Celebrating the Entrepreneurial Spirit and Ingenuity of our Industry
By Ted Godo
Greetings, fellow HGS members. As we enter the “fourth quarter” of our term, I want to take some time to acknowledge and appreciate our industry's entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity. This month’s feature article provides a great example. It is a story of how several different oil companies worked together to solve a problem for themselves and to supply a significant amount of gas to our country. Five oil companies made several small gas discoveries that were significant in terms of total reserves but were laterally spread out in deep water, none of which justified the building of a Hub. Working together for a solution, the Independence Hub (IHub) facility was designed, constructed, and installed in a central portion between these discovered reserves. Next, a pipeline to market was also needed, and it was designed and named the “Independence Trail.” Both were likely named after the independent producers who conceived the project. The IHub was the world's deepest water platform, at over 8,000 feet, located in Mississippi Canyon Block 920 at the border of the central and eastern GOM planning areas. The life of the project began in 2007 with its first production and was decommissioned in 2015. But guess what? That wasn’t the end of the story. LLOG purchased and retrofitted the IHub platform for a new project discovery in deep waters at the Leon/Castile discoveries. Recycling massive amounts of metal to reduce costs and save time from engineering a new facility is another testament to our industry drive and ingenuity.
I'd also like to take time in each issue to share how we think and share. I’ll share a personal story from the 2006 paper I was honored to present in an oral report in late 2004 at the prestigious British Geological Survey in London. This event caused me some embarrassment, but that’s where learning often comes most, sometimes a little painfully. The paper I was assigned to present focused on the newly producing turbidite fields developed by Shell in the Viosca Knoll area (refer to Figure 6 of the feature article). Channel Levee systems and low-resistivity thin beds were then just at the forefront of global awareness. Also, my work was focused on the US Gulf, with the Mississippi River system supplying most of the sediment. The Mississippi River is a vast interior drainage system that delivers much mud (soil) from the plains to the gulf. After all, it's known colloquially as the “muddy Mississippi” for obvious reasons. Other rivers with shorter drainage areas or deeply eroded highlands will produce coarser grain sediments, which had been more commonly explored then. The audience was very polite and respectful. Their common knowledge was that turbidites were often coarse-grained sands with pronounced resistivity and commonly had blocky-shaped gamma-ray signatures. I was embarrassed because I focused on the thin-bedded signatures and muddy channel fills, not realizing my audience had different knowledge and experience. I completed the 30-minute presentation, and several questions from the audience included, "Are the reservoirs the thin-bedded low resistivity beds?" Where are the coarse-grained sands? I thought to myself, I just rambled on for 30 minutes, thinking I was doing a good job, and these are the questions? Could I have better understood my audience's experiences? Should I have improved the lead sentences or even changed the title?
That experience taught me a couple of things. First, I needed to expand my knowledge of worldwide turbidites and not be so “GOM-focused”; also, maybe other global ideas could aid in my understanding of turbidites. Second, I needed to know my audience to tailor the talk to better their understanding. These learnings stayed with me even though I sometimes stray from them.
Finally, I would ask our readers to submit their technical articles for the May and June issues of the Bulletin. I’m running low on technical articles to write and could really use your help. Plus, getting contributions from other authors with different experiences and competencies would help the Bulletin appeal to a wider audience.
Thank you for reading the Bulletin articles. We strive to bring you interesting topics. See you next month.
Ted Godo