Drilling at remote sites, such as artificial islands, comes with challenges, not least of which is drilling waste management. Drill cuttings, generated from the wellbore during drilling, are traditionally the focus of attention and a solution is available to treat this waste stream at source. However, in many projects slop waste and, in some cases, conductor drilling waste is also generated. Until now, no one process has been able to treat these two additional waste streams at source. Adopting traditional waste treatment methods for these waste streams at a remote site could increase project overheads by more than 200%, versus a conventional well site location. Therefore, it is important to maximise efficiencies when it comes to recycling all drilling waste streams, recovering value and reducing disposal requirements at remote sites. This paper outlines how a single process using modular equipment, originally deployed to process drill cuttings, has now been developed to deal with all three key waste streams. The process was developed when a major operator in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) required a solution for the treatment of conductor drilling waste produced at one of the region's largest fields at an artificial island complex. The ground-breaking solution developed allows for conductor drilling waste, created by a piling rig, and legacy slop stored at the location for nearly seven years, to be treated on site using a single process. This was done in addition to day-to-day drilling waste management, resulting in economic, operational, safety and environmental benefits. This achievement was primarily through the identification by TWMA of capacity within its thermal drilling waste treatment technology to eliminate the waste streams generated at source. Opening the operating window of the technology eliminated significant haul-off costs, reduced emissions and health, safety and environmental (HSE) risk and improved operational efficiency. The new strategy was implemented in 2019. Since then, the solution has successfully dealt with a legacy waste stream amounting to seven years' worth or 13,500 MT of conductor drilling waste and 40,000 bbl of stored slop waste, in addition to ongoing drill cuttings treatment. Removing both of these waste streams has achieved significant operational, safety and environmental savings including: the elimination of onshore transportation, processing and landfill costs, elimination of island services and storage, a significant reduction in skip lifting operations and waste handling, a reduction in manpower requirements due to use of existing equipment and personnel, and a reduction of risk to the environment posed by the storage of the waste streams. The operator now also has significantly more land area available for other purposes. By processing at source, clear tangible savings have been achieved in all areas of the operation. This strategy allowed the operator to set new standards with regards to drilling waste management in the UAE. It has also driven a discussion globally about how to deal with multiple waste streams by opening the operating window of existing single-process systems instead of requiring additional processing equipment.
In mature fields, particularly in waterflood operations, well bore maintenance and waterflood effectiveness are critical issues. Many problems can occur over the lifetime of a well that can inhibit the flood performance and create severe maintenance challenges: Some common examples of problems associated with injection wells are:Thief zones developing which take most of the injected water and which resist remediation by squeeze cementing.Heavily corroded areas of the casing string.Changes in the casing profile, such as ovalling, which can create tight spots and hinder remedial work. Conventional "patch" techniques, when applied to these situations, can result in greatly reduced thru-bores inhibiting access and restricting flow to lower zones. A solution to these problems can be provided by the use of expandable tubular technology. In a recent field trial program, a 20 year-old water injection well in the Ventura Field in California was selected for a test of the technology. This well was chosen as it exhibited all of the above problems. A 250 feet section of 5.7" running OD expandable casing, with integral expandable hanger, was run inside 7" casing and expanded across the desired interval. The expansion was accomplished by use of a compliant rotary expansion tool. This expansion system allowed the expanded clad to conform to the irregular contouring of the corroded and ovalled casing thus enabling competent anchoring, clad to casing sealing, maximum reinforcement of the damaged section and a large thru-bore to the lower perforations. Subsequent injection logs indicated that the injected water was once again entering the desired zones both above and below the clad. In this paper the authors will review the problems posed and present details of the planning and installation operations, particularly of the compliant rotary expansion system. They will continue with an analysis of the results achieved and conclude that expandable tubular technology is a powerful tool in remedial work for prolonging the life and improving the performance of mature wells. The Objective The subject well was drilled in 1981, and had been utilized as an injector for several years. The subject contained 1,300' of net perforations, from 4742' to 6577'. Injection surveys revealed that 79% of the injected water was entering a 26' section of the perforations located at 5562'. The remaining 21% of injection water was going into various perforations below the 26' thief zone. This injection profile greatly diminished the effectiveness of the sweep. Numerous attempts to cement squeeze the thief zone had been performed over several years, only to degrade, and allow the injection profile to revert back to the previous status. A remedial solution was required to permanently alter the injection profile. A number of conventional solutions exist which attempt to address this common problem. These include casing patches, scab-liners and retrievable straddles.
This paper documents an 18-month expandable technology research and development effort that has culminated in a system that enables a new approach to reservoir architecture. The drive for maximum well productivity compels oil and gas companies to consider openhole completion strategies. However, historical uptake has been impeded by inability to achieve effective zonal isolation. The Expandable Reservoir Completion [ERC] combines slotted and solid expandable technology and features a return to conventional unexpanded premium connections to deliver a freely configurable reservoir completion architecture, offering a combination of openhole production performance and cased hole functionality. Fundamental to the new Expandable Reservoir Completion is a unique, selective rotary compliant expansion technique, which is used to clad the formation wall with expandable screens, slotted liner or solid tubulars with sealing units. This technique facilitates unparalleled flexibility in reservoir design by allowing sections of conventional casing to remain unexpanded between zones. This enables integration with conventional flow control and intelligent completion equipment, ultimately permitting selective isolation & production control. This paper outlines detailed test data generated by the development program, which included three downhole field trial installations. In addition to this, information from the first global commercial installations will be presented, from pre-job planning through to post installation performance review. The Expandable Reservoir Completion builds upon existing expandable sand screen and solid expandable technologies to deliver a combination of productivity and functionality previously unavailable to the petroleum industry. Introduction In recent years there had been few radical developments in the sand control arena. When the first Expandable Sand Screen [ESS] was launched in 1999 it was not only a significant departure from convention, it introduced the concept of direct screen contact with the formation as a means of reducing completion skin, thereby increasing productivity, and to boost reliability through improved sand retention characteristics. ESS has now been installed in over 350 wells in a variety of operating conditions in numerous locations worldwide. With this extensive track record, the base ESS technology platforms are now being integrated with new and conventional downhole technologies in a move to evolve the original, single zone reservoir system into a suite of solutions with multi-zone reservoir completion potential.
fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractThis paper documents an 18-month expandable technology research and development effort that has culminated in a system that enables a new approach to reservoir architecture.The drive for maximum well productivity compels oil and gas companies to consider openhole completion strategies. However, historical uptake has been impeded by inability to achieve effective zonal isolation. The Expandable Reservoir Completion [ERC] combines slotted and solid expandable technology and features a return to conventional unexpanded premium connections to deliver a freely configurable reservoir completion architecture, offering a combination of openhole production performance and cased hole functionality.Fundamental to the new Expandable Reservoir Completion is a unique, selective rotary compliant expansion technique, which is used to clad the formation wall with expandable screens, slotted liner or solid tubulars with sealing units. This technique facilitates unparalleled flexibility in reservoir design by allowing sections of conventional casing to remain unexpanded between zones. This enables integration with conventional flow control and intelligent completion equipment, ultimately permitting selective isolation & production control. This paper outlines detailed test data generated by the development program, which included three downhole field trial installations. In addition to this, information from the first global commercial installations will be presented, from pre-job planning through to post installation performance review.The Expandable Reservoir Completion builds upon existing expandable sand screen and solid expandable technologies to deliver a combination of productivity and functionality previously unavailable to the petroleum industry.
fax 01-972-952-9435. AbstractExpandable tubular technology is gradually becoming mainstream. However, many of the early products released to the industry utilized basic expansion concepts and their designs were compromised by the reliance on conventional techniques such as cementing.This paper looks at the evolution of various expansion concepts and how increased understanding of such techniques is now being fed into the next generation of expandable tubular based products. The paper discloses newly developed expansion techniques, discusses the FEA and analytical test results, which have allowed improvements in design, and shows how the restrictions synonomous with conventional expansion techniques have been removed.Field case histories are discussed to illustrate progress made with these next generation expandable liners.
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