American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2018 - 86

SpecialReport: Oil Field Chemistry
produce for a year or two before needing
separate treatments.
The scale inhibitor mix is changing,
with more companies considering polymer-based chemistries. "Polymers cost
more than traditional phosphates, but in
areas with severe scale, such as the Eagle
Ford and Bakken, or areas with high metal
concentrations, polymers can be more effective," Okullo says. "They work well in
these environments because they have a
bit of surfactancy and much higher stability
than phosphates in iron-rich areas."

By combining more precise equipment for analyzing oil and water samples with remote
telemetry that simpliﬁes adjustments to chemical programs, Newﬁeld Exploration is optimizing treatments for its wells. The company says this has reduced downtime and increased production.

be most effective."
Ready access to tools has helped operators and service companies take a
more active approach to chemical programs, Okullo adds. "For example, we
are getting better at analyzing water and
gas samples to spot early indicators of
scale formation," he reports. "This lets
us inject scale inhibitors or perform acid
jobs to address the issue before a well
scales over and requires a costly workover."
Managing chemical programs is becoming easier as telemetry proliferates,
Okullo says. "During the past few years,
we have seen more vendors make telemetry a standard component of their treatment
packages," he says. "These wireless systems let operators adjust dosage rates remotely, based on the well's production.
The systems also show when tanks need
to be refilled or a pump has gone down,
meaning we can send people to the site
less frequently."
Even with automation, there are too
few hours in a day to optimize the chemical
treatment for every well, given how wellspecific the best treatments can be, Okullo
says. "Treatment for moderate paraffin
issues will have fewer solvents and surfactants than one for severe paraffin
issues," he illustrates. "We try to tailor
each treatment to the well, but it is impossible to dive into every well.
"Instead, we manage by exception, focusing most of our attention on wells that
have a history of failures, unusually steep
production declines, or hydrogen sulfide
86 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

issues that pose a safety risk," Okullo
says. "Since we adopted that approach,
our failure rate has gone from one every
two years to one every three years."
Many operators are integrating chemical engineers with drilling, completion
and facilities teams to ensure that information gathered during earlier phases informs the production chemical program,
Okullo comments. Seeing paraffin or
scale issues during drilling can tell the
operator to put scale and paraffin inhibitors
into the reservoir during the completion,
an approach Okullo says can let wells

Easing Customization
Charlotte Burress, senior technology
manager for Multi-Chem, a Halliburton
service, says that to be effective, chemistry treatments generally need to be
customized for the application. "Paraffin,
for example, is very crude-specific," she
says. "Treating it requires experts who
know how to analyze the paraffin and
identify the best tool to achieve the operator's objectives."
To simplify customization, Burress
says, chemical providers are looking for
ways to spot trends using machine learning. "By deploying such advanced technologies, we will be able to formulate
application-appropriate chemistries at a
much faster rate," she says.
Burress adds that guiding machine
learning algorithms will give experienced
chemists a way to apply their knowledge
faster and more broadly, while allowing
them to pass along their experience to
younger colleagues.

Analyzing well-speciﬁc information to customize chemistry can boost wells' production
while helping ensure asset integrity, according to Multi-Chem, a Halliburton service. The
company says it is developing ways to speed customization, including machine learning
algorithms and advanced lab tests.

American Oil and Gas Reporter - October 2018

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