The paper describes how the extended reach drilling team at BP Amoco's Wytch Farm development on the South Coast of England met the challenge of drilling and completing technically advanced ERD wells in an increasingly difficult cost and performance focused environment. The key element in this success was the ability to continue developing new technology, while at the same time adopting a technical limit approach to performance delivery. Focusing attention on the individual components that make up a well allowed the team to build on the reliability and experience of using rapidly maturing technologies. It also gave the team confidence in the management of the risks associated with the application of new technologies and more importantly allowed the team to fight back and recover from events that would ordinarily provide justification for well programme timings and costs to slip. The paper will draw on the experience of three wells drilled from August 1998 to August 1999. M-14 a 9,600m water injection well; M-15 a multilateral well with one lateral drilled to 8,900m and the second to 6,700m; and M-16 a record breaking ERD well drilled to 11,278m. The techniques and technologies discussed will be; building a highly motivated team that can manage risk, perform consistently and perform safely; rotary steerable systems; torque and drag simulation and control; casing and liner floating techniques; ECD and mud loss control; multilateral junctions at high angles and downhole flow control completions. In conclusion the paper shows how powerful a team can be in delivering significant performance improvements even towards the end of a 6 year 17 well development. Introduction BPA's Wytch Farm Oilfield is located on the South Coast of England in an area of outstanding natural beauty with many sites of special scientific interest. Oil has been produced from the area for the last 20 years with the extended reach project commencing in 1993 to access offshore reserves under Poole Harbour from a well-site on land. The step-out of wells has increased dramatically over the life of the project. The first well in 1993 had a departure of 3.8km; M5 in 1995 a departure of 8km; M11 in 1997 broke the 10km departure milestone and set a new world record. Since then Wytch Farm has continued to push the limits of ERD drilling and completing. This paper illustrates how the team has applied new ERD technology, refined existing techniques, transferred learning from conventional drilling operations, managed the risks and overcome the setbacks associated with drilling and completing at ever greater step-outs - all in an environment of decreasing reserves per well and a low oil price
This paper was prepared for presentation at the 1999 SPE/IADC Drilling Conference held in Amsterdam, Holland, 9-11 March 1999.
fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractThe Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations (ADCO) has a program of exploration and appraisal drilling from artificial islands in an environmentally sensitive shallow marine location. In early 2000, ADCO management set up a team to look at the feasibility of drilling extended-reach wells to reduce both the impact on the environment and the cost of drilling these wells.This paper summarizes the work that has been done and the progress that has been made in delivering ADCO's first extended-reach well. It describes how the key risks to delivering the well were addressed and how a systematic approach to well planning contributed to the exceptional results. The modeling and simulation work performed in planning the well and preparing a comprehensive well program, and the use of real-time data to validate the models are detailed. The process adopted to ensure that every member of the team understood the program and was committed to the successful delivery of the well is also described.The company is in the process of drilling the extendedreach well with a measured depth of 18,748 ft and a horizontal displacement of 13,780 ft. At the time of writing the horizontal section is being drilled. Well construction up to the completion of the pilot hole is covered in this paper.When ADCO started to prepare for this well the company and the newly formed drilling team had limited experience of extended-reach drilling (ERD). However, progress on the well has been extraordinary. When the pilot hole reached target depth the well was 39 days ahead of the program. This drilling performance is in the upper quartile of global land-based ERDwells (defined by industry analysts as better than 24.6 days per 10,000 feet drilled). Extended-reach Drilling -Planning and ProcessesIt is widely accepted that ERD introduces factors that can compromise well delivery. In other words, it is more risky than conventional drilling. However, the record of ERD projects around the world, and in particular that of BP Amoco
I appreciated your news article on the massive growth in high-quality science now coming out of China (August pp14-15). However, I have been meeting excellent Chinese-born scientists ever since I completed my doctorate in Cambridge in 1959. When teaching a short course at Oxford University while on sabbatical leave in 1986, I asked some outstanding Chinese students to explain the secret of their scientific acumen. It was simple: only the best students were allowed to apply for foreign bursaries, and for every place at Oxford there were 200 applicants. The Chinese students I met were the crème de la crème.After the Second World War, many noteworthy Chinese-born scientists published papers with European, US or other non-Chinese scientists as co-authors. But 20 years ago, this trickle of "good" Chinese-authored papers was swamped by a flood of mediocrity, with most of these submissions being rejected by vigilant editors. Since "retiring" some five years ago, however, I have been spending much more time reading the relevant scientific literature, and I have noticed that over the past few years, the standard of research in China has got better. This improvement is commensurate with a drive to encourage Chinese scientists living abroad to move back to China and the development of firstclass research facilities across the country.So yes, we are now witnessing an extraordinary flowering of original Chinese science. But this is solidly based on standards established by an older generation of Chinese scientists who have strong ties (often dating from the 1960s) not only to the major scientific institutions of the West, but also to colleagues in Japan, India and Korea.
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