See Why Discovery of Natural gas in Tanzania Could not bring Too Many Jobs To Tanzanians as they believe

Few weeks ago i got  the text from Tanzanian  who is studying Petroleum engineering in among  of university in China, He was curious to know  about the employment opportunity in natural gas sector in Tanzania? And this is why  i am writing this article.

You know many people believe the discovery of natural gas could give Tanzanians millions of job opportunities, they think, their sons, relatives or themselves can be  employed in  natural gas industry.This  is definetly  untrue. So to day, this article    will clear up  this  common misconception

Oil and gas sector is highly capital intensive industry with risky operations. And Due to the investment of high capital, the oil companies do not prefer to have a large number of employee in order  to make reasonable profit. In the currently findings released by Twaweza organization in a research brief tittled “Great expectation citizens views on the gas sector” shows that, average citizens expect four millon job opportunities from natural gas industry. Their expectation  is beyond of the real situation. Tanzanians can find an example of country like Norway, though of its massive discovery of natural resources,  they  have only 240,000  employee  in their  gas sector. 

You can imagine, Tanzanians expect four millions job in gas sector while Norwagians who currently employed in gas sector is only 240,000. I hope you will agree with me that, the perception of many Tanzanian citizen to get job in gas sector is unrealistic. 

MY FINAL WORDS

 Citizen might be be employed in this sector, but is not at large number  as many citizens believe, few people they could get employment and not many of them. This is the right time for Tanzanians to be aware on this particular matter.

Read more…

Mnazi Bay Gas Wells Deliver 1st Gas to Tanzania Pipeline

East Africa-focused junior producer Wentworth Resources announced Friday the first gas delivery from its Mnazi Bay Concession in southern Tanzania to the country's new transnational pipeline.

Wentworth said that two wells are now producing, with the three remaining wells expected to be put on production in the coming months. Initial production volumes will be used for commissioning purposes and to fill the pipeline, with production rates expected to increase to 70 million cubic feet per day by October this year and 80 MMcf/d by the end of 2015.

Wentworth added that the Mnazi Bay joint venture partners have agreed payment security terms with Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation, the buyer of the gas, and various other parties.

Wentworth Managing Director Geoff Bury commented in a company statement:

"We are very pleased to announce that production from Mnazi Bay has now commenced and the Mnazi Bay joint venture is the first supplier to the new transnational pipeline in Tanzania. Concluding the payment guarantee and starting production in our Mnazi Bay gas fields are pivotal events for Wentworth and underpin the long-term viability of our operations in East Africa and our partnership with Maurel & Prom and TPDC.

"Wentworth is well positioned to become a significant gas producer in Tanzania, where supply and demand dynamics offer an opportunity which we and our partners are uniquely placed to realize. We expect to exit 2015 in a strong financial position."

Read more…

The Ministry of Energy & Mineral Development has announced that the “Uganda International Oil & Gas Summit” (UIOGS) will be held in Kampala on 16-17 September 2015.
With a first-class conference programme led by Government, Public Sector and Private Sector industry leaders; the Summit marks an important point on the global calendar.
UIOGS is held under the Patronage of Eng. Irene Muloni,Minister of Energy and Mineral Development; and will be used by the Ministry as its official platform for meeting international companies and presentation of the multitude of energy projects presently ongoing or planned for in Uganda.
Uganda has much to offer the global oil and gas community and 2015 is an exciting year as the country moves towards commercial production. Uganda is blessed with its natural resources and now has an estimated 6.5 billion barrels of oil in place, a high drilling success rate of 85%, advanced refinery plans, vast acreage of underexplored areas rich in hydrocarbons and much to look forward to with the new licensing rounds.
The UOGS programme will provide an invaluable insight into all the major issues, challenges and opportunities including:

• Focus on the licensing rounds and new opportunities
• Update on existing fields and exploration success
• Financial and regulatory frameworks
• Uganda’s Refinery Project – 60,000 bpd by 2020
• Move to commercial production
• Supporting the oil and gas industry through a skilled workforce and local content
• Infrastructure developments to support oil & gas
• How can a successful oil industry support our drive towards rural electrification

The Ministry of Energy & Mineral Development will be using the UIOGS platform to actively engage with allits partners and suppliers from around the world. The services of the renowned market leaders for oil & gas conferences; Global Event Partners have been engaged to work alongside domestic experts Image Care to ensure that UIOGS is a first-class event that puts Uganda firmly on the global map.
UIOGS is a two day conference that will be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel on 16-17 September 2015. The programme will be opened by Hon. Eng Irene Muloni and will feature more than 30 Government officials, Company leaders and Industry experts gathered from Uganda, the region and throughout the world to give Uganda a truly global platform.

Read more…

New petroleum producers survey policy options in wake of oil price slump

Countries seeking to develop newly-discovered petroleum resources are facing a fall in global oil prices, with competition from the ‘shale gas revolution’ in the United States, as well as renewable energy sources.

At a New Petroleum Producers Discussion Group in Tanzania, organised by Chatham House and co-sponsored by the Commonwealth Secretariat, authorities from more than 20 countries met this week to find solutions to these and other shared challenges.

The four-day forum from 30 June to 2 July, at which a set of Guidelines on Good Governance for Emerging Oil and Gas Producers was released, was attended by government ministries and national oil companies from Belize, Guyana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Jamaica, Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, and Uganda, among other nations.

“In the midst of the oil crisis there is less capital available for investment,” commented Michael Mwanda, Chairman of the Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation, which hosted the meeting in Dar es Salaam. “Some projects which were pegged on a high oil price are now becoming uneconomic and difficult to operate.

“We need to learn from each other and share experiences on how to reduce costs, operate efficiently and become more competitive,” Mr Mwanda said.

Addressing the forum, Ekpen Omonbude, Natural Resources Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat, remarked: “This price decline has necessitated a critical look at strategies to manage petroleum resources, from development programmes to responsible wealth management, to ensure benefits for future generations.”

Dr Omonbude stressed that while the slump in the price of oil – from over US$100 a barrel in 2014 to around US$60 today – presents immediate challenges, these can be mitigated through the adoption of flexible fiscal regimes, increased economic diversification, the development of good governance regimes and revenue transparency.

“Our mission is clear – to help position our member countries to realise the potential of their resource wealth as a driver of sustainable development and economic prosperity,” the Commonwealth representative said.

The New Petroleum Producers Discussion Group was established in 2012 to help countries think critically about policy options available either during the first steps of exploration and development or when restructuring governance arrangements. Options include setting up regulatory institutions and drafting regulations and laws that encourage investment, while balancing the needs of society and environmental protections.

This week marked the first time the discussion group has met outside London and included a final-day national seminar for representatives of Tanzania’s oil and gas sector. Co-sponsors of the initiative include the Natural Resource Governance Institute and the Africa Governance Initiative.

The Guidelines for Good Governance in Emerging Oil and Gas Producers, a synthesis of proposals put forward at each discussion group, seek to guide national authorities to pursue policies which follow good practices, but which also respond to national contexts.

Dr Valérie Marcel, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, principal author of the guidelines, said: “The emergence of shale oil and new renewable technologies offer opportunities and challenges. How the emerging producer is affected and will respond is what we have been debating. One of the main issues is how to adjust to a low price environment, asking what impact is this going to have on licensing terms and the ambitions of national oil companies.”

She added: “Emerging producers are thirsty to learn from their peers about what has worked elsewhere and what advice to give. More established producers want to know whether they are doing things right and what pitfalls they should avoid. This is a really important learning process.”

During the forum, participants exchanged experiences on how to attract investment while preserving long-term national interests, managing expenditure plans as well as ways to guard against abuses and fraud in contracts and licensing. Training sessions focused on involving local suppliers in supply chains, the design of fiscal systems and new information tools.

Eddy Belle, Chief Executive of PetroSeychelles, the national oil company of Seychelles, said: “[Petroleum] is a very dynamic business – there is new technology coming in and new ways of doing things. What Chatham House is doing with the help of the Commonwealth Secretariat is getting people together so you have the chance to learn from the mistakes as well as the successes of others.”

Bashir Hangi, Communications Officer for Uganda’s Petroleum Exploration and Production Department, commented: “Such a forum helps us a lot as emerging producers. We peer review ourselves, and our people go home with a lot of advice. One piece of advice I would share is that you cannot ignore your stakeholders – civil society, academia and communities where there are operations. They should not be taken for granted; they should be brought on board and be involved in the management of the resource.”

Anthony Paul, Managing Director of the Association of Caribbean Energy Specialists, said: “Oil and gas resources give opportunities to deepen industrialisaton, providing power and access to better lighting, heating and cooking facilities as well as petrochemicals and fertilisers. There are also benefits from developing the services industry. What strikes me most is that all countries want the same thing: they want the resource to benefit their citizens.”

Read more…

This is How To Drill Oil and Gas Well

          Now, during this lesson, we will see how to drill them.
1. First of all, let’s see how to describe the subsurface characteristics, in order to plan the design of the future well and to define the phases of the drilling job.
2. Then, we’ll describe the drilling system, and how the driller can manage the drilling process safely.
During the exploration phase a well is needed to confirm the presence of oil or gas in the reservoir.
Some appraisal wells are needed for the delineation process.
Moreover, at the end of the reservoir strategy study, a reservoir model defines how to develop the field, and, more particularly, where to drill the wells and the contribution of each of them to the production plateau.
The role of the driller is to build these wells required for the field development.
A well is an expensive item. It must be carefully studied and planned before being drilled. The well preparation phase involves coordinated work between geoscience engineers and drilling/completion engineers.
How to design a well?
In order to set up the drilling program, the driller needs to know the location of the rig, where the well has to enter the reservoir, the trajectory of the well in the reservoir for a good connection between the well and the reservoir, and the formations to be drilled. Let’s detail the description of the subsurface.
For each formation to be drilled, there are 2 characteristics that need to be known accurately:
1. the pore pressure
2. and the fracture pressure.
The pore pressure is the pressure of the fluid within the grains of the rock. It depends on the depth of the formation and on its nature (sandstone, shale, …).
The fracture pressure corresponds to the minimum pressure to be applied on the rock to generate a fracture.
When the formation is drilled, the well is full of a fluid: the drilling mud, which is directly in contact with the rock, and applies a pressure on it: Pmud.
The mud pressure depends on the depth. One of the roles of the mud is to maintain the interstitial fluid within the rock, in order to avoid a kick.


During the drilling process, the mud is in contact with the rock, which contains a fluid within the grains.
A fluid always flows from high pressure to a lower pressure. If the mud pressure is higher than the pore pressure, the formation fluid cannot enter the well. It remains in the formation and there is no risk of blowout.
During the drilling process, the mud is in contact with the rock, which contains a fluid within the grains.
The mud pressure has to be lower than the frac pressure, in order to avoid the rock being fractured. To conclude, keep in mind that the mud has to be designed so that the mud pressure belongs to the interval between the pore pressure and the frac pressure. This interval is called the mud window.
Both Ppore, in red, and Pfrac, in blue, can be plotted on a (pressure/depth) graph.
The mud pressure has to be in the yellow zone, which is called the mud window. For each lithology to be drilled, the mud has to be well adapted to its characteristics. The well is therefore drilled in different phases, each phase corresponding to a new mud to be used.
At the end of a phase, a casing is installed and cemented to protect the well from the formation already drilled and to finalize the well walls.

The definition of each of these phases is called the well design.
A typical well design is as follows:
1. The first tubular is the conductor pipe installed by the civil engineer before the rig
arrives on site.
2. The next phases are drilled using the rotary drilling technique.
3. The surface casing maintains the unconsolidated surface formations and protects the groundwater.
4. The intermediate casing protects the well from the formations or fluid which could prevent the drilling process from continuing.
5. The last casing is the production casing which allows the reservoir to be isolated.
6. During the last phase the well enters the reservoir.
When a well is an exploration well, designing is much more difficult , due to a lack of measurements and information to describe the subsurface. The mud window is not accurately known. Such uncertainties have to be taken into consideration in the drilling process.
When a well has to be drilled in a new region, there are many uncertainties about the data, including that related to the pore and frac pressure profiles. On the contrary, when a development well is planned, it benefits from data from the surrounding wells already drilled. In this case, the pressure profiles are well known, and the uncertainties are lower.
Let’s mention that the trajectory of a well can be vertical, deviated, or horizontal. The choice of the trajectory depends on the location of the rig, the location of the target of the well when it enters the reservoir, and the trajectory of the drain in the reservoir itself. These two last data are defined and given by the reservoir engineer to the driller.

How a well is drilled in practice? Mechanically, a vertical force applied on the drilling bit (the weight on bit), together with a movement of rotation, generates down to the bit the power necessary to destroy the rock. A hook hangs up the drill string, which is composed of several tubulars screwed together, and, at the bottom, there is a drilling bit.
Both the weight on bit and the rotation per minute, which is given by the rotary table located at the rig floor, are controlled by the driller to maximize the rate of penetration of the bit.
Their optimization depends on several parameters, including the kind of rock to be drilled: the regulation of the hook height controls the part of the total weight of the drillstring applied on the bit, the rotation is often given by a rotary table located at the rig floor.
The mud circuit is combined to the mechanical part of the system.
Firstly, the pump sends the mud at high pressure through the discharge line, the stand pipe, the rotary hose and the top drive, into the pipes.
The mud flows in the drill string down to the bit and catches the small pieces of broken rock, the cuttings, to transport them up to the surface in the space between the drill string and the well walls.

At the surface, the cuttings, the sand and the silt are removed from the mud through shale shakers and other systems.
The mud can be sent to the tanks in order to be re-injected.
In order to control the well in case of blowout, a Blow Out Preventer is installed between the top of the well and the rig floor. This BOP stack is composed of an annular BOP and different rams able to close the well in case of emergency. The size of the BOP is adapted to the maximum pressure that can be encountered during the drilling process.

Read more…