SPE Strong: Strengthening Our Core: Strengthening Knowledge Transfer in Unconventional Resources

Abstract

President's column To collect, disseminate, and exchange technical knowledge—are the first seven words of SPE’s mission statement. These are the three fundamental objectives of our Society. We proactively seek out the technical knowledge that not only our members need, but that the industry requires to meet the world’s demand for oil and gas. Collecting this information can be challenging, especially if those who have it are not willing or able to share it. This proved especially challenging in the area of unconventional shales when SPE began to hold conferences on the subject nearly a decade ago. At that time, papers authored by knowledgeable operators were few and far between. The rationale adopted by many operators was that any technical information about their company’s shale assets was confidential, and by withholding it, they could gain a small competitive advantage. This was also problematic for academia trying to solve the complex problems of unconventional reservoirs. Access to data was minimal unless university projects were directly funded by an operator to conduct research. Even if academics received relevant data and funding, most were then restricted from publishing their research by the operator. Today the collection of available data and findings from oil and gas shales is much improved. Recently, ConocoPhillips donated a cleaned and anonymized data set that comprises internal drilling, completions, and other well data from US unconventional reservoir plays to The University of Texas at Austin. This data donation allows UT professors to formulate real-world data analytics problems for their student teams to solve. Greg Leveille, chief technology officer at ConocoPhillips, explains, “The oil and natural gas industry is increasingly utilizing leading-edge data science techniques to find, develop, and produce hydrocarbon resources more effectively. ConocoPhillips believes it is important to support universities’ efforts to build programs to teach petroleum engineering students the foundational data science skills they’ll need to maximize their contributions to the E&P industry after they graduate.” Greg’s attitude toward sharing our unconventional data sets with universities is another excellent step in the right direction and one that I hope will expand to additional operators and academic institutions. Within SPE, the ways that we disseminate and exchange information are also much better than they were 10 years ago, but are they good enough? Should we, as a society, be doing more with the knowledge transfer of the unconventional shales? The map shows the discovered unconventional oil and gas basins around the world. Each one has its own unique geological, technical, and economic challenges to future exploitation. While JPT provides informative articles on numerous basins, there are a few regions where SPE is planning events focused on additional knowledge transfer in unconventionals.