Oil and gas project development in the North Sea is known for large discoveries, requiring the need for highly complex, capital intensive infrastructure, which can take decades to complete. Recognizing that such discoveries were becoming less common, a faster and less capital intensive approach was needed to develop smaller fields. The idea was to target fields close to existing infrastructure that could tie back to current installations and only require a seabed template. Historically, these types of projects would take the company over five years to complete. A dedicated team was established to plan these smaller projects, appropriately called “Fast Track” projects, and was challenged with cutting development time in half. The Fast Track team used lean principles to analyze project lead times and target improvement opportunities. Lean is a methodology made famous in automotive manufacturing, which seeks to eliminate time wasting activities and reduce overall lead time (De Wardt 1994). The primary lean technique employed by the team was value stream mapping. First, the team mapped out the entire project development process, from discovery to production, and identified all the key steps in the process. Second, the team estimated the time it takes to perform each major step in the process and calculated the total lead time for project development. Finally, the team quantified all the sources of delays and developed opportunities for improvement. These opportunities were then ranked based on the potential time and cost savings. With the prioritized opportunities, an improvement road map was developed to steer the team in the right direction. The improvement road map contained a four-pronged approach to cut project development times in half: StandardizationCollaborationStreamlined processesChange management Standardization involved developing standard subsea templates, well designs, and completions equipment to cut the time to develop solutions. Collaboration involved integrating the operator and the service company and making use of teams in different time zones to accelerate well design and planning. Streamlined processes focused on combining decision gates in capital projects and working the well construction process in parallel to the project development process to reduce planning time. Finally, change management involved establishing a continuous improvement process, a system to implement ideas and engrain them into the organization, and a common set of key performance indicators to align different stakeholders and drive execution results. Implementation of these improvement opportunities led to a reduction of over two years in the time needed to complete the development projects: from 5.3 years to an average of three years.
Scale-squeeze remediation has been used extensively for removing scale from production strings in offshore and deepwater environments. During scale remediation treatments, the affected tubulars undergo displacement and stress that can affect the effective seal length and integrity of the completion system. Numerous laboratory simulations can be performed to help determine the effectiveness of the treatment fluids, injection volume, scale-inhibitor retention time, fluid composition, and shut-in time; however, sufficient research has not been conducted regarding the effects of these important parameters on the structural integrity of completion systems during an actual scale-inhibition squeeze treatment. This paper studies the effects of these important parameters on completion system integrity by (1) performing wellbore thermal simulations of the treatment operations, (2) investigating how much tubing movement has occurred during these operations, (3) analyzing stress on the tubulars during different operations, (4) investigating the effects of scale-inhibition application methods on tubing movement, and (5) recommending a fit-for-purpose tubing movement workflow for the scale remediation process based on laboratory and field data. This paper investigates six cases using data from a Gulf of Mexico deepwater well. The parameters studied include injection rate, injection pressure, shut-in "soak period" time, and volume of injected treatment fluids. The results show that shut-in time, injection pressure, and injection rate are sensitive parameters that can significantly affect tubing movement and wellbore stress on tubulars. The method of application by means of squeeze treatment or continuous pumping is proven to be an important requirement for these types of operations and should be seriously considered when designing scale-squeeze treatments. These findings also provide the necessary information for optimizing the design treatment, developing good completion spaceout and design, as well as improving operational procedures for scale-remediation applications.
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