Operations Geology

Course Presenter – Tim Herrett, BSc (Hons) Geology, FGS, CGeol

Tim Herrett has over 35 years of wellsite and operations geology experience as well as performing in-house projects for major oil companies. His areas of technical expertise are in operational geoscience, formation pressure evaluation, HTHP, wellsite data management and in training facilitation.

Who Should Attend?

The course is aimed at those wanting to break into operations geology from wellsite geology, subsurface geoscientists wanting to learn more about the role or those with limited experience of the role wanting to know more. As a minimum, those attending the course should have a firm grasp of offshore operations and some knowledge of wellsite geology.

Why Should You Attend?

This is a comprehensive course for those professionals wanting to understand the role of the operations geologist. No longer is it exclusively a well execution phase role involving data acquisition and distribution, although there is still a false perception in the industry that this is what it is. In actuality, operations geology is now a wide ranging, responsible and dynamic role encompassing safety critical functions through the entire life of a well. Because of this new wide raging focus the role is also moving from a consultancy position to one of full time dedicated staff. This course describes this modern role as it is now and how it may develop in the future.

Course Overview

All modules of the course have been accredited by the Geological Society.

• Overview of the operations geology role and operational geoscience in general.
o What makes a good operations geologist?
o Importance of ‘soft skills’.

• How to plan a well effectively:
o Overview of the well planning process.
o Early planning tasks and setting well objectives.
o Offset well data acquisition, validation and interpretation.
o Geological and drilling risk identification, assessment and management.
o Role in shallow hazards assessment.
o Formation pressure and temperature predictions.
o Data acquisition programme development.
o Well trajectory planning.
o Well AFE, geological contracts and budgeting.
o Geological and drilling programme.
o Regulatory processes.
o Pre-spud tasks and personnel preparedness.

• Well surveillance and review:
o How to monitor an active well and wells drilled by others.
o Work-life balance.
o Managing personnel and services – quality control.
o Data quality and management.
o Monitoring wireline and coring.
o Real-time pressure evaluation.
o Real-time monitoring of drilling and incident management, NPT and lessons learned.
o Monitoring partner wells.

• Extended Reach Drilling (ERD) and Geosteering overview:
o ERD overview and well types.
o Specific ERD well challenges and mitigations.
o Geosteering overview.
o Geosteering challenges and mitigations.
o Planning for geosteering and dealing with uncertainty.
o Geosteering and well execution.

• Formation pressure and wellbore stability:
o Basics of pressures and overview of processes.
o Earth stresses, how to evaluate them and their relationship to pore and fracture pressures. How to recognise wellbore instability caused by anisotropic stress.
o How to calculate overburden pressures and their importance in pore and fracture pressure calculations.
o How to calculate fracture pressures and evaluate LOTs and FITs.
o The dependence of well design on formation pressure predictions.
o The importance of recognising pore pressure generation mechanisms.
o The controls on pore pressure distribution post generation – Understanding the centroid principle. Pore pressure prediction using seismic and basin modelling.
o Understanding quantitative pore pressure calculation methods.
o The interpretation of key pore pressure and earth stress indicators – caving, gas, hole conditions etc.
o Use and interpretation of direct pressure measurements.
o Real-time formation pressure evaluation.

The course is supported by numerous case studies and exercises.

About the Presenter

Tim Herrett is the director of Tim Herrett Limited and has been working in the oil industry since 1978 starting as a mudlogger and working up to become an acknowledged specialist in wellsite/operations geology, formation pressure evaluation and HTHP. He has extensive experience of wells and operations in Europe, the USA, Brazil and North Africa including 10 years drilling deep, complex HPHT wells.

He has also been involved in project work for Mobil, ExxonMobil and BP including regional pressure studies, database support, and authoring a number of manuals and procedure guides.

Since 1995 Tim has been involved increasingly in the provision of specialist training courses to the oil industry and to academia. He is an associate lecturer on two Petroleum Geoscience Masters courses at the Universities of Manchester and Derby in the UK. He also presents open courses to the industry through independent training providers in Europe and Southeast Asia.

In 2010 Tim was asked to put together material for BPs Accelerated Development Programme (ADP) for Operations Geologists. This is a ten-year process to build up BPs core skills in staff operations geology and includes two 4 week residential courses that Tim is lead facilitator on. The ADP has been very successful and Tim co-presented on it to the industry at the Operations Geology conference in London in November 2014.

Tim was chairman of the Operations Geology Conference held in London in November 2016 and is on the committee for the projected 2018 conference. In 2015 he conducted a detailed survey of operations geologists, the results of which were presented at the 2016 conference. This, together with his years of operational geoscience experience has given him a unique insight into the operations geology role.

Course Duration: 4.5 Days

Cost:£1995 + VAT

Discounts: 10% discount to Geological Society Fellows.

Operation Geology Training London, England, Scotland and other sites throughout the UK including onsite closed company courses are available.

Operation Geology Training, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, India, Ghana and Nigeria is also available.