Oil Service Companies Research Articles

Innovations and External Growth Strategy: the Case of Oil and Gas Supply and Service Companies

The upstream oil and gas service sector has been going through a wave of consolidations since 1990. Indeed, many firms in this sector have adopted an external growth strategy in order to strengthen their core business, broaden their range of provided products or reorganize their activities. Nowadays, the upstream oil and gas service sector is characterized by the presence of an oligopoly which is composed of three Major service and supply firms (Baker Hughes, Halliburton and Schlumberger) and numerous smaller oil and gas service businesses. In this article, based on the research work of the economist J. A. Schumpeter, we first provide an original explanation for the strategic development of the three leading oil and gas service and supply firms. J. A. Schumpeter has in fact analyzed the process of disseminating innovation within an industrial sector that applies in the case of the three leading oil and gas service firms. Whereas the term innovation generally means the result of technical progress, we use it in this article in the context of Schumpeter for whom an innovation can be the manufacture of a new product as a result of a new demand, the launching of a new method of production or marketing, the opening of a new market, the use of a new raw or intermediate material, or the establishment of a new organization. Secondly, we justify the reorganization of the overall upstream service and supply sector by the fact that the process of disseminating innovation, to which we gave prominence within the oligopoly, remains relevant to justify the same reorganization of the many smaller oil and gas service firms. This process leads us to consider the form of consolidation that the sector will experience over the next few years.

Better knowledge management through knowledge engineering

The authors believe that current knowledge management practice significantly under-utilizes knowledge engineering technology, despite recent efforts to promote its use. They focus on two knowledge engineering processes: using knowledge acquisition processes to capture structured knowledge systematically; and using knowledge representation technology to store the knowledge, preserving important relationships that are far richer than those possible in conventional databases. To demonstrate the usefulness of these processes, we present a case study in which the drilling optimization group of a large oil and gas service company uses knowledge engineering practices to support the three facets of the knowledge management task: knowledge capture; knowledge storage; and knowledge deployment.

Financial Analysis of UK Oil and Oil Service Companies

Financial Analysis of UK Oil and Oil Service Companies

X-Ray Computer-Assisted Tomography for Laboratory Core Studies

Introduction X-ray computer-assisted tomography (CT) entered the petroleum scene about 13 years ago. The technology showed much promise, but was expensive, unproven, and inaccessible to most petroleum engineers. Today CT scanners are an integral part of most major oil company, service company, and research university laboratories. This paper gives an overview of the theory and typical applications of CT. Theory Although CT is used to determine a wide variety of oilfield rock and fluid properties, it measures only one property, the linear attenuation coefficient, µ. The linear attenuation coefficient is defined by Beer's law and is a measure of the fraction of X -rays that pass through an object. Applications CT measurements are nondestructive and relatively fast. Most petroleum applications are aimed at estimating lithology, porosity, and/or saturation. By conducting well-designed experiments, these three parameters can be used to obtain a wide variety of additional information. When plugs are to be taken from whole cores, the whole core can be scanned beforehand, enabling the plugs to be taken at appropriate locations. This can be done without removing the wrappings for preserved cores. Lithology and Porosity. Lithology determination is typically performed for one of two reasons. The first is the screening of cores. Cores are used in a wide variety of laboratory flooding experiments. Even if CT is not used during the flow experiments, it is a useful tool for selecting cores for these experiments. Flooding experiments can be expensive and time consuming, and their analysis typically involves an assumption of uniform porosity and/or permeability. Little is more disheartening than spending months on a project only to find that your analysis is suspect or wrong because a supposedly homogeneous core has a significant interior shale streak or other heterogeneity, unnoticed from the outside. Today, many samples are routinely CT scanned to check qualitatively for homogeneity before conducting coreflooding experiments. This should be standard procedure.

SEG Development and Production Committee: 1991 Forum on Reservoir Description Using Geophysical Techniques

The first annual SEG Forum sponsored by the Development and Production Committee, held July 7–12, 1991 at the Tamarron resort in the high mountains of Colorado, was a major success. I had the privilege of serving as forum chairman. The meeting attracted 95 professionals (67 geophysicists, 17 engineers, 11 geologists) who represented virtually all the major oil companies, geophysical contractors and service companies, national laboratories, and several universities: fully 30 percent of the attendees were from a field other than geophysics. Although this was lower than our original goal of 50 percent, it did represent a good first step in the direction of attracting a balanced participation in future D&P forums.

Oil Field Of Texas, Inc. v. The Government Of The Islamic Republic Of Iran, National Iranian Oil Company And Oil Service Company Of Iran

State responsibility — Nature and kinds of — For other breaches of contractual obligations — Contractual claim against Iranian joint — stock company — Whether National Iranian Oil Company legal successor — Iran — United States Claims Settlement Declaration, 1981 — The law and practice of the Iran — United States Claims TribunalDisputes — Arbitration — Procedure — Competence — Competence to determine jurisdiction — Contract between Iranian company and claimant — Claimant also bringing action against Islamic Republic of Iran and National Iranian Oil Company — Whether claim within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal — Iran-United States Claims Settlement Declaration, 1981 — Whether contracting company agent of NIOC — Whether controlled by NIOC — Whether NIOC successor to contracting company — The law and practice of the Iran — United States Claims Tribunal

Selection of a standard programming language for an oil service consultancy

Abstract Criteria for selection of a standard programming language for an oil service company involved in creating and applying data bases for the petroleum industry are discussed. Computer languages for a popular minimainframe computer, the Digital Equipment Corporation VAX, are considered in the light of these criteria. The authors selected the language PL/1 as best fulfilling the requirements of the company. It is suggested that the selection criteria might be pertinent to computer geology, in general, and that the computer languages considered may be representative of those known and normally available to this community of users.

Slim Hole Technology - An Economic Key to Future Drilling Developments

Introduction "Based on present allowables, probably more than half the wells in Texas today could be produced through 1.5-in. tubing", stated Philip L. McLaughlin, president of The McLaughlin Co., Dallas, at a recent meeting of the Mid-Continent Section Study Group in Tulsa, Okla. McLaughlin, who was very closely associated with slim hole drilling and completion techniques and equipment while employed by the Cardwell Manufacturing Co., spoke to the Mid-Continent Section Study Group on the economics of slim hole drilling and completions. McLaughlin, owner of a firm which specializes in product market research and "assistance programs" for oil companies, opened his discussion by warning the group that since the oil industry is in a period of dynamic transition; oil companies, drilling contractors, service companies and equipment manufacturers must continually make themselves stronger as an industry and more alert to opportunity if they expect to continue their past progress. Oil Industry Needs New Ideas for Economic Survival "If oil is to economically survive in our lifetime, it must show a greater willingness to seek out, test, develop and adopt new ideas and new methods. Many research departments are thinking too small to create big deeds. There is a dire need of a freer exchange of information at all levels of each segment of our industry." Much of our present day equipment has outlived its economic usefulness-demanding an engineering revolution similar to the one the auto industry experienced in the late thirties. To cope with this transition which is resulting from keener competition, poorer economic conditions, higher dry hole ratios and fewer reserves found for each well drilled, coupled with technical and management complacency, he advised that the oil industry must either develop methods of economizing, change "fixed idea" and "ivory tower thinking", or receive a much lower return on investments. "If 15 per cent depletion allowance is passed, I expect a great engineering and economy revolution that must come, will develop in a hurry or the oil industry is likely to wake up some day and find itself, joining the railroad industry, as the second biggest ‘sleeping giant’ in U. S. history.