NAPE CONFERENCE PROVIDES PLATFORM FOR TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION, STRATEGIES-TOTAL DMD
– By majorwavesen

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The Pre-Conference Workshop of the 2019 Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationists (NAPE) held in Lagos, brought together explorationists, operators and investors to brainstorm on the current state of the oil industry to chart the way forward.

NAPE is recognized as the largest Nigerian professional association of geoscientists and related disciplines owing to its members most of whom are major operators in the industry.

Delivering his speech on how technology can change the oil and gas sector in the next decade, the Deputy Managing Director, Deep Water District, Total E&P Nigeria Limited, Engr. Ahmadu-Kida Musa, asserted that NAPE pre-conference workshop presents an opportunity for stakeholders to meet leading policy makers. Stakeholders will benefit from global best practices and discuss challenges for securing future investment opportunities towards increasing petroleum reserves, share lessons learnt and also network with purpose.

The DMD of Total noted that the theme “Emerging Technologies and the Nigerian Oil and Gas Sector – Global Trends and Regional Peculiarities” was timely and a call on all concerned stakeholders to collaborate, brainstorm, discuss technological innovations, strategies and propose policy that will ensure the sustainability of the oil sector especially in this era of oil price uncertainty.

He said, “Total’s commitment to better energy fully subscribes to its view to being a responsible energy major as part of being a critical stakeholder in the energy landscape of Nigeria.” In its advocacy for industry growth, the company will continue to “support dialogues to deliberate on sustainable strategies especially in the area of emerging technologies in order to create a conducive environment for the oil and gas industry.”

He noted that globally, there has been a downward trend in the discovery of giant oil and gas fields that have been made, and this is in spite of the preponderance of Yet-To-Find (YTF) opportunities in different basins all over the world.

The Total DMD was of the opinion that in Nigeria, there are still billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of gas yet to be discovered even in mature areas not to mention the frontier areas yet to be explored.

Ahmadu-Kida stated thus, “I am sure that the exploration gurus in this gathering can attest to this fact. With a combination of enabling policies and innovation technologies, this situation can be turned around.”

The dependence on conventional technologies that have been used in the past will surely not be the only solution to harness the Yet-To-Find oil and gas potentials in Nigeria. Those technologies worked well in the past with positive results. However, the days of easy oil and gas discoveries are gone.

At present in the oil industry, there is need for innovations in order to come back to era of frequent giant discoveries as was obtained before 2012. In Nigeria for example, the country has to key-in to the use of emerging and innovative technologies from safe exploration to HSE compliant exploitation of the discovered resources.

Ahmadu-Kida shared the belief by some school of thought that Nigeria might have totally mastered exploration in the onshore, conventional offshore and in the deep offshore domains, but this is certainly not an accurate hypothesis. There are still Yet-To-Find opportunities around in those mature domains, especially for deep prospectively and Ultra Deep Offshore domain, where little or no exploration activities have been carried out to date.

He advocated that policies should encourage participation of key stakeholders who are focused on innovation and technological advancement.

Apart from government policies and enablement, Ahmadu-Kida said more focus should be on the technical aspects of exploration, as it relates to the “Process of Data Acquisition and Interpretation all through the value chain leading to an Oil and Gas Discovery”. This process in itself is strategic and important aspect of every oil and gas exploration company. Today’s successful exploration results leads to an increase and renewal of reserves and guarantees production sustainability and as well for the growth of future production.

Being in charge of Total’s operated Deep-Water business in Nigeria, Engr. Ahamdu-Kida spoke on three key aspects which are Data acquisition, Processing and Interpretation.

For Data acquisition, it aims to focus on zones which are difficult to access and image.

Technologies have emerged recently which have helped for better and efficient acquisition of seismic and non-seismic data, for example; long offset, wide azimuth, Ocean Bottom Nodes technologies (OBN) and even in the domain of Control Source Electro Magnetic (CSEM) data acquisition.

Also, there are new technologies like cable-less seismic acquisition which is safer and more efficient for sensitive or difficult areas to access, such as transition zones and urban areas.

The DMD of Total said the company has adopted these technologies while developing more and some currently in the pilot stage. Examples are the Submarine robots (an autonomous glider low cost technology) for offshore exploration and Drone technology for Ultra High density and high-quality seismic data acquisition (Pilots in Papua New Guinea-late 2017 & Abu Dhabi, Nov.2019), while reducing environmental footprint. According to Ahmadu-Kida, these technologies when fully matured will contribute a lot to safety, while targeting cost reduction of at least 20%. Data Processing: Aims to develop tools and methods to produce 3D quantitative images of the subsurface.

Apart from data acquisition, clearly the quality of the data to be interpreted also depends on the processing methodology applied on the acquired data. A lot of efforts have been made globally in this aspect and Total has made significant advancement towards better attenuation of multiples, velocity model building and in overall structural imaging. The processing for deep plays is vital to improve velocity field and in overpressure prediction in order to assess deep prospective potentials in areas of operation all over the world.

Engr. Ahmadu-Kida explained that Total’s technological achievements in data imaging has been made possible by its in-house PANGEA III High Power Supercomputer, that has its computing power tripled, ranking it as the most powerful supercomputer in the oil and gas industry and firmly placing it among the world’s top 10 supercomputers with the capacity to perform up to 29 billion of million floating point operations per second (power available in Pau CSTJT site) equivalent to 130,000 laptops. This technological game-changer is another demonstration of Total’s commitment to Research and Development’s (R&D) support to the company’s exploration and field development strategy despite tough economic environment, while at the same time managing related risks and optimizing performance and costs.

On Data interpretation, Ahmadu-Kida explained further that it requires innovation applied with some level of open mindedness in order to continuously renew understanding of geological concepts or imagine and test new concepts that ultimately allow discovery of new plays in proven frontier basins. By applying this understanding on the interpreted data, it further enhances prediction accuracy in such a manner that allows de-risk of exploration targets leading potentially to high rates of discoveries.

Modern day subsurface interpretation is more integrated and requires the use of complementary data in order to reduce associated risks. Such include but not limited to Control Source Electro Magnetics (CSEM), Magneto Tellurics (MT), Remote Sensing, and even Seismic Reservoir Characterization with recent innovations.

He stated further that Total through “Know-How and R&D” has developed a unique Geoscience and Reservoir Integrated Platform (known as SISMAGE-CIG in-house) for faster 3D and 4D seismic interpretation to geological concept and dynamic behavior. This robust workflow has aided exploration and also development studies with interesting results in the Total Group. This is a culture change that is supported by new technological tools, and currently being deployed within the company’s group.

Speaking further Ahmadu-Kida mentioned that Total is beginning to see the benefits on accelerated exploration and reservoir interpretation workflows and increased reliability through the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is also known as cognitive computing technologies to specific business activities, such as Semantic AI for accelerated search for relevant information in documents from weeks to minutes and Pattern Recognition AI for automatic interpretation of 3D seismic images.

Concerning the Deep Offshore and Ultra Deep offshore domains, Engr. Ahmadu-Kida said, there still exists a lot of potential to be exploited globally, including in Nigeria. There is need for new technologies in pushing boundaries to face future energy demand. The assumption globally, with Nigeria included in the statistics, is that the Yet-To-Find in the deep offshore stands at about 60% of total potential estimated by the industry. It is expected that by 2035, the deep offshore oil and gas production which currently stands at less than 14Mboe/d worldwide should attain the level of about 32Mboe/d.

For the last 15 to 20 years, exploration activities have been conducted in the deep offshore in water depths of around 2,000 meters and most current developments are generally at a maximum depth of around 2,000 meters.

Following innovations with new technologies, Total has been able to explore deeper with an exploration well drilled offshore Uruguay in 2016, at 3405 meters water depth, at that time the world’s deepest sub-sea well.

The Total DMD emphasised on the recent Total’s technological breakthrough in deep offshore South Africa where the BRULPADDA well was drilled with an innovative drilling technology in frontier deep offshore within harsh weather-ocean environment. It has the world’s second fastest sea currents combined with high sea tidal conditions. A significant gas discovery was recorded and further appraisal of the field will be undertaken by the company.

He made it known that in Deep and Ultra Deep Offshore environment, operators will continue to be faced with different and diverse challenging Exploration, Development and Production context that will going forward require new technologies to maximize reserves.

However, Ahmadu-Kida suggested that to succeed in this direction, the following should be taken into consideration:

At first, ensure the safety of deep offshore developments limit environmental impacts throughout the project life. Decrease technical costs of new developments ensuring control of cost on major investments and smaller ones. Developing innovative technologies to go deeper and to face extreme and challenging conditions.

There should be an enabling environment based on consistent and competitive fiscal policies.

He explained further that Total being the largest deep offshore operator in Africa, has adopted a culture of innovation in its development projects. Though complex, the company considers innovation an absolute mandatory activity from exploration to production of discovered oil and gas. The company’s successes in exploration have led to some innovation in its fields’ development. This is evident in some of its innovative approaches to deep offshore developments projects that are currently in the company’s portfolio.

Some of these development projects are: Angola, Girassol (2001) first giant deep offshore FPSO with innovative riser towers – OTC award in 2003, Dalia (2006) chemical EOR Integrated insulation pipe-in-pipe risers, Rosa (2007) 20km tie-back to Girassol FPSO, Pazflor (2011) world’s 1st subsea gas/liquid separation and pumping modules – OTC award in 2013.

Others include: Clov (2014) subsea multi-phase pumps variable speed drive technology – IPTC award in 2015, Kaombo (2018) which is one of the world’s largest subsea networks – 300 km, including loops.

Total projects in Nigeria are as follows: Akpo (2009) first all-electric FPSO four-stage separator, Egina (2018) new concepts developed for riser base slugging mitigation – largest FPSO in the Total Group, PREOWEI working on developing of a 30km tie-back to Egina with a heated line.

Engr. Ahmadu-Kida also throw more light on other projects in Congo, central Africa which include: Pilot project (2014) subsea seawater treatment and injection MOHO NORD (2017). Most powerful subsea multi-phase pumps.

Some key and important highlights on this subject can be presented as follows: There is an evident decline in giant exploration discoveries since the industry is now dealing with more complex traps that need to be properly understood before drilling of exploration wells. Conventional technologies in most cases have reached their limit in terms of subsurface imaging and interpretation given the complexities of YTF prospects.

According to Ahmadu-Kida, apart from enabling policies, fast tracking of bid rounds on open blocks by government, development and application of new technologies are the answers. Development and the application of new technology is inevitable in order to drill material prospects and increase resource base of the country. He said innovation is mandatory to prepare the future.

The DMD revealed that the oil and gas industry face real challenges hence R&D efforts must be continued even during the context of low oil price. Scientific curiosity and expertise are mandatory to derive innovative ideas.

Innovation often comes from cross-over technologies: combination and integration of needs with transverse scientific domains often generate innovations.

Notwithstanding, the Total DMD’s remarks and progress made by the company are expected to take the oil industry to the next level especially in developing new projects with more findings.

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