Introduction

Tissa Jayasekera OBE (tissa.jayasekera@dti.gsi.gov.uk) is Manager of the DTI's LCU-LED SHARP programme.

Welcome once again to our IOR eNewsletter. We are now in the third year and this is the 7 th issue. We are very pleased with its useage and the value it has given to the IOR community. I will leave it to David Hughes, in his Editorial , to elaborate on the analysis of "visits" made over the last few months.

Recently DTI has taken steps to configure all its newsletters into a unified format and this has made us examine as to what actually constitutes a newsletter. It turns out that strictly speaking this not a newsletter, but a notification of added pages to a website. For avoidance of any misunderstanding in the future we will need to make a change to its title. The word "news" will be taken out to prevent search engines picking it out as a newsletter. We will have the new title finalised by the time of the next issue.

I would like to announce the retirement of Chris Blenkinsop from DTI LCU-LED at the end of 2003. Chris has been one of the longest standing reservoir engineers here, having joined in 1978, when we were a part of the Department of Energy, based in Millbank. Chris has worked in all areas of the North Sea , and in recent times he became well known to his counterparts in the industry as the person who conducted the twice-yearly production forecast for the Treasury. Our best wishes go to Chris for a happy retirement.

I am pleased to announce that William Wilson has joined LCU-LED Aberdeen office as a senior facilities engineer. Willie has considerable experience in subsea engineering and he has been very swift in getting his first article into this issue Subsea Seawater Injection: A New "Raw Solution" . This is a very interesting new area and will be particularly relevant to some of the marginal developments on the UKCS. It is hoped that this article will stimulate a lively discourse on the topic.

CO2 injection for EOR and sequestration is still a popular topic with five articles in this issue - Review of CO2 Capture and Storage in the UK by George Marsh, Enhanced Gas Recovery from CO2 Injection into Depleted Gas Reservoirs by Graham Paterson, Construction and Validation of an Integrated 3D Reservoir Characterisation Geomodel for Reservoir Management at Seminole San Andres Unit by Mike Uland and Ken Kosco, Evaluation of IOR by CO2 Injection in Gullfaks by Hafsteinn Agustsson and George Grinestaff CO2 EOR in the North Sea (CENS) - Update on Project Status by David Coleman.

In the heavy oil area we have an article by TianXiang Xia on the THAI process, Simulation of THAI (Toe-to-Heel Air Injection) Process . This is a follow-on article to that reported in the previous issue. The THAI process has made some progress in onshore Canada where a pilot test is planned in the Athabasca Tar Sands in Alberta .

Lastly, let me draw your attention to DTI's annual IOR seminar, which is planned for 22 and 23 June 2004 in the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre. This year the event has a new name DTI Seminar on Maximising Hydrocarbon Recovery from the UKCS 2004 and it will be over two days with a bigger participation in the presentation sessions by the oil industry and DTI. Further notification of the event with final programme and registration particulars will published on the SHARP website , and in SPE Review and PESGB Newsletter nearer the date. Details and online registration will be available from 19 April 2004 at http://events.senergyltd.com . I hope that most of you will be able to attend.

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