Drilling wells in some locations in the Greater Burgan field in Kuwait, can demonstrate significant challenges across the intermediate section. Part of these challenges are combining the carbonate formations with the weak unstable Ahmadi shaley formations at the bottom of the section. This makes it challenging to drilling engineers and difficult to balance between natural mud losses across the carbonate formations and weak shale that requires higher mud weight. Adding to these challenges, the limited surface locations in the field, that forces the well design trajectory to be deviated, which makes the mud window even smaller and shifts it higher. Zonal isolation across this interval adds an additional challenge, as it will prevent gas and liquid to escape from high pressure deeper zones to shallow lower pressure zones and probably to surface, which potentially may cause well integrity issues in the future. This paper represents a case of formation collapse on a casing prior to cementing operation, how it was detected, how it was handled and how successfully the well was completed.
Well integrity was and continues to be a significant priority for many operating companies around the world. A compromise in well integrity may have direct impacts on production sustainability well life and the environment. Well integrity became an important topic in the last decade after a number of the well blow-outs and oil spills around the world. The new electromagnetic time domain tool (EM) which is presented uses transient or Pulsed Eddy Current (PEC) measurements to perform quantitative evaluation of downhole corrosion in four concentric tubulars individually and to inspect a fifth tubular qualitatively. Case studies are presented that compare results of this instrument with industry-standard single-string evaluation tools such as multi-finger calipers. The novel electromagnetic tool which uses transient or PEC technology comprises three sensors which achieve high-resolution of the inner barrier and high radial depth of investigation for up to five barriers. Each sensor induces coaxial rings of eddy currents in multiple concentric tubulars and measures a time-varying response from the outward-diffusing eddy currents. The full transient responses from multiple sensors are then interpreted to obtain individual tubular thickness profiles. Case studies are presented where electrochemical external corrosion has penetrated inward and has affected the inner most barrier by having through holes which are also verified with another high resolution Multifinger caliper tool. Individual thickness measurement is valuable for proactive well integrity management because electrochemical external corrosion which is the primary corrosion mechanism in these wells causes the outermost casing to fail first and then continues to penetrate inwards. Therefore the new electromagnetic instrument enables early diagnosis of the outer tubulars to identify potential weak zones in the completion string while logging through tubing and eliminating the cost of pulling completions for this purpose. The paper covers the basics of corrosion logging tools and the benefits and drawbacks of running various tools and the advantages of combining several together. Also how the tubing completion like packer setting depths can affect the production casing integrity as well as workover operation impact. New case studies with multi-finger calipers support these conclusions.
With the Oil business expanding day by day and with the demand for oil increasing many challenges were introduced, Kuwait Oil Company's South-East Asset (SEK) played a major role in tackling those challenges to meet Kuwait Petroleum Company production targets. In order to ensure operational excellence strategy is implemented, multidisciplinary teams founded (Well Delivery Task Force Team) to ensure the optimization of production and the full utilization of resources available in order to heed for the KPC requirements. Today Well Delivery TFT has grown to become a symbol of defining success criteria, which goes beyond technology implementation and setting the right framework for efficiency, coordination & commitment by ensuring an effective synergy between different teams of SEK directorate. Before the Task Force was formed the teams encountered several barriers to centralization plans. Challenges like inter-dependencies, miscommunications, understanding size, time and type of operation workflows, materials availability created strong barriers to an effective plan implementation. This lead to substandard work outcome due to conveying message between one parts of the team to multiple teams located in different locations resulting in time and effort waste and eventually deviate from the desired application. As SEK core business is to meet expected oil targets, it is critical to ensure that the company standards or work practices are preserved and applied irrespective of the challenges.
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