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Fea ures
Monday, December 17, 2012
The SQU-PDO Technical Souq
PDO introduce major issues facing oil industry in the Sultanate
rative organisations that has
contributed a lot throughout
the years to overcome PDO’s
technical challenges. SQU
researchers and engineers
have shown very high competency and capability in
resolving PDO’s technical
challenges. During this collaboration PDO has invested
a considerable fund to enhance and build up some research facilities in SQU such
as the Formation Damage lab
and Expandable tubular testing facilities which in return
benefited from the good outcomes.
Emerging Theme
R
esearch consultancies and contracts
have become an important landmark in the relations between Sultan Qaboos
University (SQU) and other
institutions in the Sultanate.
They provide immediate solutions to serious problems
facing projects undertaken
by diverse organisations.
Petroleum
Development
Oman (PDO) is one of the
most important companies
which have close collaboration with SQU. This has
been triggered by the acute
needs to overcome technical barriers in the oil and
gas exploration, production
and address the geophysics
of the targeted areas. The
bilateral co-operation covers
over a hundred joint research
projects, some of which were
completed, while others are
still under way.
Recently, a poster presentation and discussion event
titled, The SQU-PDO Technical Souq, was jointly organised by SQU and PDO. In
this annual event, PDO came
up with posters introducing technical problems and
challenges faced in oil exploration and production and
researchers from SQU presented posters about ongoing and completed research
projects in the fields of oil
exploration and production.
The idea behind organising
SQU-PDO Technical Souq
was to explore possibilities
of undertaking consultative
research projects in these areas with funding from PDO.
This year, the two organisations came with more than
20 posters on various areas
including enhanced oil recovery, water management
in oil fields, reservoir geophysics, production Artificial
lift mechanisms, etc. To shed
further light on the Souq, we
interviewed officials from
both organisations.
In his remarks on the
Souq, Professor Amer Ali al
Rawas, SQU Deputy ViceChancellor for Postgraduate
Studies and Research, said
“no doubt, this event offers
a good opportunity for SQU
researchers to recognise the
impediments to oil recovery
and production operations
of the company. This would
open up new scientific possibilities in terms of identifying practical research issues
so as to provide solutions. It
will also promote collaboration between the two sides.”
“One of the most important research strategies
set by SQU is to develop a
close relation with other organisations in the Sultanate,
particularly those which embark on giant development
projects and often need costeffective solutions to concurrent challenges”, said Professor Al Rawas. He added that
“this would get us closer to a
complementary community
which achieves prosperity
and development by relying
on its own capabilities, being one of the goals of the
wise policy pursued by His
Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin
Said.”
The SQU official underlined that such partnerships
are significant for various
institutions, particularly for
the SQU and PDO. This is
the case since they provide
ample opportunities for both
the SQU to promote research
practices and centers, and
other organisations to find
cost-effective solutions.
Dr Ali Al Ghiathy, PDO
Petroleum Engineering Functional Director said: “We really focused on the key challenges we face across the full
spectrum from exploration to
production. It was interesting to see some of the people presenting for PDO who
were former students of SQU
and had returned to explain
to their old professors what
the issues were.”
He added that “SQU is
the premier university in
Oman and from the early
days we knew that collaboration would provide us with
the right calibre of recruits.
Now we need to concentrate
on the next stage and we can
definitely do more research
and front-end work to resolve some of our problems.
The relationship is evolving
in a nice way and is further
evidence of our ICV strategy
to invest in local people and
services.”
Al Ghiathy revealed that
one new area that is being
considered is more shortterm customised training by
SQU experts for PDO staff
on key technical areas next
year.
Highly Successful
Souq
Dr Syham Bentouati,
PDO Corporate Technology
Manager said “PDO funded
research on a project-by-
project basis, adding that
“this was our most successful technology souq at SQU
to date.” She remarked that
“the feedback from participants was excellent and we
are confident that our relationship will go from strength
to strength with more talented
students joining us and more
ground-breaking research being conducted to solve some
of our big challenges.”
The history of consultative
and collaborative research
projects between SQU and
PDO dates back to 1995 with
the Petroleum and Chemical
Engineering Department of
the College of Engineering
undertaking studies related
to Mukhaizna oil fields with
Dr Ali bin Saud al Bimani, as
principal investigator. Since
then, SQU has been actively
participating in scores of
consultative research projects
with PDO funding.
Until 2011, PDO has collaborated with SQU’s different colleges to carry out over
a hundred research and service projects. Over the last few
years, PDO’s annual budget
on SQU projects has been in
average around $1.5 million
spent on around 8 projects
per year. From 2005 to 2011
about 37 projects were kicked
off with a total spend $10.5
million. The projects have
covered a wide spectrum
(drilling fluid, EOR, Materials, fluid analysis, electrical field, geological studies,
Environment etc). The SQU
is one of the PDO’s collabo-
In more recent years, a
direction to establish SQU
as a “commercial” technical services provider to
PDO has been an emerging
theme. This involves supporting SQU in establishing
a “commercial” mind-set, including professional systems
(e.g. logistics, professional
reporting, marketing… etc)
to compete with commercial
service providers even on
the international scene. This
direction to “commercialise”
the outcome of R&D and
Technical Service provision
in SQU is very much in line
with the Sultanate’s strategy
on R&D as set by The Research Council (TRC).
In addition to the collaboration on R&D projects
and services, PDO and SQU
have established over the last
5 years a PDO-SQU liaison
committee. The objective is
to streamline the collaboration and steer the researches
and projects to meet the
goals of both organisations.
The committee also helps
to facilitate the co-operation
beyond technical research
and services to cover aspects
of training and development.
PDO as any other Oil
companies is facing a lot of
technical challenges. The
strategy is aimed at maximising shareholder value
through provision of technology solutions to address
key business challenges.
Despite that PDO’s R&D vision is not to be in the R&D
business, for some technical
challenges that do not have
readily available solutions,
PDO would collaborate with
relevant vendors, shareholders, universities and institutes through Joint Industry
Characterisation of
Oman Meteorites
Projects (JIPs) or project
sponsoring to develop a solution.
Challenges to be
addressed by SQU
Researchers
Current problems facing
PDO have been the focus of
SQU research community
in the Technical Souq. The
event has offered an opportunity for possible research
projects aimed at finding
innovative solutions. It has
introduced key challenges in
the following areas:
● Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR): This includes all
types of EOR such as Thermal, Chemical and Miscible
Gas Injection.
● Conformance Management: This includes mainly
Chemical Profile Control
(CPC), Mechanical Profile
Control (MPC) and all other
reservoir conformance controlling technologies.
● Production Measurement: This includes all types
of metering challenges such
as for single or multi-phase
fluids, liquid and/or gas, high
water cut, high Gas Volume
Fraction (GVF), thermal and
sour environments.
● Materials and Corrosion: This includes all challenges related to Materials
and Corrosion issues, particularly for the new harsh
environments (e.g. thermal
and sour) that resulted from
the widening EOR portfolio.
● Water Management: All
challenges related to finding, treating and disposing
of water used in the production of hydrocarbons. This
is particularly important for
EOR in terms of treating water required for and resulting
from thermal and chemical
injections as well as disposal
or re-use of water from high
water cut wells.
● Well Construction: All
challenges related to pushing
the current technical limits
and improving well delivery
cost and duration, including: Inconsistent Drilling
Practices, Shale Instability,
Drilling through Pressurised
floaters, Deep-Hard formation drilling, Stuck pipe and
Well Integrity.
● Well Productivity: All
challenges related to increasing the productivity of wells
such as stimulation through
chemical or other methods,
improving injectivity for waterfloods and sand control.
● Artificial Lift: All challenges related to lifting hydrocarbons, particularly in
the context of the new harsh
thermal and sour environments. It includes Electric
Submersible Pumps (ESP),
Progressive Cavity Pumps
(PCP), Beam Pumps (BP)
and Gas Lift (GL). Another
aspect is Opex reduction
through using more efficient
systems with longer run
life.
● Renewable Energy and
HSE: This subject is gaining in importance given the
stronger drive for energy
conservation and the need to
reduce the company’s Carbon footprint. This includes
use of solar energy, recovery/re-use of flared gas and
waste management.
A
n SQU team of researchers are embarking on a study
aimed at characterising and classifying a collection
of Omani meteorites through detailed geochemical,
mineralogical and petrological analysis. Professor Sobhi
Nasir, the chief investigator at the College of Engineering,
explains that “meteorites are the remnant fragments
from the formation of the Solar System. By examining a
meteorite, we are looking at the chemical composition of
the solar system as it was being born.”
In 1999, meteorite hunters discovered that the desert in
southern and central Oman is a favourable area for the collection of many rare specimens, he said, adding that the
gravel plains in the Dhofar and Al Wusta regions of Oman,
South of the sandy deserts of the Rub' al Khali, have yielded about 5,000 meteorites as of mid-2009. Included among
these are a large number of lunar and Martian meteorites,
making Oman a particularly important area both for scientists and collectors.
Early expeditions to Oman were mainly done by commercial meteorite dealers, however international teams of
Omani and European scientists have also now collected
specimens. In recent years Oman has been one of the world
centres of meteorite discovery. In 2011, the Sultanate contributed around 14 per cent of all the world’s meteorite
finds excluding Antarctica. Scientists are still building their
knowledge of our planet and solar system thanks to Omani
meteorite finds. The broad spectrum of Oman meteorites
and their exceptional preservation make them key research
tools that can enhance our understanding of the beginning
of the Solar System, he underlines. The research results are
to be published in a book and academic journals.
Tailor-made polymeric materials
via co-ordination polymerisation
T
he production of polyolefinic materials with controlled
properties remains a challenging task and industrially
important goal. The materials properties strongly depend
on the types and the regularities of the stereocentres along
the polymer backbone. Therefore, a research team from
SQU are developing a versatile synthetic methodology to
control the microstructure of the polymer such as tacticity
and comonomer incorporation, for example acrylates. This
will allow to tailor critical material properties, such as glass
transition, melting and heat deformation temperatures,
creep, adhesiveness, wettability and hardness, all of which
have a determining impact on the applicability and end use
of the material.
Dr Sarim Dastgir, of the Department of Chemistry, says
the study deals with the synthesis of polyolefinic materials
with controlled properties and controlled amount of polar
monomers via co-ordination polymerisation. This will be
achieved by developing a novel series of molecular catalysts composed of bi- and tridentate ligand frameworks
containing N-heterocyclic carbene and phosphinidine moieties. The potential applications and possible economic
advantages of this proposal to the local industry such as
Oman Oil Refineries and Petroleum Industries Company
(ORPIC) are enormous, when compared with the existing
technologies currently used in the industry. Therefore, it
is anticipated that after the launch of the project, future
funding could be obtained from local as well as international chemical companies such as SABIC, Shell, DuPont,
Exxon-Mobil, BP, Rohm and Haas and BASF.