offshore contractors offer a wide range of VLS capacities: beyond removable systems, 100Te-120Te permanent systems exist as well as often in the 275Te-350Te range. Top-range systems belong to the permanent moon-pool tower type, typically featuring a laying capacity of 550Te to 650Te. A good example of a state-of-art vessel is Saipem’s Normand Maximus (Fig. 8), equipped with a permanent VLS of 550Te capacity designed for the installation of flexible and rigid reeled products ranging from 50 mm to 700 mm outside diameter (up to 12” for rigid pipes OD).

Normand Maximus, delivered this year after final outfittings in Norway, is the result of an innovative design philosophy aimed at combining SURF installation with field development activities in ultra-deep waters. This DP3 vessel is about 178 meters long, with a beam of 33 meters, a deck area of more than 2.500 m2 and is able to accommodate 180 people.

Normand Maximus provides unique operational benefits in terms of versatility, as it is reconfigurable for multiple and simultaneous project tasks. It is designed to perform in the harshest environmental conditions thanks to its DNV Ice class C. It is also equipped with latest generation ROV, the Sonsub INNOVATOR 2.0.

The VLS is positioned aft of the vessel moonpool and accommodates two 275Te tensioners, also being able to be inclined by +/-10˚. An under deck basket is located aft of the VLS for the storage of up to 3,800Te of flexible products. Moreover, additional removable Basket or RHD can be accommodate on Vessel deck to supply the product to the Tower.

Conclusions The article provided an overview of a typical flexible and umbilical laying system, describing its main components and characteristics and also showing the main features of a state of the art equipment such as the one onboard Saipem’s latest vessel, Normand Maximus.

Fig.7: 90Te VLS on board of an OCV

Fig.6: Unique lift of loaded carousel and basement

perform the laying of flexible pipelines in the sea applying the required tension load at the required speed.

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Valerio Bregonzio Presently part of the Offshore R&D projects portfolio management unit, he has 14 years of experience in the offshore O&G industry. He committed many years to Research and Development, starting out as an R&D engineer in charge of the improvement of pipelay equipment and at a later stage became R&D project manager of technology innovation projects, growing also intellectual property management competences. He was also field engineer in the Green Stream pipelay project, involved in the offshore field activities. In the last years, before joining the Technology and innovation unit, he strengthened his technical background in the Asset department for about two years, in charge of the preparation and upgrade of flexible products lay systems.

Roberto Raglione Roberto has more than fifteen years of experience in the energy industry and currently works in Saipem’s Asset Department. His interests include the development of laying systems and new technical opportunities in the offshore oil & gas field. Roberto holds a Master’s Degree in Civil-structural Engineering from the Pisa University, Italy, and Master in Engineering and Contracting – Project Management at the MIP School of Management, Italy. He is the SPE Italian Section Project, Facilities, Construction member.

Andrea Intieri Andrea has more than ten years of experience in the energy industry and currently works in Saipem’s Marketing department. His interests include the generation and development of new technical-commercial opportunities in the offshore deep and ultra-deep water oil & gas developments and in the subsea processing technologies. Andrea holds a Master’s Degree with honours in Industrial Engineering from the Technical University of Milan, Italy, and a M.B.A. at the MIP School of Management, Italy. He is the SPE Italian Section Project, Facilities, Construction Technical Director.

Fig.8: Saipem’s Normand Maximus at the naming cerimony

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Naturally Fractured Reservoir, challenging modeling of complex fracture/matrix mechanisms Naturally fractured Reservoirs (NFRs) represent a significant proportion of the world’s oil and gas reserves, including some of the largest reservoirs.

Andrea Lamberti Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Reservoir Technical Director

Fig.1: Fractured carbonate reservoir are extremely complex. Main challenge of modeling is the correct representation of fluid dynamic behavior.

NFRs are among the most complicated class of reservoirs to produce efficiently. Indeed, in an NFR, production is driven by complex mechanisms governing fracture/matrix-block communication.

Natural fractures provide high-permeability conduits, which could short-circuit fluid flow within a reservoir. This can lead to early breakthrough of water or gas in production wells, leaving a significant amount of unrecovered oil behind in bypassed matrix blocks.

Therefore, a careful control of production rates is essential, especially in fractured reservoir systems with active water drive, to keep water cut low and to achieve higher recovery efficiency.

Special attention has to be paid in modelling NFR in order to correctly reproduce the fracture network dynamics.

The main challenge is the uncertainty about the spatial distribution of the fractures influencing the flow and affecting the reservoir performance. Connected systems of fractures often occur on length scales of 10s to 100s of meters

that are considerably larger than what many wellbore-based measurement techniques can assess, but too small for typical 3D seismic techniques to solve.

This data gap can be partially filled by dynamic data and wellbore-based seismic data, but typically leaves room for significant uncertainty.

The work here below combines the information based on the nature of the reservoir with the dynamic behavior and production data of the field. The study delivers a 3D model capable to support the definition of production optimization activities and to provide reliable forecast production profiles.

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Reservoir modeling and innovative history match methodology under anhydrous production constraints and no pressure decline: the Rospo Mare field (Adriatic Sea) case history Rospo Mare is a fractured karstic carbonate reservoir heavy oil bearing (11.5°API) on stream since the 80’s. Reservoir pressure has been constant during this period due to a strong tilted aquifer. The producing wells are systematically operated at a critical rate to prevent water production because of absence of water Giuseppe Bellentani treatment installations.

Edison S.p.A. Beyond the complexity of this reservoir, the historical data to match are very limited since the field production proves no water or gas production and a pressure constant over production years is observed.

The two solutions found to achieve a predictive model were: first, to propose an adapted method to model the karst and the fracture systems, and second, to develop an innovative history match method consisting in an iterative process which combines both historical and forecast periods.

The complex, polyphasic and fractured karst Cretaceous reservoir of Rospo Mare is represented by two media in the model: the matrix and the fracture. Both these two media, with their specific heterogeneities, participate to the reservoir behavior. The simulation model is dual porosity single permeability.

The matrix porosity is generally below 5% with associated low permeability. At the end of the history match period only 10% of oil was produced from the matrix medium and the remaining 90% from the fracture medium.

Two main fracture components are observed in Rospo Mare field; diffuse fractures (small scale objects) and faults or lineaments (large scale objects). For the diffuse fractures, the network geometry is built by applying the DFN (Discrete Fracture Network) modelling technique (Bourbiaux et al., 1997), whereas the modelling of faults and lineaments is deterministic. As the fracturation phase of Rospo Mare reservoir occurred before the karstification phase, the dissolution of the carbonates was guided by the existing fracture network. A connection was found between the density of diffuse fractures and the different matrix facies, the most compact facies being the most fractured. The fracture modeling was therefore guided also by the matrix facies distribution. The karst system and the fracture network were modelled together thanks to a fracture model including several enlarged fracture sets and lineaments (Fig. 2).

During the dynamic calibration of the fracture model, the conductivity of the different fracture components has been modified to reproduce the KH values of the well tests. Lineaments and karstified fractures are the major contributors to the production, whereas diffuse fractures have a lower contribution. The classical calibration strategy aiming at choosing wells in order to calibrate separately the different fracture components was not feasible since the different fracture types were interfering at all wells in a complex manner. Therefore, the fracture model was calibrated with all the fracture components together.

Fig.2: Conceptual fracture model for Rospo Mare field

Because of the limited data for fracture characterization, the dynamic characteristics of fractures, particularly the aperture of enlarged fractures, were fully considered as a history match parameter. The aperture of enlarged fractures was derived through a volume estimation: knowing the well oil rates, supposed to be critical, and other parameters such as fluid properties, drainage areas and horizontal permeability from well tests, it was possible to estimate at each well the distance to water interface by using the critical rate correlations of Joshi (1988) and Giger (1986). The oil volume lying between the initial and the computed oil-water contact (OWC) in 2012 can be calculated by using different karstified fracture apertures. Comparing the volume obtained from this difference with the cumulated amount of oil produced at the end of 2012 allows estimating an aperture of karstified fracture of around 15 cm. This value is consistent with what is expected from the observation of such fractures through wellbore imaging.

The Rospo Mare field is also characterized by a tilted and strong aquifer. It was initialized in non-equilibrium state. The water saturation and pressure were specified in each cell to discretize the shape of the initial tilt of the oil-water contact. The slope was maintained by using analytical aquifers constrained in pressure defined at two opposite corners of the reservoir grid (Fig. 3).

Those analytical aquifers ensure a difference of pressure maintaining the slope of the aquifer. Without any producing well, it was checked that the oil-water contact shape is maintained during fifty years, with a constant pressure. The grid layering was chosen fine enough to ensure a good representation of the initial tilted aquifer and the water behavior at wells.

Fig.3: Positioning of analytical aquifers

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The Rospo Mare field history match is restricted to the match of the well oil rates, imposed to the fluid flow simulator. To better constrain the history match, the critical rate assumption management has been implemented in order to avoid any water production. Indeed, when producing a field at critical rates (Gauchet, 1996), the oil rates are progressively reduced during the field life when water appears. The critical rate assumes a constant vicinity of water at wells through time, without water production. This behavior has also to be reproduced by the model in the forecast to assess a close water position at wells. Therefore, the history match method considers the forecast period through a do nothing case scenario, together with the history match period. Hence, a well is considered matched when the oil production remains dry during history match, when the oil production reproduces the expected decline in forecast, and the distance of the WOC is in an accepted range honoring the monitor wells.

The history match has been achieved also with global modifications of the fracture permeability taking into account both vertical and horizontal field zonation.

The vertical field zonation is based on a vertical subdivision of the karst in: • epikarst and vertical infiltration zone (upper part of the reservoir), in which the vertical fracture permeability has been multiplied by 10; • horizontal drain zone (lower part of the reservoir), in which the horizontal fracture permeability has been multiplied by 10.

The horizontal zonation is based on the observation of well productivity and defines a best producing zone with horizontal fracture permeability in the epikarst and vertical infiltration zone only divided by 2 while the horizontal fracture permeability in the rest of the field is divided by 80 (Fig. 4).

Fig.5: Retained horizontal and vertical zonations of the fracture permeabilities

er, permeability maps correspond to one possible solution. The history match also allowed founding one possible combination of global parameters, which combined with local modifications made possible to reach the objectives.

Despite the fact that other solutions could have been possible, the obtained matched model is fully consistent with geological and physical standards. It provides a useful tool for managing the field and supporting future decisions.

Acknowledgments The author wishes to thank Beicip Franlab for the fruitful work performed during the project execution.

References • BOURBIAUX, B.J, CACAS, M.C., SARDA, S., SABATHIER, J.C.: “A FAST AND EFFICIENT METHODOLOGY TO CONVERT FRACTURED RESERVOIRS IMAGES INTO A DUAL POROSITY MODEL”, PAPER SPE 38907 PRESENTED AT THE 1997 SPE ANNUAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE & EXHIBITION, SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, 5-8 OCTOBER 1997.

• GAUCHET, R., SPE, ELF IDROCARBURI ITALIANA SPA, AND CORRE, B., ELF AQUITAINE PRODUCTION: “ROSPO MARE FIELD: A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE OF HEAVY OIL PRODUCTION WITH HORIZONTAL WELLS IN A KARST RESERVOIR IN PRESENCE OF A STRONG TILTED HYDRODYNAMISM”, PAPER SPE 36869 PRESENTED AT THE SPE EUROPEAN PETROLEUM CONFERENCE, 22-24 OCTOBER 1996, MILANO, ITALY. • JOSHI, S. D.:”AUGMENTATION OF WELL PRODUCTIVITY WITH SLANT AND HORIZONTAL WELLS”, JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY, PP. 729-739, JUNE 1988.

• JOSHI, S.D.: “HORIZONTAL WELL TECHNOLOGY”, PENNWELL BOOKS, CHAPTER 8: WATER AND GAS CONING IN VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL WELLS, PP. 251-328, JOSHI TECHNOLOGIES INTERNATIONAL, INC., TULSA, OK, USA, 1991.

• KARCHER, J. P.,F. M. GIGER AND COMBE, J.: “SOME PRACTICAL FORMULA TO PREDICT HORIZONTAL WELL BEHAVIOR”, PAPER SPE 15430 PRESENTED AT THE SPE 61ST ANNUAL TECHNICAL CONFERENCE AND EXHIBITION, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, 5-8 OCTOBER 1986.

Fig.4: Retained horizontal and vertical zonations of the fracture permeabilities

With the history matched model, the general encroachment of the water is reproduced and underlines the identified macro coning under platforms (Gauchet, 1996). The local coning under the wells is also well represented (Fig. 5). Moreover, the position of water in the model at the monitoring well is in an acceptable range through time (4 to 16 meters), compared to the observations.

The final match consists of one possible solution allowing fulfilling the criteria selected in the history match objectives. The fracture permeabilities are resulting from the calibration of the fracture model and the upscaling of the equivalent fracture properties. As the fracture components were calibrated togethGiuseppe Bellentani: He holds a degree in Geology at the “Università degli Studi di Milano”. He worked as reservoir geologist in Eni, Edison and Enel since 1998. He is currently Senior Reservoir Geologist in Edison.

30

INNOVATION

The Role of Corporate Venture Capital in the Oil&Gas Industry

Stefano Maronese Eni S.p.A.

Indeed, “thinking out of the box” is the key to innovation. The innovators are capable of re-thinking existing technologies, merging and contaminate different fields to find a more effective way to achieve their goals. We cannot rely on the ways we used to, but we as engineers (and I put myself in the number) are not so creative: we are skilled in developing but we need innovators, people who tell us to put “the sand on the ice”.

In this perspective, the job of Venture Capital (VC) and Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) is to find the innovators and bring them from their labs to the big firms, providing equity investment that bridge the gap between the ideas and the market.

A Venture Capital is an investor who either provides capital to start-ups or facilitates small dynamic companies the access to the big market. Similarly, a Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) acts on behalf of a Corporation attracting high grow and high potential business that can be strategic to the firm.

Fig.1: SPE President introduces the conference.

Nevertheless, while the sole objective of a VC is financial return, CVC pursue the research on innovations to feed the

corporate growth, and its role is not only financial, but also strategic. A master example in Oil&Gas is BP, which creates its own CVC as an extension of its R&D department.

A lake owner once had a problem with the beautiful lake by his house, as it was slowly turning into a swamp. He therefore asked a lake expert how to stop this process, and the solution provided was to lay down half-meter of sand on the bottom of the lake. The lake owner resorted to a company that accepted to carry out the work but the cost was too high.

After asking to several companies, all prospecting the same costly solution, finally, the lake owner found a company that suggested a different, innovative approach: waiting until winter and lay the half-meter of sand on top of the frozen lake, so that when the ice melts, the sand would drop on the lake bed uniformly.

During the conference presented in the next article, Mr. Meehan engaged the audience with a rather brilliant anecdote, telling the story of a lake owner, posing an amusing way to reflect on the

SECTION ACTIVITIES

31

concept of “thinking out of the box”. Surely, downturns are not new to the O&G industry, which already experienced many in the past decades.

The last downturn that occurred in the eighties, fostered the development of many new technologies that are now state of the art (for instance: deepwater drilling, horizontal drilling, etc…). In this frame, CVC can positively help O&G industry to recover from the swamp of the current economic situation, increasing the resilience in times of low oil prices.

“The ultimate challenge in our industry is to enable safe, affordable energy to improve people’s life” noted Mr. Meehan.

And we all agree that to achieve such an ambitious scope, we need to find a way to put “the sand on the ice”.

Fig.2: GA Drilling presentation

Boosting start-up to upstream operations: the Corporate Venture Capital way

Ruben Visintin Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Program Chairperson

One of the key event of the 30th Anniversary of SPE Italian Section, has been the conference titled “Boosting start up to upstream operations – The Corporate Venture Capital”, held in Eni at Bolgiano, the main R&D center of Eni in San Donato Milanese, on the 14th of September.

Alessandro Tiani, Chairman of SPE Italy, opened the conference welcoming the audience and pointing out how the main challenge in our field is the creation of new synergies, especially

during downturns.

The opening segment of the conference was highlighted by the contribution of Giuseppe Tannoia (EVP of R&D department at Eni), Livio Scalvini (CEO of Neva Fininventures, Intesa Sanpaolo) and Nathan Meehan (2016 SPE President) who focused on the controversial topic of innovation in the O&G industry.

Giuseppe Tannoia, EVP Research and Technological Innovation in Eni S.p.A. thanked the SPE Italian Section and Intesa Sanpaolo for the opportunity to talk about a very important tool on the innovation funnel. This was the perfect chance to present various real cases explained by companies and investment funds, the related strategies used and the financial advantages obtained.

The first of the two keynote speeches was presented by Livio Scalvini, CEO of Neva Finventures, Intesa Sanpaolo, who had a first insight on the Corporate Venture Capital and the possibility to benefit from the innovations made available by the market place to sustain profitable growth in a corporation: “only

the firms that can manage to adapt themselves, are destined to grow, otherwise the stress will quickly bring them out of the market”, was the key message he launched.

Nathan Meehan, 2016 SPE President, performed the second speech where he gave a perspective on how the innovation could help facing the changes in upstream oil and gas sector during the downturn.

He had clearly remarked that this is a good time for innovation.

When oil prices and rig counts are high, asset teams scramble to keep up with activity, so there is little time or inclination to innovate. When prices are lower, it presents an opportunity to do something different and better. And this is the smartest way to react.

Bill Barber, the conference’s presenter, introduced to the audience five examples of highly dynamic, privately held business offering innovative solutions to tackle the crucial objective of increase the efficiency while reducing the costs in the Oil&Gas industry, the cornerstone to survive in the downturn. He has spent his whole life in the CVC world. Currently he is working with Intesa Sanpaolo as a “serial entrepreneur” (as he like to define himself), creating and selling innovative companies.

The five start-ups were presented during a so-called elevator pitch. The term ‘elevator pitch’ reflects the idea that it should be possible to deliver the summary in the time span of an elevator ride, such as in the scenario of an accidental meeting with someone important in the elevator. If the conversation in those few seconds is interesting and value adding, it will either continue after the elevator ride, or end in exchange of business cards or a scheduled meeting.

32

SECTION ACTIVITIES

Fig. 3: The presentation from Sestosensor

The first start-up was GA Drilling, a high-tech company developing and commercializing a groundbreaking technology platform PLASMABIT. The technology enables massive time and cost savings compared to relevant existing drilling technologies and opens up vast new possibilities in oil & gas, geothermal energy, mining, and tunneling.

NTSG, New Tech Generation System, is as start-up dedicated to the research, design and construction of new engineering and measurement systems, exploiting new technologies, materials and processes used in pioneering fields such as Aerospace. They developed a tool (OF) for measuring the deformation of an object with any type of shape and made up of any materials, using optical fibers and strain gauges as measuring instruments.

Sestosensor is a high-tech startup company developing photonic sensors with special focus on fiber optic sensing solutions for Oil & Gas, Structural Health Monitoring (SHM), geological monitoring, mining, smart power grid, monitoring of museum artifacts, process control in chemical and industrial plants and leakage detection for landfills/waste disposal sites.

Nanto Paint’s mission is to become a world benchmark in the protective coating market replacing conventional coating with new sustainable, innovative and cost effective smart coatings with very high corrosion and abrasion resistance, chemical and heat endurance, remarkable scratch and easy cleaning properties.

The last company to present itself was weAR, which aims to deliver a new generation of user-generated instruction manuals, easily accessible with smartphone, tablet and smartglasses through augmented reality mobile app to train workers in a new way. weAR’s first product is MARKO: the Next Generation Manual. A round table closed the event, moderated by Bill Barber.

It gathered several representatives of the corporate, research

and financial world: Massimiliano Pieri (VP of MIT Cooperation Agreement at Eni), Philipp Ulbrich (Innovator scouting at E.on), Arne Froiland (Saudi Aramco Energy Venture), Giovanni Ravina (Engie New Venture), Pascal Siegwart (Aster Capital), Francis O’Sullivan (Director at MIT Energy Initiative).

During the discussion, it has been pointed out that in some industry sectors, such as the Oil & Gas, the length of the innovation cycle could be remarkably long, in spite of the need to perform better of the peers, to decrease costs and to accelerate the field development.

Owing to increase efficiency doing innovation, the CVC could represent a way to bring external ideas and technologies into the innovation process, an opportunity for innovation without paying high R&D costs or incurring too much risk, accelerating time to market, and creating new revenue streams for the company. On the other side, the startups can benefit from access to a large, established customer base, credibility through brand association and a larger network of partner companies and advisors.

After one hour of intense debate, the conference ended up sharing some clear statements. There is no magic wand to boost profit and efficiency in the operations. In a sluggish economy, there is no room for errors and no time to lose. The different experiences shared during the event showed that in a challenging time as the one the Oil and Gas sector is facing today, the cornerstone of the success is the innovation. The faster we will bring new and efficient solutions to our operations, the better it will be for our business.

SECTION ACTIVITIES

Fig. 4: Giampiero Sindoni presents NTSG solutions

Fig. 5: The final panel on Corporate Venture Capital

33

SPONSORED CONTENT

AHEAD 375

a new fully automated drilling rig with the highest level of safety and drilling efficiency Angelo Calderoni - Marco Cercato The design and the technology of the land drilling rigs have remained almost unchanged and traditional for too long. On the contrary, downhole tools and well drilling technologies have undergone significant changes involving innovative approaches towards the design and engineering of many drilling rigs components.

The vision of new automated drilling rigs, driven by well data gathered in real time, has only recently started spreading in the drilling rigs market. Automated drilling has rapidly become one of the oil industry’s most important innovation targets, mostly because of the challenging difficulties and increasing costs of the new oil and gas frontiers. The latest generation of drilling rigs is: Advanced Hydraulic Electrical Automated Driller, named AHEAD. Recently the “AHEAD 375” has been developed.

It is a new concept of fully automated drilling rig where the highest HSE standards and drilling efficiency are assured.

With the introduction of the AHEAD Series in the market, a new standard has been set. Fairly soon even 500 ton and 750 ton static hook load capacity AHEAD rigs will be developed, so making the hydraulic rigs very competitive with the 1,500 HP and 2,000 HP conventional rigs, even in the offshore market, as a valuable solution, particularly for platforms with limited space available.

The main technical break-through introduced with these new rigs is certainly the new hydraulic telescopic mast, equipped with a double hydraulic piston (patent pending), a technical innovation that gives AHEAD the capability of handling 90 ft stands, included two API Range 3 (or three API Range 2) drill pipes, with no prejudice to the fast moving characteristics of the rig. As a matter of fact, the innovative mast configuration has been designed to divide the mast into two independent sections for transportation on two standard semi-trailers. The connection and disconnection of the two pistons are easy and fast; they take place at ground level, with the aid of a crane, in very safe conditions.

An advanced fully automated off-line system (patent pending) allows making up and breaking stands directly in the mouse hole, drastically reducing the downtime related to the operations performed at the rotary table. The drill pipes, placed horizontally on transportable racks, are taken by an automatic sliding clamp and positioned on the first pipe handler, which carries out the vertical overturning in the mouse hole.

The drill pipes make-up and break-out are performed by a Power Tong installed at the mouse hole and characterized by a vertical sliding system capable of ensuring the proper alignment of the drill pipes before the connection.

Once the stand is composed, it can be directly taken by the Top Drive at the mouse hole and brought to the well center, or it can be positioned in the vertical pipe rack, by using a second pipe handler installed on a vertical rotating tower.

The system works automatically in a programmed logic controlled (PLC) sequence but the driller maintains the possibility to manage directly the whole system from his cyber chair.

The vertical pipe rack is located on the right side of the rig. It is comprised of mobile bins that contain stands 90 ft long. Characterized by a modular structure, sized for a pipe storing capacity of 5.000 m (90 ft stands composed by 5.1/2” Range 3 drill pipes), it can be easily assembled and disassembled. The offline system is able to handle even the casing joints in the same way as the drill pipes, placed on special racks, which are positioned on the ground.

The drill collars are handled by an auxiliary crane, able to handle up to two 9 3/4” drill col-

lars at a time. A dedicated rack, placed next to the vertical pipe rack, assures the storage of the drill collars.

In order to ensure high drilling performance in deep wells, as well as in horizontal wells, the AHEAD rigs are equipped with an ETD (Electric Top Drive), able to provide high torque in a wide rpm range. The ETD configuration for the AHEAD rigs includes the horizontal displacement system, which allows it to move the pipes from the center hole to the mouse hole and vice versa.

In the AHEAD rigs everything is conceived to increase drilling efficiency and safety, while reducing NPT, moving time and costs. This statement is supported by solid evidence: only 21 loads are necessary to move the rig package from one location to the next one. No oversize vehicle or special permission are required. Furthermore, the rig, complete of its vertical drill pipe rack, can be equipped with a walking system, so reducing further NPT and additional costs for the drilling contractor.

All rig up/down operations take place at the ground level, minimizing crane operations at considerable height.

Once the rig is completely assembled, the mast is raised to vertical position by two hydraulic pistons integrated in the lower section. After that, the rig is raised to the required substructure level. Such a simple procedure allows reducing the drilling crew members number, resulting in increased safety and faster operations. Only one individual is required in the driller’s cabin to supervise operations.

Although the AHEAD Rigs are able to handle 90 ft stands, the compact design characterizing the new hydraulic telescopic mast does not compromise the typical environmental friendly design of the hydraulic rigs.

The rig location, including all equipment needed for drilling operations, requires a 40% smaller space than an equivalent conventional rig.

The hydraulic technology allows a reduced visual impact, low noise level and minimized waste production.

SECTION PROGRAM Dear members, I am proud to announce that the next few months will see many events that we hope will be fruitful and do figure out how to belong to the SPE is a source of continuous opportunities for collaboration and growth, both on the professional and the relational Ruben Visintin side.

Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section Sparkling start with the celebration Program Chairperson of the thirtieth anniversary of the Italian section, culminated with the creation of the Student Chapter at the Politecnico di Milano, with the conference “Boosting start-ups to field operations: the Corporate Venture Capital way” and with the visit of Nathan Meehan, 2016 SPE president, as you read on this bulletin. On September, 30th a Business Visit at TenarisDalmine was organized by our wonderful team of Young Professionals. SPE YPs joined the visit at the Tenaris Mill to learn about pipes melting, shaping and milling techniques.

On October, 27 , there will be a round table organized by APVE (Associazione Pionieri e Veterani Eni) and SPE YP Italian Section: “Collaboration between generations: overcoming barriers to create new opportunities”. The event will be hosted by Eni Corporate University, in San Donato Milanese. th

On November, 17th, ClampOn & Mepeco, will welcome customers, collaborators and colleagues in the industry for a full day with technical session (Non Intrusive Monitoring related to Flow Assurance) related to sand, erosion, corrosion, pigging and vibration. During the Technical Day, attending people will have the opportunity to share and discuss any technical aspect of interest.

The event will be held at the Crown Plaza Hotel, in San Donato Milanese.

troleum engineering positions, asset development leadership posts in operations, and global technology deployment roles.

Since 2008, van den Berg has helped to organize the SPE Intelligent Energy and Digital Energy conferences. He joined Shell after graduating in physics at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

• On February, 20th, Ronald McLeod will present “Human Factors in Barrier Thinking”. Ron McLeod is honorary professor of engineering psychology at Heriot-Watt University. He has more than 30 years’ experience as a human factors specialist and was Shell’s global discipline lead for human factors until March 2014.

McLeod has been active in organizations including the UK National Advisory Committee on Human Factors, the Process Safety Leadership Group, the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers, SPE, and the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. He has published in scientific journals and has authored or contributed to numerous technical standards and best-practice guides. McLeod’s first book, Designing for Human Reliability: Human Factors Engineering in the Oil, Gas, and Process Industries, was published by Elsevier in 2015.

• On June, 5th Dean Rietz will present “Incorporating Numerical Simulation Into Your Reserves Estimation Process: A Practical Perspective”. Dean C. Rietz is president and member of the board of directors at Ryder Scott Petroleum Consultants. He has more than 30 years of diverse experience in evaluating oil and gas properties, including more than 25 years of applying numerical modeling approaches to these evaluations. Previously, Rietz managed the Ryder Scott Reservoir Simulation Group for approximately 15 years and worked for Chevron, Gruy, and Intera before joining Ryder Scott.

These events are showed in the schematic table here below.

Finally, let me introduce the three Distinguished Lectures that will be hosted during 2016-2017: • On November, 24th Frans VandenBerg will present “The Digital Oilfield Collaborative Working at Global Scale”. Frans works in the global Smart Fields program in Shell’s Projects and Technology organization in the Netherlands. He leads the company’s global implementation of CWEs. Van den Berg has served in peDate

Promoter

Type

Title

27 OCTOBER

Associazione Pionieri e

Liaison with associations

Collaboration between generations: overcoming barriers to create new opportunities

Veterani Eni 17 NOVEMBER

ClampOn & Mepeco

Technical Day

Non Intrusive Monitoring related to Flow Assurance

24 NOVEMBER

SPE Italian Section

Distinguished Lectures

The Digital Oilfield Collaborative Working at Global Scale

20 February 2017

SPE Italian Section

Distinguished Lectures

Human Factors in Barrier Thinking

5 June 2017

SPE Italian Section

Distinguished Lectures

Incorporating Numerical Simulation Into Your Reserves Estimation Process: A Practical Perspective

SECTION BOARD S P E I TA L I A N S E C T I O N B O A R D 2 0 1 6 - 2 0 1 7

Chairman

Vice Chairman

Tiani Alessandro (Eni S.p.A)

Maurizio Rampoldi (Eni S.p.A.)

alessandro.tiani@eni.com

maurizio.rampoldi@eni.com

Mentor Chairperson

Past Chairvice Chairman

Paccaloni Giovanni

Tealdi Loris (Eni S.p.A)

gpaccal@tin.it

loris.tealdi@eni.com

Program Chairperson

Membership Chairperson

Ruben Visintin F.G. (Eni S.p.A)

Eleonora Azzarone (Eni S.p.A)

ruben.visintin@eni.com

eleonora.azzarone@eni.com

Treasurer

Scholarship Chairperson

Fernando Luis Morales Urosa (Sclumberger Italiana S.p.A.)

Dellarole Edoardo (TEA Sistemi S.p.A.) edoardo.dellarole@tea-group.com

fmorales2@slb.com

Technical Director Section Drilling and Completion

Technical Director - Section HSE

Paolo Allara (Saipem S.p.A.)

Scotti Davide (Saipem S.p.A.)

paolo.allara@saipem.com

davide.scotti@saipem.com

Technical Director Section Management and Information

Technical Director Section ProduCtion and Operations

Giudicati Gianna (Eni S.p.A)

Allegra Mondello (Costacurta S.p.A.)

gianna.giudicati@eni.com

amondello@costacurta.it

Technical Director - Section Project Facilities and Construction

Technical Director Section Reservoir

Intieri Andrea (Saipem S.p.A)

Andrea Lamberti (Eni S.p.A.)

andrea.intieri@saipem.com

andrea.luigi.lamberti@eni.com

Director - Companies advertisement and Sponsorship

Director External Relations Universities

Valerio Parasiliti Parracello (Eni S.p.A)

Claudia Porretta Serapiglia (Eni S.p.A)

valerio.parasiliti.parracello@eni.com

claudia.porretta.serapiglia@eni.com

Director - External Relations and Associations

Director - Mid/Downstream Liaison

Stephan Conte ( Eni S.p.A.)

Carollo Lorenzo

Director - innovation and section development

Director - Awards Nominations

Pinarello Giordano (Bluethink S.p.A.) giordano.pinarello@bluethink.it

Ugo Ormezzano (Tetra Technologies Inc.)

Director

Director

stephan.conte@eni.com

lorenzocarollo73@gmail.com

uormezzano@tetratec.com

Maurizio Senese

Di Lullo Alberto (Eni S.p.A)

maurizio.senese@gmail.com

alberto.dilullo@eni.com

Director

Director - Gela Liaison

Antonella Godi (Edison S.p.A.)

Savioli Lorenzo (Eni S.p.A)

antonella.godi@edison.it

lorenzo.savioli@eni.com

Internet & Communication Chairperson

Young Professional Chairperson

Vacca Adele (Eni S.p.A)

Andrea Tondelli (Eni S.p.A)

adele.vacca@eni.com

andrea.tondelli@eni.com

Student Chapter Liaison

Secretary

Viberti Dario (Politecnico di Torino)

Ferdinando Marfella (Eni S.p.A)

dario.viberti@polito.it

ferdinando.marfella2@eni.com

Director - Bulletin Managing Editor

Vienna Arrigo (Eni S.p.A) arrigo.vienna@eni.com

Italian Section dashboard Section # 096 Report as of 05 October 2016 Char ts do not include affiliate members.

Professionals Members: 476

Affiliate Members: 8

Student Members: 260

Professional Member Retention: 80.04% Professional Member Growth: -6.85%

STYPED THE YOUNG PROFESSIONALS JOURNAL

BULLETIN 3 / 2016

YP FOCUS

STYPED INITIATIVES

YP COMMUNITY

The energy beyond SPE’ YP is the answer.

Discover Oil&Gas Industry: SPE visits TENARIS

SPE Italian Section celebrates its 30th Anniversary

Giovanni Cuomo Eni S.p.A.

Andrea Adelmo ASCI - Eni S.p.A.

Andrea Tondelli Eni S.p.A. - SPE Italian Section YP Chairman

42 YP FOCUS

The energy beyond SPE’ YP is the answer.

I would like to begin with a “Thank you”!! Thank you to all the people that worked behind the scene to organize an amazing full day event as the one we realized the September 14th.

Every event needs work in order to be successful but often there is no correspondence between the energy involved and the courtesy received. Often YPs’ work remains in the back-office and does not receive the deserved refund. Last September 14th has been a big day for us, surely because of the participation of SPE International president Nathan Meehan but also because it was THE “testing day” for all of us; a full day of successful events.

We are a completely new board with people involved that roughly reach a year of seniority in SPE, but this does not scare us as we took part with confidence in the whole organization.

YPs were involved since the beginning for the first event of the day at PoliMI with the poster creation and distribution. We organized with a common leading thread the Torino, Milano and Roma Student Chapter presentations. Moreover, the catering selection, the coordination with PoliMI staff, professors and students had the YP stamp. Everything worked flawlessly and the event was a success with more than 40 students listening the SC proposal and the amazing motivational speech that Nathan held for all of them. YPs commitment for the afternoon conference solved two fundamental tasks: communication and logistics. The poster event has been fully developed and physically distributed by YPs in all the work places we are present while the memory of the day has been stored thanks to a dedicated article and hundreds of pictures. YPs greatly solved the logistic task organizing a free bus for all member that desired to participate in the afternoon conference.

Andrea Tondelli Eni S.p.A. SPE Italian Section YP Chairman

For the night, the bus stopped in three different locations (Metro Station, Bolgiano and Eni) in order to be more comfortable for all members coming from various parts of Milan. YPs involvement for the night solved different tasks. Graphics: poster and menu’s style were created from scratch to match the anniversary dinner motif; welcoming: YPs managed the initial reception and solved the inconvenience that came out during the event; award: YPs were involved in the awards that have been issued during that special night in the whole realization workflow, from the design to the manufacturing. With this article, I wanted to shed light on these tasks that usually does not receive consideration and let everyone know about the hard work behind the creation of such ambitious events of SPE Italian Section.

Our goal this year is to further enhance the membership value, our member deserve to be proud of their association and we need to reach this ambitious goal. Being part of SPE allows members to participate at technical workshops and stay updated about new developments in our industry. SPE permits all members to create a personal and professional network, thanks to the events during the year but also with the brand new “Business Visits Program”. The BVP open the major companies’ doors of our business and this only for our members and with the ambitious goal of a business visit every month. Participating at them not only allow members to discover the heart of the O&G industry - hardly, if not impossible, to see on their own - but also create a wonderful possibility to grow a network with other professionals.

Make it recurrent just simply allows to create a more robust network. The BVP is entirely promoted and managed by YPs with the help of our senior identifying possible company candidates, and this is just the beginning.

STYPED INITIATIVES

43

The SPE group who visited TENARIS

Discover Oil&Gas Industry: SPE visits TENARIS On September 30th, a group of 16 SPE members visited the leading supplier of tubes and related services for the world energy industry: TENARIS, settled in Dalmine (Bergamo). Tenaris is a division of Techint, which was founded in Milan in 1945 by Italian industrialist Agostino Rocca. Mr. Rocca began as an engineering apprentice at Dalmine, a steel maker, in 1923 and in a decade he began the CEO of the company, that later would be bought by Techint.

Tenaris has presence in over 30 countries and more than 21.000 employees. Today companies owned by Tenaris include: Dalmine (Italy), Siderca and Siat (Argentina), Confab (Brazil), Tamsa (Mexico), Algoma (Canada), Silcotub (Romania) and production facilities in the US and in Japan.

Through a series of strategic investments Tenaris expanded its business including the world’s leading oil and gas companies (casing, tubing and line pipe are the principal products) as well as automotive (air-bag) and building companies (structural pipes).

Giovanni Cuomo Eni S.p.A.

In Tenaris’ philosophy, as well as the one of SPE, the know-how is considered one of the most important assets. For this reason Tenaris launched the TenarisUniversity which is committed to providing training that contributes to the Company’s performance.

We were welcomed at the University by Simone Malesani, Tenaris Technical Sales Representative, who introduced the company and the OCTG (Oil Country Tubular Goods) manufacturing process.

Tenaris manufactures a complete range of seamless and welded steel tubular products. In Dalmine seamless pipes are produced following these two main steps: - transformation of raw materials into steel billets; - transformation of steel billets into mother pipe, which is manufactured in different types of rolling mills

The raw materials for the steel bar manufacturing process are sponge iron or metal scrap (as in Dalmine). The process starts loading the metal scrap into the furnace by means of buckets.

Using electric arc furnace raw materials are melted to obtain liquid steel with a temperature reaching 1660°C. The electrodes of the arc are made of graphite and to accelerate the melting some burners, running on gas and oxygen, are placed into the furnace, which has a capacity of 105 tons of raw material and is lined with refractory bricks.

Liquid steel is discharged through a tap hole and poured into a ladle. The furnace tilts backwards to allow the slag to fall into a melting pot and then tilts forwards to discharge liquid steel into a ladle. Out of the 105 tons of metal scrap loaded, 80 tons are poured into the ladle. At this stage the chemistry of the molten steel can be adjusted by adding ferroalloys: samples are collected and send to laboratories until reaching the wanted recipe. A crane lifts the ladle above the continuous casting turret and from the ladle the liquid steel is poured into the tundish so to produce solid bars.

The liquid steel begins its solidification during the continuous casting and finally becomes a steel billet with a diameter of 145395 mm, which is cut into segments and then transferred to a cooling bed.

The billets are then placed into a rotary hearth furnace, where the material is heated to a temperature of around 1300°C which is suitable for further deformation and to have the right condition for the rolling phase. The seamless manufacturing process is a result of Mannesmann brother: it consists into piercing the massive solid billet while it is rolled through two dual-tapered conic shape cylinders that cause the cracking of the billet in the middle. The thick walled pipe (called shell) so obtained is then

44 STYPED INITIATIVES hot rolled using two or three rolls for each stands (they are 90° to each other): a multi-stand pipe mill process allows to reduce the outside diameter and wall thickness until the target value.

In order to modify mechanical and corrosion resistance properties, heat treatments are performed. They can be done in different way for example as quenching and tempering or as normalization. The first one is the most frequent for OCTG and consists in the heating of tubes at high temperature (850-930 °C),followed by a very fast cooling and a subsequent heating at a lower temperature (500-700 °C). The normalization consists in homogeneously heating the tube until reaching the austenitizing temperature. Then the tube is cooled down at room temperature in open air. This generates uniformity in the pipe’s microstructure, hardness and mechanical properties.

We had the unique chance to witness first-hand all the above described steel making process: from the loading into the furnace to the continuous casting. It was an incredible experience for all of us. Thanks to Eugenio Maffeis, Roberto Locatelli and Alberto

Redaelli, having years of experience in Tenaris, we were able to satisfy our curiosities about all the aforementioned processes, asking questions ranking from the selection of metal scrap, to the additive used to avoid the stucking between the billet and the mandrel, as well as the automation process implemented.

At Tenaris each product is manufactured in accordance with customer specifications and undergoes severe Q/C procedures, amongst them are non-destructive tests to guarantee a high reliability of the final product. The most common techniques are electromagnetic and magnetic testing, ultrasonic testing, dye penetrant inspection and visual inspection: some of them were shown in Tenaris’ laboratories.

All the participants were truly enthusiastic of this business visit, that was perceived as a wonderful and effective way to learn how big and interesting could the O&G world outside the little slice that each one of us usually see each day, and SPE always strives to let its members discover as much as possible of this world.

So, what to add… See you at the next visit!!!

TenarisUniversity.

Overview of the rolling milling process for seamless pipes seen from the Control Room.

YP COMMUNITY

45

YP’S PHOTOBOOK SPE Italian Section celebrates its 30th Anniversary

On September 14th 2016, SPE Italian Section celebrates its 30th anniversary with a day full of events!

The first event of the day was at Politecnico di Milano with the “PoliMI” Student Chapter kick-off. Other Italian Student Chapters, from Università “La Sapienza” of Rome and Politecnico di Torino were present for the event. Speechs by G. de Getto, (former Eni EVP, now Professor at Politecnico di Milano), and Nathan Meehan (2016 SPE International Chairman) enriched the event and were focused on the Oil & Gas developments for years to come and other remarks based on both their personal and professional experience.

Andrea Adelmo ASCI - Eni S.p.A.

Photo credits: Giulia De Donno

In the afternoon, Eni Conference Room in Bolgiano hosted a round table about Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) from the perspective of boosting start-ups to upstream operations. The event was also an occasion for a sequence of Elevator Pitches by Companies that most of all showed how innovation could couple with Upstream O&G Industry. Amongst all the attendees, the aforementioned Nathan Meehan, Matthias Meister (SPE Regional Director – South, Central and East Europe) and Alessandro Tiani (SPE Italian Section Chairman) participated with large interest.

46 YP COMMUNITY

The evening was an occasion for the annual SPE Social Dinner, attended by 100+ people, both seniors and young professionals. At the end of the dinner, various members were awarded for their contribution to SPE, receiving the award by Nathan Meehan and Matthias Meister.

It was a truly long, interesting and satisfactory day for both the participants and the organizers that once again tested what the willing for volunteering of the members of the SPE Italian Section is able to create and manage in order to be beneficial to our Industry.