fuelforthought The Elk Hills Oilfield By Dr. Clifford Jones, Aberdeen University.


The Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005 necessitated withdrawal from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which requires the permission of the President of the US. The SPR consists of about 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in salt caverns along the Louisiana coast. The Reserve was established during the presidency of Gerald Ford, partly because of the stoppage of exports of oil to the US from OPEC countries for a period in 1973- 74. Reserves of oil for contingencies was not at that time a new idea. One of Gerald Ford’s predecessors William Howard Taft, who was president from 1909 to 1913, set aside certain oil fields as strategic reserves including one of the best known, namely Elk Hills in California. The difference between such reserves and the SPR is of course that in the latter oil has been taken out of the well and stored, possibly after long transportation; by no means all of the oil in the SPR is domestic oil. The reserves established President Taft consisted of crude oil in situ. Nine years after Elk Hills was so reserved there was a major fire at one of the wells there, extinguished after nearly four weeks of steady burning by use of explosives.


Elk Hills is no longer a Government facility


having been acquired in 1998 by Occidental in what, in monetary terms, was the largest privatisation ever in the US. Since then many new wells have been drilled at the field, sometimes using horizontal drilling techniques. Extension of the Elk field since its privatisation is said to have caused the loss of some sites of significance to the Kitanemuk Indians, generations of whom lived at the site before oil production began there. The treaty which allowed drilling to commence at Elk Hills in the mid nineteenth century had a member of the Kitanemuk as one of its signatories:


which enabled President Taft to make the Elk Field into a strategic reserve also applied to specified deposits of shale in the Colorado desert which, at the time of writing in 2006, have not yet been developed in any way.


j.c.jones@eng.abdn.ac.uk Reply Card no 7


Henry Bob-Manuel has joined ABB’s Process Automation (UK) division in Aberdeen as Sales Manager for Oil and Gas Service. With this new job, he takes up account management responsibility for oil and gas services within the Process Automation division in Aberdeen. He will be working towards realising the strategic growth objectives of the Oil and Gas service team and also build lasting relationships with ABB’s increasing customer base in the UK oil and gas sector.


Henry comes to ABB having recently successfully completed an MBA with speciality in Oil and Gas Management at the Robert Gordon University. This


was an endeavour he achieved by taking time off a career spanning 11 years. Added to his chemical engineering degree and industry experience in process engineering including upstream process diagnostics, nucleonic instrumentation and sand management, Henry comes with a good understanding of process issues that operators face as they look to reduce down time, improve recovery and optimise production from their assets. Henry will be helping new and existing customers take advantage of ABB Process Automation’s range of services which are designed to help operators obtain greater value for their oilfield investments by delivering better process control, safety and performance.


Until September 2008 when he commenced his MBA, Henry was previously Business Development Manager at AFTRAC Ltd, an oilfield services company and technical partner of Tracerco (formerly part of ICI, now a subsidiary of Johnson Matthey Plc). At AFTRAC, Henry was responsible for promoting growth of Tracerco’s range of process diagnostics services and sold to projects in the West African region. He is a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) and the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in the UK.


Oil and Gas Service Manager for the UK Cameron Fyffe said “ I am delighted that Henry has come on board. Our main aim is to support our installed base from inception to obsolescence and life extension and we need someone like Henry which will lead this with our customers”.


Reply Card no 6


New Sales Manager for Oil and Gas Service Team


Dani SpA and Jeol Enter in an Exclusive Distribution Agreement for the BeNeLux


Dani SpA (Italy), a well known European producer and developer of high level GC systems and attachments for the GC market and Jeol (Europe) BV (Belgium) announced and signed an exclusive distribution agreement. Dr. Umberto Saini from Dani as well as Dr. Bob Hertsens from Jeol are looking forward to expand the market share with this strategic agreement.


Since Dani and Jeol have complementary systems, and that no production of his great-grandson has


been one of the critics of the recent extensions. Interestingly, the Act of Congress of 1910


competitive instruments exists between Dani and Jeol, this joint effort could be very interesting for the market. Offering solutions is the key issue. With the development by Dani of the Master -TOF (high throughput GC-TOF), Jeol can now offer a complete line of GC-MS systems. The high-throughput fast acquisition via the Master-TOF on the one hand and the high resolution JMS- T100GCv from Jeol on the other hand offer the most flexible choice to the market. Also Q-MS is available.


The already tested combination with GCxGC on every GC-TOF system will open possibilities in a wide variety of applications such as fragrances,


environmental research, petrochemical research, quality control, food research and many more. The use of the fast Master -GC in the olfactometry will open a new and promising market.


Reply Card no 8


Expansion for German Instrumentation Manufacturers both Home and Abroad


Samson (Germany) has used the less busy times of the economic recession to make the infrastructure at its headquarters in Frankfurt ready for future challenges. The expansion work included a large extension of the high-bay warehouse only built a few years ago. Instead of ten, the warehouse now has 16 rows of shelves; the number of stacker cranes has been increased from five to eight to still allow one crane to operate two rows. 180 pallets or wire mesh boxes per hour now can be loaded and unloaded. The number of storage spaces distributed on 25 racks has grown from 13,500 to 23,000. The dispatch hall has also been integrated into the extended warehouse previously intended for production logistics. A separate pick/pack area with two stations was created. Thanks to modern warehouse technology and shortened routes, SAMSON can complete the dispatch process even quicker than before.


Samson India, the Indian subsidiary of the Frankfurt instrumentation and controls company, has moved from Mumbai to Ranjangaon near the industrial center of Pune. At the new site still located in the federal state of Maharashtra, Samson India has the urgently required space to expand its business activities. A four-storey office building and a large production hall have been built on the 18,000 m² company premises. The site provides sufficient space for further expansion in one of the world's fastest growing markets. 125 employees work in production, sales and service at Samson India. In addition to the head office, the subsidiary has eight branch offices strategically located all over India to quickly serve customers in all major industrial regions. The town of Ranjangaon is favorably located between three major economic centers on the subcontinent, Mumbai, Pune and Aurangabad, and is just a one-hour drive from Pune international airport. The products manufactured are not only


intended for the Indian market. Some of the large plant engineering companies have set up their Asian head offices in India and buy products centrally here for their projects on the largest continent Reply Card no 9


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52