By Steve Earle - HGS Editor 2007/2008
One of the first things the editor must do is define measurement standards for the publication. HGS has always used English measures (e.g., feet and miles) as is common in the domestic E&P industry; however, international articles and most academics use metric measures. I hope that when we converted those that we rounded in the appropriate direction (although if not, I’m sure the readership would let me know about it).
One of the great things about the old English system is that the measures tend toward the colorful. So one could talk about a hogshead of oil or a butt of ethanol, a butt being equal to two hogsheads or three barrels of oil (using the wine standard—beer measures are naturally a little different). With grain ethanol becoming a common additive to gasoline, there might be some traction for this. Alas, no colorful measures exist on the gas side. I’d offer up the “Bessie,” defined as the amount of methane generated by the royal bovine in one year, but the Queen declined to subject her favorite cow to such treatment. An interesting side note is that most gas generated in the gut of cattle is burped out.
On a more serious side, there was some discussion recently in one of the user groups about map projections for X and Y values in our projects. In the U.S. we generally use the state plane coordinates system, a Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) projection, but still requiring reference to a standard ellipsoid and datum. International standards are generally WGS 84, but in North America the oil and gas industry has more commonly used the older Clarke 1866 ellipsoid and NAD 27 datum. A common mistake is to think the latitude and longitude on your handheld GPS can be plugged directly into your project and be accurate. The projection and datum used for each is probably different and the error could be significant. I believe you can plug your GPS values into Google Earth, but don’t hold me to that.
When I worked South Texas, most well locations are referenced to the abstract lines. These can be somewhat tricky because some are defined by local landmarks such as the old oak tree (the one that died in the last drought) or the river with its moving meanders. Most shotpoints for 2D seismic lines were provided with lat/long values (NAD 27), but we would get the occasional survey with shots measured from abstract lines. And in South Louisiana it is common to have kelly bushing elevations measured from the Braden head flange, not from mean sea level. I would guess this might have something to do with the fact that all the survey datums there are known to be slowly sinking, as the Gulf of Mexico is an actively subsiding basin.
If this is confusing for us, think how it must be for the person loading data into your project. That person is a critical member of the team and valuable if he or she is doing the job right. The bottom line is that we usually take locations in our projects at face value, but they are probably wrong as often as they are correct. How many dry holes can be attributed to such errors? Probably more than one would like to ponder.
* * * * *
So here is where I wrap up my year as your Editor. It has been a privilege to serve the HGS members in this capacity and on the Board. The Society is fortunate to have officers and volunteers of such high caliber and it was a joy to work with them all. My guiding principle has been that everything in the Bulletin is there for your benefit. Credit for the high quality of this publication goes to the volunteers and staff, to our advertisers and particularly to the authors who contributed material. Responsibility for any shortcomings this past year rests solely with me. I appreciate all feedback I received. Constructive criticism helped me keep the Bulletin well-balanced and confirmed that people actually are reading it.
I would like to recognize and thank my assistant editors, Elsa Kapitan-White, Jim Ragsdale and Charles Revilla. I have never met a more capable technical editor than Elsa. Jim provided valuable insight on technical issues as well as grammatical ones. Charles is a fine gentleman and a master of the English language. I could always count on their dedication as well as their sense of humor, both being critical to get through the year. I also want to thank Lisa Krueger, who does our layout and whose fine eye on all matters artistic I relied heavily on, our publisher, Prime Source Office Solutions, which performed minor miracles when necessary to get the Bulletin out on time, and Lilly Hargrave, who ran the vitally important advertiser function with virtually no effort on my part. Be sure and thank the advertisers appropriately because there would be no Bulletin without them. Finally, thanks to Michael Forlenza for his help as Editor-Elect; hopefully we have warmed him up, not worn him out. I trust he will find his tenure as rewarding as I have mine.