Collateral Damage
Whilst the prime concern has to be the safety of people, some consideration should be given to the role of window film in reducing collateral damage. Glass fragments can contaminate the work place as was found following the Bishopsgate bomb in 1993 when the whole air conditioning and ducting system had to be replaced. Modern window film systems contain glass fragments, thus reducing clear-up costs and damage to vital equipment and reducing consequential loss by allowing organisations to get back to work sooner.
Glass Audit
For most organisations the first task is to carry out a glass audit and to ascertain the nature of installed glass and the glazing configurations to measure its ability to offer resistance to blast waves. 3M can organise a glass inspection of this kind and provide a written report on which a remedial programme, if necessary, can be instigated. A glass audit of this kind can also recognise and evaluate any existing film applications to see if they meet today’s accepted guidelines. The reality is that many films installed more than a few years ago are now recognised as being below the required standard because technology has moved on and because the threat these days is from larger, more powerful explosions. Very often, films were applied without consideration for the size, thickness and weight of glass and therefore would fail in the event of an explosion.
To Inject or Not to Inject ?
Improved oil recovery (IOR) is seen as a way of sustaining oil production and prolonging the life of maturing oil fields in the North Sea. IOR includes anything that can help to increase incremental oil recovery, beyond that which is achievable through secondary techniques, such as waterflooding. A subcategory, which appears to be less talked about, especially in European circles, is enhanced oil recovery (EOR). EOR is usually reserved for more advanced, in situ processes that are capable of achieving additional oil recovery through discrete mobilisation mechanisms and, in some cases, improving reservoir sweep.
The main types of EOR process are chemical, polymer, gas injection, thermal and microbial. Over the last 20 years, it has become increasingly evident that chemical (surfactant methods) are too expensive, even at today’s oil prices. Polymer flooding is also expensive, but fits into a special sub-category, namely ‘flow profiling’, and is therefore not a distinct EOR process. Microbial has not yet demonstrated any apparent success at the pilot scale, therefore, only gas injection and thermal are real contenders.
The simplest definition of EOR is the injection of an expensive fluid into a reservoir, to increase oil production. It is important to query whether the fluid to be injected is available in sufficiently large quantities, like water offshore. Very often this is not the case and it is one of the principal reasons for the implementation of EOR techniques not accelerating ahead, as was predicted 15 years ago. The main inhibitor then was the low oil price – US$20 per barrel was considered to be the lift-off price for certain EOR processes. During the last 20 years of EOR development, hundreds of field pilots and small-scale commercial developments have been undertaken worldwide, but mainly in the US due to US Department of Energy (DoE) support. However, there are currently only two examples of large-scale EOR application:
- steam injection into heavy oil and bitumen reservoirs, accounting for more than 80% of all incremental EOR oil – some 800,000 barrels per day (bbl/d); and
- miscible hydrocarbon gas injection at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, operated by British Petroleum (BP).
No EOR projects of any scale have been started in the North Sea, although there have been few IOR polymer injection projects (reservoir profiling) and depressurisation in the Brent field. The leading question is therefore: will large-scale IOR/EOR happen before it is too late or will it be consigned to the history books as an interesting idea, but much too complex to actually put into practice?
Category:
Health & Safety
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