American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2017 - 93

ible and robust, it may penalize the economics of field development in a lower-oil price environment.
In addition to Cascade/Chinook, there are now three more fields
producing from the Lower Tertiary formation, providing greater
knowledge and understanding of reservoir characteristics and production behavior. A new fit-for-purpose well design basis that considers everything else that has been learned since the Cascade A
well potentially may reduce capital and operating cost. The options for improvement include smaller-diameter production casing, eliminating under-reaming, better drilling operations, enhanced
frac pack hardware, and detailed fracturing design.
❒
FLAVIO DIAS DE MORAES is the principal well engineering
consultant at Positive Well LLC in Katy, Tx. He previously served
as a senior well engineer at Petrobras, working on ultradeepwater well drilling and completion designs, including the well design
for the Cascade and Chinook fields. De Moraes holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering and an M.S. in material science, and earned
a Ph.D. in petroleum engineering from the University of Tulsa.
ZIAD HADDAD is lead deepwater completion engineering
consultant at FOI Technologies in Houston, and an in-house
consultant at Petrobras America Inc. Since 2008, he has worked
on developing the first ultradeepwater Lower Tertiary project
in the Gulf of Mexico. He has 20 years of well engineering, completion engineering and well operations experience with
strong emphasis on hydraulic fracturing. He previously worked
at Pennzoil Production Company and Devon Energy Corp. He
holds a B.S. in petroleum and natural gas engineering from
Pennsylvania State University.

Editor's Note: For more information on the Cascade/Chinook FPSO development project, see OTC 27041, a technical
paper originally prepared for presentation at the 2016 Offshore
Technology Conference. With a production capacity of 80,000
barrels a day and a storage capacity of 600,000 barrels, the
FPSO is stationed in 8,530 feet of water and connected through
sophisticated subsea infrastructure to wells in both the Cascade and Chinook fields. As the first project to produce from
the Lower Tertiary in the Gulf, the success of Cascade/Chinook holds important lessons for future field developments in
this frontier play.
MAURO ROBERTO BECKER is principal at MB Geology
Consulting LLC in Katy, Tx. He recently served as the Walker
Ridge area reservoir manager at Petrobras America Inc. He
joined Petrobras in 1985 as a field development geologist and
subsequently held positions as a geoscientist and reservoir technical manager for Petrobras Business Unit, Corporate University and at Petrobras R&D Center. Becker holds a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Texas at Austin.
NHOM "VINCE" NGUYEN is a senior reservoir engineer at
Petrobras America Inc., and has spent the past six years working on the Cascade/Chinook project. With 15 years of experience in field development, planning and production, Nguyen began his career at Shell Oil Company in both on- and offshore
field development and production. He holds a B.S. in chemical
engineering from the University of South Alabama.

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APRIL 2017 93

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