Breathing Second Life into an Old Well through Coiled Tubing Cement Squeeze for Brownfields in Malaysia

Abstract

BY, an offshore oil field discovered in 1976, has been in production since 1984. Several production enhancement activities were continuously conducted throughout the production life of the field. This includes surveillance works to arrest the production decline and enhance the oil recovery. A systematic investigation showed that a few wells were having anomalous high water production despite being located at the crestal area of the reservoir. Further investigations revealed that poor cement bonding behind the casing was the main cause of high water production in the up-dip wells. With this new information, an evaluation of the remaining reserves was carried to justify any remedial well work required to reactivate the wells. A coiled tubing cement squeeze job was identified at BY field to unlock the well potential of the watered out well located at the crest of the reservoir. The well, WELL-X has been idle for over 20 years due to high watercut. After a successful job execution, the well was able to flow with more than 1000 STB/D at 0% water cut. This has opened up more opportunities for idle well reactivation of other idle wells with similar high water cut due to cement channelling issues behind casing. This paper presents an established workflow and optimization cycle adopted in BY highlighting the methodologies/techniques used to identify potential production opportunities that may have been overlooked in a brownfield and a recommendation on the way forward. The systematic workflow applied displayed success in a well using rigless intervention and has achieved economic return in a short time.