Orion quadrilateral won BP award

Petroleum News Staff

BP Exploration (Alaska) Prudhoe Bay drilling engineer Mik Triolo and Steve Deckert, Alaska Drilling and Wells staff engineer, are on senior petroleum engineer Donn Schmohr’s team, which won BP’s 2004 Paul Martins production excellence award for the L-201 quadrilateral drilled in 2004 at the Orion satellite at Prudhoe Bay.

This is the first time the award has been given.

It is for technology excellence in drilling and completion, with competition among BP business units worldwide based on six criteria: materiality — significant business impact; integration; long-term sustainability; sharing of ideas; initiative; and measureability. The reward goes to individuals and small teams within BP’s exploration and production segment, or those working in partnership with BP, who have made an outstanding contribution to production excellence.

The award was created in honor of Paul Martins, who died last fall, by colleagues who wanted to memorialize his contributions to the company.

Martins, 50, was BP’s head of discipline, completions and wells. He was with BP in Alaska from 1990 to 1996 as lead stimulation engineer and team leader for production technology, returning to the United Kingdom in 1996 as subsurface manager for the Magnus field. He was then named well performance technology network leader. Martins earned a Ph.D. in geomechanics from Imperial College and B.A. and M.A. degrees in engineering science from Oxford and began his career with BP in 1982 at the research and development center in Sunbury, UK.

The Alaska multilateral well team took top honors.

Also among the finalists were Diane Richmond, Milne Point reservoir management lead, and her team.

They increased production from the Kuparuk reservoir at Milne by 5,000 barrels per day with no additional capital spending, cutting the decline of oil production from the Kuparuk reservoir from 17 percent to 7 percent a year.