Editorial

The Newsletter is compiled by David Hughes, Senergy Ltd. on behalf of the DTI, Oil and Gas Directorate (david.hughes@senergyltd.com)

Thank you for accessing the fourth issue of the SHARP IOR eNewsletter.

Compared to the second issue, since the third issue was launched on 30 September 2002 the eNewsletter site has received twice as many hits - over 55,000 in total (a hit is defined as a single action on the web server).  The number of visits (times that a user has accessed the site) over the same period is around 6500.  The activity over the last six months (in fortnightly intervals) is shown below.

The five most popular articles from the third issue were A Post-Well Analysis of Recent Years Exploration Drilling in the Atlantic Margin by Nick Liozou of the DTI, Britain's Oil and Gas: What We Stand To Lose by Anton Ziolkowski of Edinburgh University, Reservoir Fluid Studies by Ali Danesh of Heriot Watt University, Gas Condensate Well Productivity by Bob Mott of ECL Technology and Depressurisation of Waterflooded Reservoirs – Results From Oil-Wet and Mixed-Wettability Micromodels by Dabir Tehrani of Heriot Watt University with 150-200 visits each.  Many of the features such as the Introduction and the item on AEA Technology Subsurface being sold to ECL received 170-200 visits.

The statistics also show that Issues 1 and 2 are still being read.  For example Air Injection Processes: Heavy Oil Recovery and In-situ Upgrading; Light Oil Recovery by Malcolm Greaves of Bath University received 314 visits in the last six months, Light Oil Recovery via Air Injection Technology, by Demetrios Yannimaras of BP (169 visits) and Brent Field Depressurisation by Rob Kuyper of Shell U.K. (174 visits).  Malcolm's article is by far the most visited - unfortunately we don't have a prize!  Let's see if we can double the number of hits again and reach 100,000 with this issue!

In this the first anniversary issue, we again have a substantial section on CO₂ EOR and sequestration.  This seems to be the "hot" topic of the moment.  The UK Government is considering how it can meet its commitments in relation to greenhouse gas emissions under Kyoto 1 and 2.  There has been much recent debate between the DTI and the various stakeholders with an interest in CO₂ sequestration - see for example the discussions at the workshop on The Feasibility of CO₂ Sequestration in the UK held on 18 October 2002.  The outcome of all this will be an Energy White Paper due in the next month or so.

We also have a section on Production System Optimisation. Vendors have brought forward a number of software solutions to this problem and I am grateful to Mervyn Grist of the DTI for reviewing these and supplying his comments.  A number of other articles cover fallow fields, legacy data retention, miscible gas injection, smart wells, reservoir analogues, MEOR, dynamic grids and the modelling of chemical EOR processes.

No feedback was received (in terms of emails to the editor) on any of the posted items in Issue 3.  Once you have read an article please be forthcoming with your comments (to iornewsletter@senergyltd.com) - feel free to get a vigorous debate going.  We will include a selection of these in a "Feedback" section in the next issue.  We also need a new "Talking Point" or two for the next issue.  Is there something you want to get off you chest?

Hello out there - where are the universities?  We only have two contributions is this issue from universities (thanks to UCL and Heriot Watt).  Please use this newsletter to keep us informed about your ongoing projects or on any ideas that you have for new IOR-related projects. After all, this newsletter is read by representatives of funding bodies and potential industry sponsors.

Thank you to everyone who provided items for inclusion in this issue. Thanks are also due to Tissa Jayasekera at the DTI for the effort he has put in writing and soliciting contributions, to Chris McLeod (RML) who constructed the web pages and to Grant Cooper (RML) who analysed the website statistics.

If you would like to submit an article or other contribution for inclusion in the next issue of the newsletter, please provide the text in a Word document. However, please do not embed any graphic objects in the Word document. Please send these as separate .jpg or another high quality graphic format files. Keeping the graphics files separate provides us with better originals than we are able to extract from .doc files. Ideally the .doc file and the graphics files should be zipped up into a single file prior to submission. Please keep contributions relatively short and make liberal use of hyperlinks to other material on your own website. The next edition of the SHARP IOR eNewsletter is due to be published in May 2003. Contributions should be submitted to iornewsletter@senergyltd.com by 30 April 2003.

The newsletter is distributed via an email notification with hyperlinks to the newsletter itself. We would like to send the email to a single contact within each organisation for onward distribution within that organisation. Please would you liaise with others in your organisation, and set up an email address of the form (for example) iordistribution@xyz.co.uk which is itself a mailing list of those wishing to receive the email notification, which is maintained by your organisation. Please let me know when you have set up such an email address and emails notifying future issues will be sent to your distribution email address.

Disclaimer: The material available on this website is designed to provide general information only. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is accurate, it does not constitute legal or other professional advice.
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