Carbon capture, utilization and storage（CCUS）activities are growing in number and size due to reinforced measures of climate change mitigation as well as heighted interest in low carbon hydrogen as an alternative fuel source. To meet the goals of Paris Agreement, acceleration of financing and initiatives is needed.

While many governments of countries with advances in CCUS projects have provided grants to offset initial investment costs, some countries have also introduced many measures to support operation costs and minimize risk for private operators, such as tax exemption, ensuring CO₂ offtake price. In many areas or the world, the lack of the enabling environment for private financing is still lacking, namely robust regulatory framework, risk mitigation measures and carbon pricing inhibit finance mobilization. In order to remove barriers, many international initiatives are under way including developing model regulatory framework and effort to position CCUS in the context of sustainable finance in terms of energy transition.

Carbon market is a promising tool in putting value of CO₂ stored and creating much needed cash flow. Development in including CCUS in carbon crediting schemes are under way in both public and private led initiatives. In addition to addressing issues on supply, such as how to address permanence, incentives to stimulate demand is also needed. Securing finance including the utilization of carbon market is necessary to gain public acceptance and should be addressed with the same importance and urgency as technological development.

Carbon dioxide capture and storage（CCS）has steadily produced successful results in both onshore and offshore large-scale CO₂ underground storage projects. It is recognized as an effective technology to address global warming. In Japan, a large-scale pilot test totaling 300000 tonnes has just been completed offshore of Tomakomai, following the pilot test in Nagaoka of the geological sequestering of CO₂ totaling 10000 tonnes. Geological Carbon dioxide Storage Technology Research Association is publishing Practical Guidance for Geological CO₂ Storage based on collection of technical examples introduces domestic and overseas CO₂ storage cases. The guidance is a reference manual for future CCS project operators in Japan.

JOGMEC has been working on several research projects in order to improve the efficiency of operations in oil and gas E&P business by incorporating digital technologies such as artificial intelligence（AI）and internet of things（IoT）since 2018.

As the first research project in drilling was prediction of mud loss while drilling operations by using commercialized AI software. However due to mismatch of the analytical algorithm of the AI and insufficient data quantity, significant result could not be obtained. On the other hand, importance of selecting proper analytical algorithm and preparing sufficient data is recognized from this project.

The second project is prediction of stuck pipe while drilling. Based on the lessons learned from the first project above, the research consortium was established with Japanese E&P companies and the other research institutes including universities in order to gather sufficient data for analysis and develop the AI algorithm. Some algorithms were tried and one of them might look to detect the indication of pipe stuck from the provided data. Currently, the system verification test is being carried out at actual drilling site.

In 2019, JOGMEC joined the Rig Automation and Performance Improvement in Drilling（RAPID）consortium which is led by the University of Texas at Austin. In RAPID, JOGMEC has been working on 2 research projects, one is the condition based maintenance（CBM）of mud pumps and the other is the CBM of mud motor. The objectives of these projects are to estimate the accumulated damage on equipment or tools in order to optimize the timing of maintenance. Currently, data acquisition at actual drilling site is planned for verifying the algorithm of mud pumps CBM, and the algorithm of mud motor CBM is under development.

Drilling Technology School is a vocational school established by Geopower Gakuen School Institution, which was approved by the Hokkaido Private School Council meetings in June 2021 based on the Private School Act. The Drilling Technology School is a one-year school that teaches onshore drilling technologies with regard to geological surveying, water well and deep geothermal wells drilling.

There has been only a few universities in Japan that educates students about the drilling technology, and there has been no high school or vocational school as well. Therefore, each drilling company provided technical training tailored to their specific needs for new employees after they joined to the company. In addition, the necessity of the drilling technology and its contents is not well recognized by the younger generation and society, resulting in a current serious shortage of human resources in domestic drilling industry. In order to contribute to solving these issues, it was decided to establish a Drilling Technology School.

This is the first vocational school for drilling technology to be established in Japan. The school building is in Shiranuka-cho, Hokkaido, about 5 minutes by car from Kushiro Airport. The Drilling Technology School was opened on 11th April, 2022 and is providing classes about drilling technology for students.

Managed pressure drilling（MPD）is defined as "an adaptive drilling process used to precisely control the annular pressure profile throughout the wellbore" in API RP 92M. The MPD technology became known in the early 2000s and is now getting common practices for drilling a well with a narrow drilling window, such as high-pressure/ high-temperature（HPHT）and deepwater wells, and provides a function of early kick detection by reading accurate mud return rate at Coriolis flow meter.

In 2021, JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration drilled a HPHT exploration well by utilizing MPD services provided by Weatherford in Malaysia. This paper introduces essential points in MPD planning and actual MPD experience while drilling operations including MPD related challenges during the HPHT exploration well drilling.

Offshore drilling, which began some 130 years ago with a pier on the coast in only a few meters of water, has faced many difficulties and challenges, struggled in the harsh site, and repeatedly challenged itself to develop various elemental technologies. As a result, the frontier of greater water depths of more than 3000 meters, and even greater depths that were unimaginable in the beginning, has been opened up.

In line with the development of technology, there have been significant changes in operations. Lessons learned from various accidents have reaffirmed the importance of safety management systems in the industry, and HSE-MS has been implemented and operated. In addition, the development of satellite communications has made it possible to build high- capacity networks on rigs, which has greatly contributed to the efficiency of operations and the safety of crew members by allowing more information to be shared with land bases.

Sand production is one of the most serious production problems encountering during the development of sandstone fields. In Japan, the production tests were terminated due to sand production-related issues during the first and second offshore production tests of methane hydrates in the Nankai Trough. It has been reported that sand production occurs not only in production wells but also in injection wells. With a growing interest in CCS and CCUS, sand control is considered one of the most important well design elements for CO₂ injection wells when drilled in sandstone reservoirs. The selection of the optimum sand control methods requires accurately predicting the onset of sand production and the volume of produced sand as well as thorough well performance evaluation. In this presentation, we reviewed recent advances in sand production prediction approaches such as sand production experiments using a true triaxial compression test apparatus, formation failure analysis using an elastoplastic finite element method model, and semi-analytical sand rate prediction model based on field sand rate measurements.

Toward the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, carbon capture and storage（CCS）is becoming more important as a measure to reduce CO₂ emission associated with oil and natural gas development. INPEX corporation jointly with JOGMEC set out plans to drill two new wells in Minami-aga oil field with the following objectives:

・to evaluate foam enhanced oil recovery（EOR）technology using foaming agent currently under development;

・to investigate potential opportunity of further commercial development of Minami-aga field using CO₂-EOR; and

・to acquire lessons learnt of field experiences for carbon capture, utilization and storage（CCUS）.

This presentation describes the conceptual well design of the two wells to be used for huff and puff operation. Fiber cables are designed to be installed behind production casing to acquire data by distributed acoustic sensing（DAS）and distributed temperature sensing（DTS）. To avoid damage to the fiber cables, an oriented perforation is planned. Hence, the inclination across the perforation is designed at 30 degrees to assure high and low sides.

In completion, a formation isolation valve（FIV）is designed to be incorporated, to eliminate effect of wellbore storage during pressure build up / fall off recorded by downhole gauge. Unlike surface-controlled subsurface safety valve （SCSSSV）, FIVs adopt a fail-as-is feature which cannot close the valve in case of control line failure. Since wells are unable to naturally flow over the period of well life, a SCSSSV is not adopted.

The perforation gun with dynamic underbalance is planned to be deployed through the completion. Prior to perforation, wellbore is displaced to underbalance fluid to reduce skin damage. During wellbore clean-up flow and production, gas lift using a coiled tubing or macaroni pipe installed inside the tubing is planned since the wells are unable to naturally flow due to the reservoir pressure depletion.

Four potential techniques contributing to low carbon society are discussed in the future view of domestic tight oil development for Onnagwa formation mainly distributed in Akita prefecture, Northern Japan. The first one is a new acid stimulation for aiming dissolution of minerals along veins extended into Onnagawa formation. The acid stimulation can be done with no extra pump power resulting in low energy consumption due to its stimulation mechanism relying on rock-acid interaction in a geochemical process. It might become a low carbon-emission technique. The second one is slim-hole drilling. The slim-hole drilling has been already reported as one of proved approaches to reduce drilling costs for North America shale development. Reducing hole size inherently means reducing input energy to remove rock mass in the subsurface and saving completion materials such as cement and steel. The slim-hole drilling in conjunction with the new acid stimulation should play an important role for Onnagawa tight oil development amid the trend of low carbon society. The rest techniques comprised of compressed natural gas transportation and CO₂EOR with direct air capture process are reviewed in the current status regarding technical readiness levels. It is believed that these techniques will contribute for progressing to low carbon society.

The society of petroleum engineers（SPE）, established in 1957 and the world’s largest academic society in the E&P industry, launched the distinguished lecturer（DL）program in 1961. Annually in recent 3 decades, around 30 DLs selected from all over the world provide special lectures to local section members. The author was selected as the first Japanese national DL in the program’s 60-year history. In the year 2021-22, total 3 lecture tours were held as 2 virtual and 1 in-person programs due to the COVID-19 situation. The report summarizes the overview of SPE DL program and the author’s experience of DL activities.