Ultra-Deepwater Program

RPSEA’s UDW Program

Transforming ultra-deepwater discoveries into producing fields requires huge capital investment and new technologies. RPSEA will focus on:

• extending basic scientific understanding of the many UDW challenges as well as developing modeling and predictive tools to help industry better define and ultimately manage the risks associated with field development and physical regimes of the resource base to support efforts in the enabling and enhancing categories
• developing new enabling and/or cross-cutting technologies that will allow industry to safely, and in an environmentally friendly manner explore and transform these discoveries into producing properties in ways that are impossible with existing technologies
• enhancing technologies to help lower the overall cost and risks and reduce the field development cycle time by improving existing technologies resulting in higher recoveries, lower thresholds of abandonment, and development of currently uneconomic resources. It is instructive to note that even in today’s commodity price environment; many large (100 MM BOE plus ) fields are not economic due to the current cost of existing technologies and the high level of risk involved with development
• grand challenges – transformational technologies which, if successfully developed, are capable of “leapfrogging” over conventional research and development pathways

UDW Goals and Metrics

The primary goal of the RPSEA UDW Program is to increase and produce UDW reserves while protecting the environment, providing the U.S. consumer with secure and affordable petroleum supplies. The RPSEA UDW Program will carry out appropriate activities as delineated in the following sections of this Plan to maximize the value of these resources in order to support America’s economic growth, job creation, and its international leadership in energy science and technology by:

1. Increasing the supply of such resources,
2. Reducing the costs to find, develop and produce such resources,
3. Increasing the efficiency of exploration for such resources,
4. Increasing production efficiency and ultimate recovery of such resources,
5. Improving safety, and
6. Improving environmental performance, by reducing any environmental impacts associated with UDW exploration and production.

Approach

DeepStar is subcontracted to RPSEA to assist in managing the UDW program element; DeepStar is the world’s largest UDW stakeholders group and has a 15 year history of managing collaborative research in the relevant domain. Through this arrangement, RPSEA has access to 700+ technical and management committee experts as well as a process of technology research, development, and commercialization. In addition to providing high level direction from the operators, who are ultimately responsible for the production of energy resources, this highly developed process strongly supports universities, regulatory bodies, and other key stake holder groups and formally facilitates their direct input. Through this process, over 50 universities, not-for-profit and other research institutes, and other organizations have received over $50M in research and technology development funds to extend the boundaries of deepwater from less than 3000 feet to nearly 10,000 feet.

From actual industry results in the UDW as identified in Figure 2 below, a systems engineering study was performed, and high-level design basis information was generated for the four base case scenarios identified. Currently the design basis consists of the following information:

• 4 base case scenarios that illustrate the general arrangement of development facilities.
• Reservoir and well information for each base case.
• Flow Assurance Strategy for each base case.
• Met-ocean data using a typical GOM UDW location.

Walker Ridge / Keathley Canyon

• sub-salt
• deeper wells
• tight formations

Alaminos Canyon

• viscous crude
• lacking infrastructure

Eastern Gulf – Gas Independence Hub

• higher pressure & temperature
• CO2 / H2S

Overall

• higher drilling costs
• challenging economics

Planned solicitations

The identified four (4) reservoir trends represent in a generic sense the majority of the anticipated UDW resources. Technical challenges associated with these trends give rise to 32 themes summarized below in Table 2. From the themes, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) on the various Technical Advisory Committees (TACs) with guidance from the UDW Program Advisory Committee (PAC), other RPSEA groups, and NETL will develop Request for Proposals (RFPs) which will be aggregated into two (or possibly 3) solicitations to call on the nation’s research universities, national labs, industry and others to generate proposals targeted at addressing and solving the many challenges facing operators in the UDW GOM. Solicitations will reflect the desire to establish a balanced portfolio to reflect an appropriate mix of science, enabling, enhancing and “Grand Challenge” projects. It is anticipated that the UDW program, in the initial year, will recommend 10-30 projects ranging from $250K to $3 MM having an average RPSEA contribution of $750K.