PPFG/Geomechanics Specialist II

Airswift has been tasked by one of our major Oil and Gas clients to seek a Pore Pressure (PPFG) / Geomechanics Specialist to join their team located in Houston, TX for a 12-month contract position with benefits!
Role Synopsis
The central Western Hemisphere Pore Pressure and Geomechanics team located in Houston is looking for a Pore Pressure/Geomechanics specialist to join the team and support well planning and execution for all of the Western Hemisphere.  This team supports all of the Gulf of Mexico, Trinidad, and exploration (including Brazil and Canada) producing assets and exploration activities offshore.  In addition, the team is becoming increasingly involved in appraisal and development work for Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) in the US.  We work closely with our subsurface and wells teams both in the Western Hemisphere as well as globally to safely and effectively deliver wells for company.
The Pore Pressure/Geomechanics Specialist is an integral member of the cross-disciplinary well delivery teams and provides support for well planning and execution by developing geologically sound and compliant pore and fracture pressure forecasts and wellbore stability models. The specialist is involved in all aspects of well planning from early concept, through detailed well planning, execution and post well analysis. During execute the specialist also collaborates with the Real Time Collaboration Center on pressure detection efforts and with subsurface, drilling, and completions toto incorporate pore pressure and wellbore stability learnings and understanding to safely and effectively execute the wells.
Primary Accountabilities

• Pore Pressure and Fracture Pressure Forecasting:
  
  
  
  • The successful candidate is expected to integrate multiple types of indicators and observations of pressure and fracture gradient in a geologic context to generate a pre-drill pore pressure and fracture gradient (PPFG) forecast.  This may include: pressure from seismic velocities, offset well data such as measured pressures, connection gases, log derived pressures in shale, and basin models for building the pore pressure model and log data, drilling events/data, mini-frac/leakoff test data, lost circulation events, impact of reservoir depletion and lithology variations to constrain fracture gradient and minimum stress. .
    
  • The successful candidate with then integrate their work with others on the multi-disciplinary well planning team to optimize the design on the selection of drilling fluid type/weight, casing string design, setting depths, potential geo-hazards and mitigation techniques. They will also be able to communicate the technical work as well as the risks and mitigations to a wide range of stakeholders, ranging from the drilling team, the Operations team monitoring the well, leadership as we well as co-owners and governmental regulators.
    

  
  

• Operational Support for Pore Pressure Detection as required for complex development or exploration wells in collaboration with the remote collaboration center; including real-time model calibration, kick analysis, gas and breathing analysis and losses investigations as well as interpretation of formation integrity tests. The successful candidate will be responsible for communicating the updated PPFG model and forecast going forward to the operations team and to recommend potential changes to mudweight or drilling strategy and potential locations for pressure points.
  
• Drillability Assessment: work closely with wells to develop wellbore strengthening model and implementation plan for drilling through depleted reservoirs.
  
• Wellbore stability analysis:Developing wellbore stability models as the basis for providing minimum mud weight recommendations for drilling and completing wells. There will be an emphasis on analysis and integration of data from multiple sources e.g. log data, drilling data, cavings analysis, image and caliper log analysis etc.
  
• Operational assessment: contribute to Reservoir Development Operating Limits, broaching analyses, zonal isolation assessment, alternate well design, deviation/abandonment risk assessments. Participate in risk assessments to represent the PPFG, zonal isolation and broaching risks.
  
• Participation in subsurface related non-productive time (NPT) analyses and investigations
  
• Support development and implementation of a world class PPFG and Geomechanics toolkit. 
  
• Represent company externally as required at industry meetings and JIPs etc.
  
• Coach for less experienced team members
  

Essential Education
Master’s or PhD in Engineering, Science, Geoscience, Geomechanics or Mathematics
Essential Criteria

• Minimum 5 years of experience in relevant oilfield (drilling PPFG/geomechanics) with operator or service company. 
  
• Strong communication skills with the ability to distill complicated technical work to a variety of stakeholders.
  
• Ability to work with cross-disciplinary teams and competing priorities to deliver challenging wells.
  
• The candidate must be familiar with PPFG, geomechanics, drilling and subsurface aspects of Well Planning and Execution.
  

Desirable Criteria and Qualifications

• Previous PPFG experience with an operator; previous geomechanics experience such as wellbore stability and formation pressure integrity tests, strong geology and geophysics background and experience with well planning.
  
• Experience generating pre-drill PPFG forecasts for deepwater wells in both development and exploration settings.
  
• Awareness of Geology, Petrophysics, Basin Modelling, Processing Geophysics, Reservoir Geomechanics, Drilling Engineering, Rig Systems, and Well Control.
  
• Software proficiency and coding capability (e.g., VBA, Python, Techlog and Petrel).