Positive Displacement Motors (PDM) are extensively used in the oilfield, either in drilling or in coiled tubing (CT) operations. They provide a higher rate of penetration and the possibility of drilling horizontal wells. For coiled tubing operations, PDMs can mill through obstructions and enable shut-in wells to work again. One of the major challenges while using these tools is the motor stalling, which can lead to serious damage to the PDM and lost time events in drilling and workover rigs. These events result in total losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and their avoidance mostly depends on trained and fully aware equipment operators. If a PDM starts to stall, the pumping needs to be halted immediately or the tool may fail. This paper describes the use of a Fuzzy Inference System (FIS) to detect the stalling events as they start to happen using the acquisition data from the coiled tubing unit, the output of the FIS could then trigger an alarm for the operator to take the proper action or remotely stop the pump. The FIS was implemented in Python and tested with real CT milling acquisition data. When tested using real data, the system analyzed 68,458 acquisition points and detected 94% of the stalling events across this data during its first seconds, whereas, during the real job, a CT operator could take longer to notice this event and take the proper action, or even take no action. If the FIS was applied on a real coiled tubing acquisition system, it could reduce PDMs over-pressurization due to stalling, leading to an increase on its useful life and decrease on premature failure. As of now there is no similar system in the market or published and this kind of operation is fully performed using human supervision only.
A new solution to reservoir saturation logging in highly deviated and horizontal wells leverages a light system using coiled tubing (CT) equipped with fiber optics to overcome reach limitations and provide real-time acquisition of downhole reservoir information. The advantages of the methodology in terms of technical capabilities and efficiency have been demonstrated in wells in Mexico where acquisition of once-inaccessible logging information opened new avenues in the production management of the area. The conveyance of logging tools via wireline cable or wired CT presents significant reach and pumping limitations in highly deviated or horizontal wells. The combination of a recent downhole module development and the use of lighter CT package equipped with fiber optics addresses these conveyance and operating challenges. The optical telemetry link supports real-time logging without the need for wireline surface equipment, and the new downhole module provides power to a wide range of logging tools, including the power-demanding reservoir saturation tools. The lighter system overcomes weight limitations, and logging can be performed in any type of well profile. The new module significantly increases the voltage output from the downhole source to the logging toolstring, thus enabling the use of power-demanding components that were previously unusable with CT systems. It also extends the downhole operating logging time for traditional production logging tools by up to six times over that of previous methods. As the production of mature fields in Southern Mexico is gradually decreasing and water has become an increasing issue, operators in the area are currently performing major workover operations to rejuvenate the fields. This novel approach enabled acquisition of reservoir saturation data in several wells in which this information could not be acquired previously because of reach limitations. The newly acquired data enabled identification of bypassed hydrocarbons in those wells. With this information, the operator could selectively shut off the water-producing zones while opening new hydrocarbon-bearing ones, thus significantly reducing water production and prolonging the life of the wells. The introduction of the innovative methodology not only significantly broadens the range of logging interventions that can be performed, it also enables accessing reservoir data that, in some cases, have been inaccessible for a long time, and which can be key to the optimization of production management of entire fields.
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