Digital Slickline: Case Studies Highlighting Impact of Real-Time Slickline and Efficiency Improvements Compared to Traditional Slickline &amp; E-Line Interventions

Heaney, Frank; Mayorov, Mikhail; Savage, John E.

doi:10.2118/204447-ms

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

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1.69-inch Electro-Mechanical Pipe Cutting Deployed on Digital Slickline

Heaney

Powell

MacKay

et al. 2023

Day 2 Wed, March 22, 2023

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Digital slickline (DSL) has been deployed in the industry since 2013 (Loov et al., 2014 & Wiese et al., 2015) and has proven to be an effective tool to improve well intervention efficiency from the traditional two-unit slickline and eline model. Since initial deployment, the product has continuously expanded services with on-command explosive triggers, non-explosive setting tools, downhole anchors, surface readout (SRO) pulse neutron formation evaluation services, production logging, and multi-finger calipers. Numerous case study papers extol the DSL time savings, which leverages one slickline rig-up & down compared to multiple rig ups and downs when a slickline and a separate eline unit are dispatched to complete the same work scope. On complex interventions such as multiple tubular patches, these savings could be several days, especially if each unit required scheduling to be on location. (Heaney et al., 2020). Other papers (Koriesh et al., 2022) highlight the opportunities for deploying a small and lightweight slickline unit to address offshore platform limits that would not support the larger eline units. Additional benefits of DSL include reduced personnel on board (POB), fewer crane lifts, faster rig up & down, and increased cable speeds compared to eline. Although DSL has many attributes, it still uses a slickline cable, albeit coated, that has a much lower breaking strength than eline and has limited communication bandwidth; nevertheless, the efficiency savings on many interventions is transformative. One service requested for DSL is a non-explosive pipe recovery device to reduce health, safety, and environmental (HSE) risks and provide cost containment in areas that require an explosive escort. One specific device proven effective in pipe recovery is the eline deployed electro-mechanical cutter, which can produce a complete flare-free machine shop quality cut that other pipe-cutting devices cannot match. There are multiple variations of the electric cutting tool, and all employ proprietary high-powered motors that allow the cutting blade to sever the tubular. The novel feature in this paper is a battery-powered 1.69-inch electro-mechanical pipe-cutting tool deployed on DSL or eline to cut pipe from 2.375 to 3.5-inch diameter that dominates many completions globally. The paper will discuss tool development details and verification testing to ensure a battery-powered device could sever the expected downhole tubulars.

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1.69-inch Electro-Mechanical Pipe Cutting Deployed on Digital Slickline

Heaney

Powell

MacKay

et al. 2023

Day 2 Wed, March 22, 2023

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The Intervention Opportunity, Why the Industry does not do More and How New Collaborative Workflows with Aligned Outcomes can Change this

Billingham¹,

Proud²,

Ramondenc³

2023

Day 2 Wed, March 22, 2023

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This analysis challenges the typical way interventions have been planned and executed, both from an operational and commercial basis, and examines where there is room for significant improvement in the industry. Perhaps more importantly, it examines the case for performing interventions and tries to explain the headwinds in what is an opportunity for both financial and net zero goal reasons. Benchmarked data has already shown that opportunity absolutely exists to do more, and the authors discuss why the intervention opportunity is underserved. By appreciating the issues operators face when justifying and designing intervention activity, the challenges can thus be addressed by proper alignment to the best outcome. Intervention global expenditure is a small percentage of the total exploration and production spend while there is a strong value case for such operations. This study examines why this is so and then looks at how to address those issues. There is a huge array of well integrity and reservoir performance challenges that can bottleneck production and the industry has delivered many innovative solutions to address these issues. Reduced capital expenditure spend over the last years and the pressure to maintain production sustainably should create a perfect climate for intervention. However, an asset mindset that is often risk averse to entering a producing well, as well as complex workflows, will too often detract from the opportunity to intervene. New workflows—including digital—are discussed to demonstrate how identification of candidate wells and intervention techniques can be simplified, and how the success rate of the operations, as well as incremental production gains, can be determined more reliably to enable more robust outcomes. However, current contracting techniques and conventional key performance indicators can also cause further misalignment as to the true goal of interventions being to increase production sustainably. Those issues and how they have been resolved are addressed herein. New workflows and commercial models have been used to facilitate the quicker identification of intervention opportunities, enabling collaborative planning and optimal solution identification, combined with feedback mechanisms to ensure continuous close collaboration between technical experts enabled by digital tools can disrupt the conventional intervention model. Case examples will be provided to support the arguments made and demonstrate a new way of performing interventions. New digital workflows combined with strong collaborative, technical domain knowledge and a wide array of possible intervention solutions can change current typical intervention models. With these changes further improvements can then be made to the conventional business models used to maximize the intervention opportunity and the sustainability opportunities it brings with regard to getting the most out of existing infrastructure.

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The Intervention Opportunity: Why the Industry Does Not Do More and How New Collaborative Workflows with Aligned Outcomes Can Change This

Billingham,

Proud,

Ramondenc

2024

SPE Journal

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Summary This analysis challenges the typical way interventions have been planned and executed, both on an operational and a commercial basis, and examines where there is room for significant improvement in the industry. Perhaps more importantly, it examines the case for performing interventions and tries to explain the challenges (“headwinds”) in what is an opportunity to achieve both financial and net-zero emissions goals. Benchmarked data have already shown that opportunity absolutely exists to do more, and we investigate why the intervention opportunity is underserved. By appreciating the issues operators face when justifying and designing intervention activities, the challenges can thus be addressed by proper alignment to the best outcome. Intervention global expenditure is a small percentage of the total cost of exploration and production, and yet there is a strong value case for such operations. This study examines why this is so and then looks at how to address those issues. There is a huge array of well integrity and reservoir performance challenges that can bottleneck production, and the industry has delivered many innovative solutions to address these issues. Reduced capital expenditure over the past years and the pressure to maintain production sustainably should create a perfect climate for intervention. However, an asset mindset that is often risk averse to entering a producing well, as well as complex workflows, will too often detract from the opportunity to intervene. New workflows—including digital—can simplify the identification of candidate wells, and intervention techniques can help determine the success rate of the operations, as well as incremental production gains, more reliably to enable more robust outcomes. However, current contracting techniques and conventional key performance indicators can also cause further misalignment as to the true goal of interventions being to increase production sustainably. Those issues and how they have been resolved are addressed in this study. New workflows and commercial models have been used to facilitate the quicker identification of intervention opportunities, enabling collaborative planning and optimal solution identification, combined with feedback mechanisms to ensure continuous close collaboration between technical experts enabled by digital tools, which can disrupt the conventional intervention model. Case examples support the arguments made and demonstrate a new way of performing interventions. New digital workflows combined with strong collaborative, technical domain knowledge and a wide array of possible intervention solutions can change current typical intervention models. With these changes, further improvements can then be made to the conventional business models used to maximize the intervention opportunity and the sustainability opportunities it brings with regard to getting the most out of existing infrastructure.

show abstract

Digital Slickline: Case Studies Highlighting Impact of Real-Time Slickline and Efficiency Improvements Compared to Traditional Slickline & E-Line Interventions

Cited by 3 publications

References 6 publications

1.69-inch Electro-Mechanical Pipe Cutting Deployed on Digital Slickline

1.69-inch Electro-Mechanical Pipe Cutting Deployed on Digital Slickline

The Intervention Opportunity, Why the Industry does not do More and How New Collaborative Workflows with Aligned Outcomes can Change this

The Intervention Opportunity: Why the Industry Does Not Do More and How New Collaborative Workflows with Aligned Outcomes Can Change This

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