Offices

Itasca Houston, Inc.

Background Staff Contact

Itasca is pleased to announce the formation of Itasca Houston, Inc. The office will extend Itasca's geomechanical and hydrological expertise and software products to the oil and gas industry. Current challenges in the industry to which that expertise may be applied include:

Wellscale

Wellbore stability in directional/extended reach wells
Drilling in ultra-deep HPHT and deep water environments
Drilling in salt environments
Solids production
Optimization of completions in different scenarios (unconsolidated/fractured/embedded rock)
Perforation performance
Drillbit-rock interaction

Reservoir Scale

Fault leakage analysis
Coalbed methane reservoir production
Naturally fractured reservoir
Compaction/subsidence
Increased extraction from tight gas formations
Production from gas shales
General coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical modeling of reservoir behavior

All of these challenges are areas where Itasca — and Itasca Houston, Inc. in particular — expects to be able to make significant contributions through our ability to analyze 2D and 3D geometries, model complex rheologies and geometries, explicitly represent discontinuities, represent coupled thermal-hydraulic-mechanical (and possibly chemical) behavior of continuous and discontinuous media, and model multiphase flow.

Itasca Houston, Inc. will offer consulting services independently and in conjunction with other Itasca offices. The company's goal will be to provide solutions that apply the best available technology and are practical, while developing a wider profile for Itasca within the oil and gas industry.

Byungtark Lee — geomechanics & petroleum engineering. Mr. Lee recently obtained his M.S. degree from Texas A&M University, following initial M.S.-level study at The Pennsylvania State University. His B.S. degree is in Mechanical Engineering from the Korea Aerospace University. Using his Mechanical Engineering experience, Mr. Lee has been involved in the design and implementation of automobile parts. His education and study in petroleum engineering and geomechanics has included using the poro-thermoelastic Displacement Discontinuity Method (DDM), diffusion and heat transport equations to investigate fracture aperture and permeability changes in a naturally fractured reservoir composed of Westerly Granite. Mr. Lee also has investigated pressure, normal, shear-stress and temperature distribution in the far field.

Neal Nagel — petroleum & geomechanics engineering. Dr. Nagel has 20+ years of experience in petroleum geomechanics, mostly with ConocoPhillips (COP). During his career, he has performed extensive reservoir, completions/stimulation and drilling geomechanics evaluations for world-wide operations. Dr. Nagel also has led and supported efforts for R&D in reservoir geomechanics, including the constitutive behavior of soft rock, geological characterization (fault/fracture geomechanics), coupled-flow model development and its application for large-scale compaction and subsidence challenges. He has extensive geomechanics training experience both for new engineers and for experienced personnel in areas such as hydraulic fracturing and wellbore stability. Dr. Nagel is active in industry groups (ARMA and SPE) and has served as an SPE Distinguished Lecturer. He is currently the principal editor of the pending SPE Monograph on Solids Injection.
cv | publications

Marisela Sánchez-Nagel — petroleum/geomechanics engineering. Dr. Sánchez has over 18 years of experience in oil & gas geomechanics projects. Her areas of expertise include modeling borehole-stability problems during drilling and production, pore pressure prediction, rock mass and rock stress analysis and characterization from field & laboratory data and subsidence & compaction modeling at the well and reservoir scales. She has lead multidisciplinary applied technology projects for oil & gas operation assets and has conducted numerous short courses in geomechanics for universities and the oil & gas industries.
cv | publications