Oil and Natural Gas - Industry Highlights:

India is endowed with 26 sedimentary basins totaling around 1.72 million sq. km of which offshore area (up to 200-m isobath water depth) amounts to 0.38 million sq km. India is currently the fourth largest oil consumer in the Asia-Pacific region after Japan, China and South Korea. Estimated to increase at the rate of 7-8 percent a year, the annual demand for petroleum products, is expected to nearly double from the present level of 80 million tonnes to 155 million tonnes by the year 2006-07. India needs over 700 million barrels of petroleum products per year by the turn of the century. Coal bed methane (CBM) resources in India in the form of thick coal seams at shallower depths are favorably located near some of India's major industrial centers and are of the order of 1,000 billion cubic meters (assuming gas content of 5 cubic meters per tonne). Bombay High has estimated reserves of 6.1 billion barrels.

A Comparison with the leader:

Advantages of oil as a source of energy are

Easily combustible, and produces high energy upon combustion helping in locomotion and in the generation of electricity and various other forms of energy; Widely and easily distributed all over the world through rail and sea tankers Comparatively inexpensive due to large reserves and easy accessibility Good availability Inexpensive Very large amounts of electricity can be generated in one place using oil, fairly cheaply. Oil-fired power stations are very efficient. An oil-fuelled power station can be built almost anywhere, so long as you can get large quantities of fuel to it.

Disadvantages of oil as a source of energy are

it is non-renewable and fast depleting; burning it releases carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas, that had been stored in the earth for millions of years it leaves behind harmful by-products upon combustion, thereby causing a lot of pollution; mining of oil leads to irreversible damage to the adjoining environment; Oil spills as well as evaporation and fumes pollutes the environment; Used oil is difficult to recycle. The price of oil is rising, especially if the real cost of its carbon is included. Burning it produces carbon dioxide, a major cause of global warming.

Oil Rigs: Cities on the Sea

Offshore production platforms may be marvels of modern engineering, but none of that valuable petroleum makes its way out of the wells and into refineries without a great deal of human labor. In fact, larger oil rigs often employ more than a hundred workers to keep the platform running. As many of these rigs are located far from cities and shores, the employees (who range from engineers and geologists to divers and doctors) live for weeks at a time on these huge structures. There are definitely pros and cons to working on an offshore platform. On the plus side, salary and benefits are usually pretty good, and employees typically enjoy long rest periods when they're not at sea. Employees will work one or two weeks on the oil rig, then spend one or two weeks at home. The downside, however, is that when they're at sea, they work 12-hour days, seven days a week. The weeks away from home can strain workers' home lives, as they spend half the year away from their family. To help cope with these issues, petroleum companies frequently put a great deal of effort into providing comfortable living conditions for offshore workers. In many cases, quarters are on par with those found on major cruise ships -- featuring private rooms, satellite TV and even gym, sauna and recreation facilities. The food on board also tends to be above average -- and available 24 hours a day. After all, work on an oil rig continues day and night, with employees working rotating schedules of daytime and night time shifts. Helicopters and ships bring in most of the necessary materials for day-to-day life on an oil rig, often through choppy weather conditions. Oil rigs aren't all Jacuzzis and cafeterias, though. Outside the living quarters, life on an oil rig is a constant encounter with potentially deadly conditions. The business of an oil rig boils down to drawing extremely flammable fluids out of the Earth, burning some of it off in a giant jet of flame and separating highly poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas from the extracted petroleum. On top of this, workers have to deal with all the typical dangers associated with operating dangerous machinery and working at tall heights in windy, stormy conditions. To cope with these dangers, petroleum companies make use of extensive training programs on how to work safely with volatile substances on the high seas. These measures not only help to safeguard the lives of their employees, but also protect their truly massive financial investment in constructing and sustaining an offshore production platform.

Marking Scheme:

Blowout preventers: (BOPs)

The equipment associated with a rig is to some extent dependent on the type of rig but (#23 & #24) are devices installed at the wellhead to prevent fluids and gases from unintentionally escaping from the borehole. #23 is the annular (often referred to as the "Hydril", which is one manufacturer) and #24 is the pipe rams and blind rams. In the place of #24 Variable bore rams or VBR's can be used, they offer the same pressure and sealing capacity found in standard pipe rams, while offering the versatility of sealing on various sizes of drill pipe, production tubing and casing without changing standard pipe rams. Normally VBR's are used when utilizing a tapered drill string (when different size drill pipe is used in the complete drill string).

Centrifuge: an industrial version of the device that separates fine silt and sand from the drilling fluid. Solids control: solids control equipments for preparing drilling mud for the drilling rig. Chain tongs: wrench with a section of chain, that wraps around whatever is being tightened or
loosened. Similar to a pipe wrench.

Degasser: a device that separates air and/or gas from the drilling fluid. Desander / desilter: contains a set of hydrocyclones that separate sand and silt from the drilling fluid. Drawworks: (#7) is the mechanical section that contains the spool, whose main function is to reel in/out the drill line to raise/lower the traveling block(#11). Drill bit: (#26) device attached to the end of the drill string that breaks apart the rock being drilled. It
contains jets through which the drilling fluid exits.

Drill pipe: (#16) joints of hollow tubing used to connect the surface equipment to the bottom hole assembly (BHA) and acts as a conduit for the drilling fluid. In the diagram, these are "stands" of drill
pipe which are 2 or 3 joints of drill pipe connected together and "stood" in the derrick vertically, usually to save time while tripping pipe.

Elevators: a gripping device that is used to latch to the drill pipe or casing to facilitate the lowering or lifting (of pipe or casing) into or out of the borehole. Mud motor: a hydraulically powered device positioned just above the drill bit used to spin the bit
independently from the rest of the drill string.

Mud pump: (#4) reciprocal type of pump used to circulate drilling fluid through the system. Mud tanks: (#1) often called mud pits, provides a reserve store of drilling fluid until it is required down
the wellbore.

Rotary table: (#20) rotates the drill string along with the attached tools and bit. Shale shaker: (#2) separates drill cuttings from the drilling fluid before it is pumped back down the borehole.

Undersea Drilling

You've established your multimillion-dollar offshore drilling platform and, miles beneath you, there's a fortune in untapped petroleum deposits. The challenge in undersea drilling is transferring all that precious oil and gas from point A to point B without losing it and polluting the ocean. How do you tunnel into the Earth without water flowing into the hole or all the oil surging up into the sea? To ensure accurate drilling, engineers connect the drill site to the platform with a subsea drilling template. On a very basic level, this serves the same purpose as the templates you might have used to trace a pattern or carve a jack-o-lantern design into a pumpkin. While the design may vary depending on the exact ocean floor conditions, the drilling template basically resembles a large metal box with holes in it to mark the site of each production well. Since production wells often have to sink miles into the Earth's crust, the drill itself consists mostly of multiple 30-foot (9.1-meter) drill pipes screwed together, called a drill string. They're much like tent poles in this respect. A turntable on the platform rotates the drill string and, at the other end, a drill bit grinds through the Earth. The drill bit generally consists of either a rotating bit embedded with industrial diamonds or a trio of rotating, interlocking bits with steel teeth. In the weeks or months it takes to reach the oil deposit, the bit may dull and require replacement. Between the platform and the ocean floor, all of this equipment descends through a flexible tube called a marine riser. As the boring hole descends deeper into the ground, operators send a constant flow of drilling mud down to the drill bit, which then flows back up to the platform. This thick, viscous fluid consists of clay, water, barite and a mixture of special chemicals. The drilling mud lubricates the drill bit, seals the wall of the well and controls pressure inside the well. Also, as the drill bit shreds rock, the resulting fragments become suspended in the mud and leave the well in the rising, return flow. On the surface, a circulation system filters the mud before sending it back down the well. The drilling mud acts as the first line of defence against high, subterranean pressures, but there's still a high risk of a blowout of fluid from the well. To handle these events, petroleum companies install a blowout prevention system (BOP) on the seafloor. If pressurized oil and gas gush up the well, the

BOP will seal the well with hydraulic valves and rams. It will then reroute the surging well fluids into specially designed containment systems. The drilling process itself occurs in phases. The initial surface hole, with a diameter of about 18 inches (46 centimetres) descends from several hundred to several thousand feet. At this point, engineers remove the drill string and send down hollow segments of metal pipe called casing. Once cemented into place, this conductor pipe barrier lines the hole and prevents leaks and caving. For the next phase, a 12-inch (30-centimeter) drill bit digs the well even deeper. Then, the drill string is again removed so surface casing can be installed. Finally, an 8-inch (20-centimeter) bit bores the rest of the way to the petroleum deposit. This final stretch is called the bottom hole, and is lined with intermediate casing. Throughout this process, a device called a packer travels down the well, expanding against the walls to ensure everything is sealed.

Exploratory Drilling
You can send shock waves down to the ocean floor all day, but ultimately you're going to have to drill a little if you want to know if you have a potential gusher on your hands. To handle this job, oil companies send out a mobile drilling platform to perform exploratory drilling on a site. Some of these platforms are ship-based, but others have to be towed to the drilling site by other seagoing vessels. An exploratory drilling rig will typically drill four temporary exploratory wells over a suspected deposit, each taking 60 to 90 days to complete. Geologists initially drill to obtain a core sample. The principle is the same as if you stuck a hollow cylinder into a birthday cake and then removed it. You'd then be able to examine the cylinder to discover what varying layers of icing and cake existed inside the cake. Will there be ice cream? This is one method of finding out without cutting you a whole slice. Of course, oil geologists aren't hoping for ice cream. They're looking for signs of petroleum, which they call a show. Once a show has occurred, drilling stops and geologists perform additional tests to make sure oil quality and quantity are sufficient to justify further action. If so, they then drill additional wells to substantiate the findings. Once geologists have established the worth of a petroleum deposit, it's time to drill a production well and begin harvesting the riches. An average well lasts a good 10 to 20 years before it's no longer profitable, so offshore production platforms are built with a long stay in mind. The platforms are typically fixed directly to the ocean floor using either metal or concrete foundations or tethering cables. As you might imagine, the platform has to remain as stationary as possible during all this drilling, no matter how severe the weather becomes. One platform can boast as many as 80 wells, though not all of them go straight down. Directional drilling allows oil platforms to sink production wells into the ocean floor at an angle in order to reach deposits miles away from the drill site. If you've seen the 2007 film "There Will Be Blood," then you may know this as the "I drink your milkshake!" method. In the film, a maniacal, moustached oilman

boasts that, through directional drilling, he's managed to drain all the oil beneath a nearby parcel of land. This issue also arises in the offshore drilling industry. For instance, in California, the state is authorized to drill new wells if it can prove that wells in adjacent federal waters are draining California-owned oil deposits. Even after its wells have run dry, offshore production platforms often find renewed life as a central hub for other nearby oil platforms. The other platforms pipe petroleum over for processing and/or storage.

Some useful links: Kshitij 2012: http://www.ktj.in IIT Kharagpur: http://www.iitkgp.ac.in/ General Electric (GE): http://www.ge.com/in/ Industrial Design Problems, Kshitij 2012: http://www. ktj.in/#GeoTech