As a result of this course, participants should be able to:

There is an open book written assessment for each module. If any participant has difficulty completing assessments, they can request the assessments be conducted orally.

A North Texas company has launched a sweeping project to tap potentially huge oil reserves still left in the ground at the famed Hastings field, located between Alvin and Pearland.

The project aims to free stranded oil by injecting carbon dioxide into the once-prolific reservoir in a process used since the 1970s in West Texas to coax more crude from aging fields.

It is made possible by a new $1 billion pipeline that carries the gas from south Louisiana to Hastings, and that eventually could help revive a number of dormant fields along the Gulf Coast.

Using conventional extraction methods, oil companies typically recover about a third of the oil in a reservoir. When carbon dioxide is injected into a well, however, it mixes with trapped oil and creates a new fluid that is less viscous and flows out more easily. Recovery rates can rise to 60 percent.

Plano-based Denbury Resources still has months of work to do before the project begins producing oil.

That work includes building new infrastructure and pulling up decades’ worth of oil field detritus.

And it includes winning over residents, not all of them excited about the prospect of yet another new oil development at Hastings.

“There’s a lot of scars on the acreage over the years,” said Marty Toombs, operations engineer for Denbury, during a recent tour of the field.

The Hastings project arrives as rising crude prices are providing fresh incentive for oil companies to pursue more costly or experimental projects that otherwise might not be feasible.

It also highlights the potential of enhanced oil recovery techniques, both to boost U.S. oil supplies and to dispose of large quantities of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas linked to climate change.

The techniques could produce 85 billion additional barrels of oil in U.S. oil fields, with more than half of that profitable to extract at crude prices above $70 a barrel, according to a study early last year by Advanced Resources International.

Output could be even higher if regulators created incentives to capture carbon dioxide from industrial sources like power plants and steer it to oil production, the group said.

In Texas, one of the top oil-producing states, carbon dioxide-enhanced oil recovery projects already account for more than 15 percent of the average annual oil production, though most is from mature fields in West Texas’ Permian Basin, according to the University of Texas’ Bureau of Economic Geology.

Outside the Permian Basin, more than 5.7 billion additional barrels of oil could be produced statewide using the technology, the bureau estimates.

Susan Hovorka, a senior research scientist at the bureau, said it’s impossible to estimate the cost of going after those barrels, given variables like drilling expenses, cost of carbon dioxide and other factors. But with oil now trading around $90 a barrel, she said, investors are interested.

To this point, the biggest obstacle in redeveloping Gulf Coast fields like Hastings has been lack of a readily available source of carbon dioxide.

Denbury’s 320-mile Green Pipeline changes that. It transports carbon dioxide, mined in Mississippi, from Donaldsonville, La., to the Hastings field. Ultimately, Denbury hopes it also will carry carbon dioxide collected from Gulf Coast refiners, chemical plants and other industrial facilities — and be extended to other fields, including the much larger Conroe oil field in Montgomery County.

The Hastings field was discovered in 1934 by Stanolind Oil and Gas Co. and has produced about 600 million barrels of oil from 600 wells over its life. After hitting peak production of 75,000 barrels per day in the mid-1970s, it now yields just 1,000 barrels a day, according to Denbury, which took over the western portion of the field in early 2009.

Toombs, the operations engineer, said Denbury has been able to boost output at similar fields up to eightfold by injecting carbon dioxide.

He declined to share forecasts for Hastings but noted, “Denbury did not purchase this property to operate it as is.”

The firm, which started carbon dioxide injections in four wells at Hastings last month, expects to start producing oil late this year.

Godot never does come, which forces the two men to fill their waiting time
The play was voted “the most significant English language play of the 20th century.” It was written during the winter of 1948-1949 and had its initial performance in January 1953. It is often described as an absurdist play and its script has led to much discussion about the hidden meanings behind the storyline. One drama critic wrote about Mr. Beckett and his play that it “has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats. What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.” That description seems an appropriate characterization of the Gulf of Mexico offshore petroleum business for the past six months.

The offers were submitted after the authorities had evaluated applications from 41 companies in the Awards in Pre-defined Areas (APA) 2010.

Of the 50 production licenses, 31 are located in the North Sea, 17 in the Norwegian Sea and two in the Barents Sea. Eighteen of the production licenses are additional acreage for existing production licenses. Seven of these are adjacent to discoveries/fields. Six of the new licenses are divided stratigraphically and only apply to levels below/above a defined stratigraphic boundary.

Of the companies that applied, 39 will be offered interests in at least one production license. Twenty-two of the companies will be offered operatorships. Two of these, Edison International and Spring Energy, have not previously been operators on the Norwegian shelf.

“The emergence of new operators is satisfying. It shows that the companies are developing and the number of players is increasing. It is important to explore the mature areas on the shelf thoroughly,” said exploration director Sissel Eriksen in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate.

The offers are subject to obligations stipulated by the authorities. There is a requirement for acquisition of new seismic data in six areas and three fixed wells are to be drilled: Two in the North Sea (Statoil and Talisman) and one in the Norwegian Sea (Wintershall). For the other production licenses there are ‘drill or drop’ conditions. This means that the licensees have from one to three years in which to make a decision to drill a well. If they do not wish to do so, the production license lapses.

APA 2010 was announced on February 19, 2010. Up until the deadline of 15 September 2010, the companies could apply for area totaling 84,854 square kilometers divided into 306 blocks. This was 30,000 square kilometers more than at the application deadline the year before. The increase is due both to areas relinquished during the course of the year and an expansion of the area covered by the APA scheme.

Since the first APA round in 2003, the APA acreage has been expanded several times and for the APA 2010 comprised a total of 162,826 square kilometers. This was an increase of 22,600 square kilometers from the year before.

Sissel Eriksen is very satisfied with the results of the APA scheme. She states that it contributes to mature areas on the Norwegian shelf being explored more thoroughly and quickly. New players with new ideas and new exploration goals have yielded more new discoveries in old areas. Discoveries have been made in about 40 percent of the more than 60 wells that have been drilled in production licenses awarded under the APA scheme, and more than 180 million standard cubic meters of recoverable oil equivalents have been proven to date.

The scheme also ensures that the industry secures regular access to exploration acreage and that acreage is relinquished more quickly. Nearly 100 previously awarded APA licenses have been relinquished, thus making the acreage available for new players.