Deepwater Petroleum Exploration & Production: A Nontechnical Guide

This book begins with a brief history of oil exploration, both onshore and offshore. Throughout, the authors provide boxes with interesting facts and background material that help maintain the reader's interest. Some boxes are stories of innovations in the field (such as John Chance's invention of a system to "decode" the jittered government GPS data) whlie other boxes explain some of the unfamiliar terms of the oilfield world, like use of "Christmas Tree" for a certain piece of equipment and the use of unusual names for oilfield leases (such as "Bullwinkle" and "Cognac").

My only dissatisfaction with the book is the lack of a bibliography to assist the reader in finding more information on certain subjects covered. Also, the index should include more key names and terms. (For example, the name John Chance is not in the index despite the fact that his discovery is mentioned in a supplemental box.) I like any book that I read to have an extensive index so that I can quickly return to interesting passages.

The book is a relatively quick read. In just one day I read about one-third of the book (well into Chapter 4). The book assumes that the reader has little technical knowledge (but at least some technical interest) and would be a good introduction to the oilfield terminology and concepts, especially for nontechnical personnel who have to work with the engineers and geologists. (For the record, I am a civil engineer, and I worked a little with the oil industry in the past. My current interest is in the creative aspects of design and innovation.)


Broad, concise, and interesting   November 28, 2003
 16 out of 16 found this review helpful

This is a good place to start if you're looking for a very general introduction to deepwater exploration and production (E&P). Almost nothing gets a lot of detail, but almost nothing is omitted. The chapters cover the following topics:

1 - history of offshore drilling
2 - the move into deeper and deeper water in the eighties
3 - exploration
4 - drilling and completion
5 - development systems
6 - fixed structures -- compliant towers, concrete, etc.
7 - floating systems -- TLPs, FPSOs, spars, and so on
8 - subsea systems
9 - topsides
10 - piplines, flowlines, and risers
11 - technology and the future

The writing is sound, and there are plenty of decent graphics -- pictures of the gigantic Bullwinkle platform; photographs and schematics of equipment and layouts; and a couple of colour plates showing seismic analysis displays. The chapters are really just overviews -- although there's a fair amount of detail in some areas, particularly in platform construction and assembly, there is so much to say that they can't do more than scratch the surface.

The book does give you quite a lot of vocabulary to work with, which is valuable. There are a multitude of online oil and gas glossaries that you might want to search for via the web, but the narrative form that this book provides is a pretty good way to understand them too.

If you are new to E&P and would like a good overview, this is a pretty good place to start, but it won't take you very far in any one direction.