Ali Ghalambor: The technological frontier in oil and gas industry

Ali Ghalambor is a multi-awarded petroleum engineer. This blog article talks about the special role played by technology in the survival of the oil and gas industry.

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In a speech delivered by OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem El-Badri to the 15th IIES Conference and Exhibition held in Tehran, Iran last year, he properly recognized that technology has dramatically changed the overall facets of the oil and gas industry. In his words, he considers it a “profound change” that consequently “transformed the supply geography worldwide.” Considering the crippling challenges brought by the geographic, geopolitical, and economic challenges in the oil and gas industry, the assessment could never have been timelier and highly relevant.

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Ali Ghalambor is a retired American Petroleum Institute endowed professor and head of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

The oil and gas industry is in crisis, yet it survives through the emergence of technology that continues to provide innovative approaches in oil and gas drilling explorations and operation.

“For more than a century, new technologies have changed the way reserves are identified, developed, and produced, leading to a massive growth in reserves and supply,” Abdalla Salem El-Badri said in affirmation and confirmation of the fact that technological changes are pushing the oil and gas industry to a new age. Nevertheless, while technology truly promises a new way forward, the more serious and real challenges have to be identified and contained—something that Abdalla Salem El-Badri hopes the major industry players will take up together to “reach a new frontier.”

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Oil industry smarten up

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In the current context of depleting oil reserves that threaten the major engines of growth in a global scale, oil producers turn to one single, most powerful innovation of the modern century—high technology.

Amidst the rising cost of oil and greater issues and challenges in oil production, technology is advertently leveraging innovative solutions in oil and gas exploration and operations. While consumers are slowly adapting to change, major players are starting to focus on the digital age of the oil and gas industry. Using new inventions such as intelligent field technology and nanotechnology, the global oil production found ways to escape the high-stake issues on oil drilling operations. Through geospatial solutions which enable real-time data processing, oil producers can explore previously untapped sources of oil. Fueled by the success of technology-backed operations, oil companies are now starting to funnel their capital and other assets in technology investments. In recent years, the emergence of the digital oil field has caused the major optimization of oil drilling operational processes. Today, it continues to help oil producers cut costs while benefitting from the huge profits of production.

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Despite the growing fear on total oil depletion, the lucrative oil production enterprise is currently on the rise and has no sign of abatement. To say the least, the entry of cutting-edge technology in the oil and gas industry is indeed revolutionary. Moreover, it is a future rushed to act for a world that can’t run without oil.

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‘Peak Oil’ and the oil crunch

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While some “doomers” talk of “peak oil” and “a life after petroleum,” majority in the oil industry still think that everything is just peaking right. The peak oil scenario—the hypothesis that the oil resources are not only on rapid decline but have already reached their peak—is fast gaining traction from sectors left and right.

The notion that humanity has already burned enough oil reserves that usually take millions of years to develop is seemingly plausible in some respect, but people verge away from the real issue—the current challenges to oil production that continues to slide down from easy to difficult.

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In the past decades, oil reserves had become a potent powder keg of wars at various scales. As the world consumes millions of barrels of oil every day, the exponential rate of loss is truly staggering. No one can doubt that fact. Argument-wise, the avid advocates of alternative sources of energy are in fact standing in a solid ground. The global oil production is indeed at an all-time high as the world approaches closer to a more advanced stage of progress. Nonetheless, the real challenge is not the unfounded belief and fear on the “end of oil age” but the increasing difficulty on oil extraction at hostile territories that cost more money and resources to operate.

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Given the politics and economics of the oil industry, the world will never run out of oil; it will just run out of cheaper ways to extract more.


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Ali Ghalambor: The Natural Gas Engineering Handbook and its contribution to education toward efficient natural gas production

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor believes that with the world’s energy consumption rising exponentially and oil production becoming riskier, the shift to natural gas and other alternative energy sources are all but assured.

Natural gas is a cleaner fossil fuel, is plentiful, and is more useful than oil. But naturally, as with all fossil fuels, it still needs to be refined to be useful. The procurement and refining processes of natural gas are complex and are integral parts for the efficient production of natural gas. This is why high-quality natural gas engineering education for students and their continued education as full-fledged natural gas engineers or professionals are very important.

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor is an accomplished petroleum engineer and is a recipient of the Society of Petroleum Engineers Distinguished Achievement Award.

Dr. Ghalambor’s Natural Gas Engineering Handbook, now on its second edition, covers the full scope of natural gas engineering, from gas reservoir engineering to gas processing. It utilizes a computer-assisted approach, which other books on natural gas engineering do not have, and spreadsheets for every engineering calculation that is on the included CD-ROM. This book aims to provide both students and professionals worldwide up-to-date and relevant information in order to provide better insight into the intricacies of natural gas production.

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor: An overview on the oil and gas well drilling process

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Ever wondered how the process for drilling oil and gas wells work? This Dr. Ali Ghalambor article will enlighten you about the basics of this process, which is a vital aspect in the oil and gas industry.

In the complex world of the petroleum industry, drilling is just a part of what it takes to extract petroleum fluids from beneath the surface of the earth. It entails many elements which will require much planning, studies and research before the actual execution of such operations. A team of geologists, scientists, engineers, and other industry experts works to formulate strategies on how to properly source out oil and gas.

Finding the source of oil is of course the first step to drilling a well. Geologists are said to be primarily responsible in locating the right conditions for an oil trap, which includes the source rock, reservoir rock, and entrapment. Some of the things that they consider in finding oil trap are surface rocks and soil types.

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor has co-authored various handbooks about drilling, production and well completion in exploiting petroleum bearing formations. These handbooks are useful reference for industry movers and those who aspire to work in the petroleum field.

After the site selection, further studies are made particularly on the boundaries and environmental impact of the process. Permits and agreements are also ironed out. In preparing the land, several holes are dug around the area, and a rectangular pit or cellar serves as the workspace around the hole.

Once the rig is set, the drilling operations may start. From the starting hole, experts drill the surface up to the pre-set depth. The pre-set depth is located just above the oil trap. A cemented casing must be placed into the section of the hole to avoid it from collapsing. After several casings, the drilling would continue until it reaches the final depth, wherein there are several tests such as well logging, drill-stem testing, and core samples done. Once the final depth is reached, a perforating gun is lowered into the well. The gun creates the necessary holes in the casing wherein the oil will flow.

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor has over 35 years of academic and professional experience in the field of petroleum engineering. For more about him, follow this Facebook page.

Ali Ghalambor: Energizing the production of oil and gas field development wells

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor, who has served as a consultant to more than 50 petroleum production and service companies, finds that these companies can do so much more with additional information on how they can further energize the production of oil and gas in their field development wells.

There have actually been various changes in the activities related to the petroleum industry that have been implemented over the years. These activities have been made more and more efficient through advancements in research and technology. However, there is still an obvious need for improvements to keep up with the global demand, and lowering the cost.

Along with his colleagues Boyun Guo and Kai Sun, Dr. Ali Ghalambor has published the “Well Productivity Handbook,” Gulf Publishing Co. (ISBN: 1-933762-32-2), 334 pages and has done research on various topics pertaining to modeling oil and gas production wells. They have gone back to reviewing crucial engineering issues and have touched on topics such as petroleum fluid properties, wellbore flow performance, reservoir deliverability, and the productivity of intelligent well systems.

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The data collected are a promising herald of more innovations to come as both seasoned engineers and students are able to understand and apply these to their own work, which will give rise to more improvements in best practices. Reservoir simulation is crucial to the design of effective systems that affect oil and gas field development well operations, and regularly updating modeling methods is seen as the key to energizing the rest of the activities that follow.

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Dr. Ali Ghalambor is the recipient of various awards from the Society of Petroleum Engineers and the American Petroleum Institute. Learn more about his pursuits to contribute to the still-growing petroleum industry by visiting this Facebook page.

Ali Ghalambor: Pioneering offshore pipeline texts

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Before Ali Ghalambor decided to co-write Offshore Pipelines, there was a marked dearth in the academic literature that was available for this area of study. As a matter of fact, there were very few books about offshore petroleum engineering, and no one dared to tackle the challenging topic of offshore pipelines.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the use of offshore pipelines, mainly due to its safety, environmental, energy, maintenance, and reliability benefits. With this trend, the subject of offshore pipelines has become all the more important in the study of petroleum engineering.

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This is the reason why the book on offshore pipelines written by Ali Ghalambor, Boyun Guo, and Shanhong Song has been regarded as an edgy and up-to-date contribution to the study of petroleum engineering. First published in 2005, it has proven to be one of the most useful references for engineers and developers who are accorded the challenging task of bringing oil and gas onshore.

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Through this book, pipeline design engineers will learn about designing low-cost pipelines that allow long-term operability and safety. Moreover, pipeline operation engineers and management personnel will be able to acquire the necessary knowledge and skills in the cost-effective operation of pipeline systems.

The book also contains a section that deals with deepwater pipelining, a relatively new technology that has been developed in the past ten years and is swiftly increasing in practical use.

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