Nearly two decades ago, Jesus Contreras packed up his young family and left his home country.
“I was born in Venezuela and worked 10 years for PDVSA,” he said, “Until political issues forced many oil and gas workers from my country to migrate overseas.”
An engineer with a flair for inventing solutions, Jesus soon landed a job in Mexico, contracting for PEMEX, the Mexican national oil company.
Strategy, Sustainability and Technology EVP Dominic Macklon and Legal and General Counsel SVP Kelly Rose present Jesus Contreras with a 2023 SPIRIT Award for Innovation on Feb.15, 2023, in Houston.
2022 innovations in a nutshell
Gas Lift
By performing two field tests in Eagle Ford wells flowing using gas lift, Jesus created a strategy to determine, with low uncertainty, the critical rate for those wells and executed that methodology for reducing gas lift consumption in depleted wells. The critical rate process reduces gas lift injection per well, establishes an average total gas production of 350 mscfd and enables the reduction of total gas lift injection. It’s also the key strategy for supporting late life artificial lift.
Gas Material Balance in Central Facilities
Through the creation of virtual gas meters in Eagle Ford Central facilities, using the hydraulic model, Jesus developed an innovative process for performing gas material balances in those facilities. With this information and through a field process, the Eagle Ford Operations team has put on average some 32 compressors in standby monthly, reducing CO2 emissions and fuel consumption.
The Paraffin Risk Index
For first time in Eagle Ford, Jesus created a process for mitigating production impairments associated to paraffin plugging in pad and gathering system. The process uses gas compositional data through a machine learning system combined with an algorithm for detecting paraffin on surface. This development has saved more than 125 MBOE/year and mitigated hazards by avoiding processes for removing paraffin in the gathering system by venting these pipelines.
Optimize Dehydration Capacity
Produced gas in Eagle Ford is processed through dehydration at the central facilities where lack of capacity was causing production impairments in recent years. Jesus leveraged the asset’s hydraulic model to monitor the flowing system and redirect gas from high-pressure new wells to low-pressure depleted gas lift wells, significantly reducing production curtailment.
At that time, he and his wife, Lauris, applied for green cards to come to the United States. Lauris, a baker, received her green card first, and the family moved to the Houston area.
Jesus was soon applying his skills at oil and gas contractor companies, like Baker Hughes, Enventure and Halliburton. His assignments included projects in Colombia, Argentina, Algeria, Nigeria, U.K., Russia and Canada. In 2012 a Haliburton project brought him to ConocoPhillips headquarters in Houston.
“I must have done something right because the ConocoPhillips Production Engineering Supervisor Joe Becnel and Eagle Ford Operations Manager Randy Black (both of them retired) offered me a fulltime job with the company,” Jesus said.
Now a 10-year veteran, Jesus has proven himself well worth Becnel and Black's decision. Just two years after joining the company, he won his first SPIRIT of Performance Award as part of the Integrated Operations of the Future (iOF) team. Applying best practices, improved processes and cutting-edge technology, the iOF team succeeded in creating a new onshore integrated operations model used around the world today.
“Since 2012, I have had the great fortune to work in the Eagle Ford Operations Organization,” Jesus said. “The process was trial and error at first since industry experience in shale formation was almost nonexistent. Slowly, we were creating the processes, tools, culture and science for understanding this unconventional reservoir.”
During those 10 years, Jesus has added value to this asset through a series of innovations and initiatives that have generated more than 2 MMBOE.
2022 was a particularly busy year for Jesus. His contributions included a strategy for reducing gas lift consumption in depleted Eagle Ford wells; a means to estimate gas flow rates to establish material balances and better manage field compression requirements; a process for mitigating production impairments due to paraffin plugging; and a process to reroute new well high-pressure gas production directly into the gas lift system.
Asked to describe his process for coming up with so many innovative solutions, Jesus points to his head and makes a reference to Dr. House from the early 2000s TV series. In essence, his brain, like the fictional doctor’s, appears to be uniquely programmed to visualize and conceive answers to complex challenges. Sometimes those answers pop up while he’s engaged in other activities. For example, the gas flow estimation solution came to him while watching a Netflix documentary on “sorting algorithms.”
Data is the key to all his innovations. With more than 1,800 wells, Eagle Ford provides a surplus of data that allows Jesus to work his magic. Jesus and Lauris have two grown sons, both of whom also work with data in their chosen fields. Kevin is a software developer and Brian a data scientist.
“I would have liked them to follow in my footsteps into the oil and gas industry,” Jesus said. “But I couldn’t be prouder of what they have achieved. They are using their minds to build a better future.”
Clearly, they had a good role model in their serial innovator father.
