Even today, looking for oil and gas is an adventure that has the power to grip intrepid explorers. Although there is less and less virgin territory, the need to explore ever more remote areas for harder-to-access oil and gas resources demands sustained technical excellence and continuously improved capabilities. Every day, our E&P teams meet new challenges in some of the world’s most hostile environments.
The first fields to be developed were the ones that presented the fewest technical challenges. They were soon depleted, however, and demand continued to grow, leading the oil industry to expand across the globe, onshore and offshore, constantly innovating as new problems emerged.
Each new development project has its own special features, which present a broad array of challenges. In some cases, E&P teams have to cope with extreme temperatures and often-disconcerting technological, cultural or contractual environments.
Every day, these teams are overcoming new obstacles and pushing back their boundaries.
Itau in the Bolivian Jungle
Launched in 1997, the Itau project in Bolivia was carried out in extreme conditions - drilling installations built at an altitude of 1,700 meters, 500 kilometers from any infrastructure, with freezing fog at the summit, torrential rains for weeks on end and peak summer temperatures of 50 °C in the villages of the valley. Problems included:
Clearing a trail to the drilling site was arduous, because the forest was so dense that even bulldozers had trouble getting through; in some cases, they had to be winched ahead using trees for support.
Helicopters had to be used for the seismic survey to prevent deforestation.
The line that carried water to the drilling rig climbed 900 meters, requiring pipes to be laid and booster pumps to be installed in the jungle.
Drilling operations were complicated by very hard, abrasive rocks, with drilling restricted to only ten to 15 meters a day.It took more than 300 days to drill to a depth of 5,500 meters, whereas the same result could have been achieved in two months under conventional conditions.
In addition, the seismic survey teams that initially explored the region faced serious, although calculated, risks and lived in extremely primitive conditions.
However, all this hard work paid off with discoveries in 1999, and in 2003 the Itau region’s reserves are estimated at close to 10 TCF of gas.
Kharyaga, Producing in Siberia
Lying 90 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle in the Russian Federation’s Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Area, the Kharyaga oil field presented a host of issues that included a remote location, a hostile climate, a lack of infrastructure, and unknown local cultures and working practices.
Discovered in 1970, Kharyaga’s first four reservoirs were brought on stream in 1986 by Komitek. Total identified the development of horizons 2 and 3 as a potentially profitable investment in 1991 and a year later signed a memorandum of agreement for production sharing with the regional public company. The production sharing contract was signed in 1995 and came into effect in January 1999. In October, the wells worked over by Total began production and output was tripled to more than 7,800 bbl/d, all of which is now exported to Germany and Baltic ports. Phase 2 was launched in 2000 and completed in 2003 with the startup of new installations.
The transit base for the Kharyaga teams is Usinsk, an oil-centric city of 30,000 inhabitants that is a two-hour plane flight from Moscow. The extremely hostile conditions include an icy landscape, just five hours of daylight in winter, and temperatures that plunge below -30 °C. Fast reflexes are a necessity in remote Kharyaga, and with 16 nationalities taking part in the project, flexibility is also critical. Although the technology is not particularly remarkable, the climate is taxing, as the constant cold saps energy and slows things down, while the lack of sunlight eventually makes people more tired and irritable.
Today, Kharyaga is the focus of our exploration and production operations in Russia. We are leveraging the know-how acquired on this exceptional project to strengthen our position in the local market. |
