Hai

Hai Liu, Development of Organic Shales Outside North America

Hai Liu is Technical Advisor, Production and Stimulation, currently based in Kuwait.

He joined Schlumberger in 2001 and has worked in Asia, the Middle East and Texas. His primary areas of expertise are in reservoir production and stimulation. He has authored or coauthored more than 30 technical papers. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Xi’an Petroleum College of China, and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering from Heriot-Watt University, UK.

Please explain the topic of your SPE lecture.

“The success of organic shale development in North America has sparked great interest internationally. So far, the techniques used in North America have been adopted in international environments, with limited success. The international shale plays are usually in high tectonic stress environments; they tend to have complex geological structures, frequently with natural fractures. This is quite different from plays in North America, which have relatively simple structures and more relaxed stress environments. The complexities of the high-stress environments have resulted in challenges such as proppant placement issues and casing deformation, which adversely affect production performance.

My lecture provides an overview of these challenges and summarizes important findings and practices that would address the challenges to improve production in the international plays.”

Why is this lecture topic significant to you?

“I have been involved in organic shale projects in the Middle East and Asia over the past 10 years and have seen similar challenges arising from project to project. I put this lecture together so that the lessons learned can be shared. On a personal level, presenting this material as a Distinguished Lecturer is a milestone in my career, second only to being recognized as Schlumberger Eureka Technical Careers Advisor in 2016.”