Background It is often reported that medical students repeatedly develop health anxiety related to the diseases that they are studying. To the best of our knowledge, health anxiety has not been investigated in medical students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Therefore, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of health anxiety among a sample of medical students attending the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). We conducted a cross-sectional study of 193 undergraduate medical students (68 males, 125 females) across the 6 years of the College of Medicine at the UAEU. Students were screened for health anxiety using the Short Health Anxiety Inventory (SHAI). Results Eighteen students (9.3%) reached the threshold for clinically significant health anxiety on the SHAI (score ≥ 27). There was no statistically significant difference between those with and those without health anxiety in age, gender, place of origin, or year of study. There was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) between the two groups as regards a past history of medical or mental health conditions influencing their choice of college. No specific student demographic or background characteristics significantly predicted the occurrence of clinically significant health anxiety. Conclusions Health anxiety was prevalent in a significant proportion of subjects in our sample (almost one in every ten students). Individual experiences of medical and mental illness may play a role in the development of health anxiety and in the choice of studying medicine.

Placing a horizontal well successfully within the target reservoir layers of uneven surfaces with uncertainties in dip and thickness is not a simple task, particularly in areas structurally disturbed. The level of difficulty increase when the well intersects a sub-seismic fault of unknown attributes. In such cases it becomes very difficult to decide which way to steer the well, so that it could re-enter the zone of interest, or which part of the reservoir is drilled after intersecting the fault. A limitation to geological steering is the relatively small volume of investigation of the traditional logging while-drilling (LWD) sensors, which can typically probe no farther than few inches into the formation. A new LWD directional, deep electromagnetic propagation service was recently developed with a much larger radial response that delivers distance and direction to the nearest change in resistivity within a formation, in addition to the resistivity of each of the formation layers. A case study is presented onshore Abu Dhabi field of the United Arab Emirates, where information from the deep directional propagation LWD tool, together with near-the-bit direction and inclination measurements enabled to take proactive and timely corrective drilling actions to optimize the placement of the well path. A team from Petroleum Development and Drilling was formed with specific objectives to maximize reservoir exposure and minimize drilling risk and to insure 24 hours communication and real time data transmission between service and operating companies. The result was a well with 100% of its length in the desired reservoir. It was possible to achieve the field production target for this gas reservoir, drilling only 5 of the 7 wells originally planned.

An appraisal well was drilled to assess the potential of gas bearing carbonate formations. The petrophysical objectives were to determine porosity, permeability, fluid type and saturation. The known presence of anhydrite and the lack of core information in the field to choose the Archie parameters were of concern for the evaluation and had to be addressed by the logging program and the interpretation workflow. This paper illustrates how the challenge was addressed using neutron elemental spectroscopy to improve lithology and porosity computation, nuclear magnetic resonance and high resolution borehole image to compute a high vertical resolution permeability and finally dielectric measurement to refine Archie parameters. This paper explains also how the core measurements and test results were used to validate the log measurements and interpretation workflow used. This case study is a good example of addressing the well objectives using a properly designed logging acquisition and advanced interpretation workflow.

The traditional way of acquiring reservoir fluid samples (prior to production) has usually involved running a wireline formation tester for several days or even weeks after drilling the well. This time delay between drilling and sampling has an adverse effect on obtaining high quality fluid samples because of long-term exposure to invasion. This effect becomes worse in low permeability formations where effective mud-cake build-up is poor, resulting in deeply invaded formations. In turn, this requires large volumes of filtrate to be pumped back out of the formation in order to collect low contamination reservoir fluid samples. The ability to sample while drilling using LWD technology solves part of this problem by allowing the pump-out to start much earlier in the invasion process, thereby reducing the volume of filtrate required to pump out of the formation. In addition to cost-savings from reduced sampling time, there are other benefits to LWD sampling such as continuous circulation. This can be critical when multiple reservoirs are exposed, some of which may be depleted and pose differential sticking risks, which is often the case in the Middle East. However, current LWD sampling technology is done with a probe which limits the inflow area thereby complicating the sampling process in low permeability formations. Many of the giant carbonate reservoirs in the Middle East are highly heterogeneous and have low average permeabilities (&lt;1-5mD) making it difficult to sample with a standard probe in many situations (LWD technology cannot overcome all the challenges just yet). But viscosity is also critical and the overall mobility of gas reservoirs can be relatively high due to the low gas viscosity, thereby making gas samples a potential application for this new LWD technology in Middle East carbonate reservoirs. Formation pressures and fluid samples were taken from such a reservoir. In this field there is known condensate banking and the project involves re-injecting the produced dry gas into the reservoir to help maximize the condensate recovery. Seven (7) samples were collected using an LWD sampling tool, and subsequent lab analysis on the samples confirmed condensate in the reservoir. This new technology is seen as a way to help maximize recovery and minimize costs.