Gulf of Mexico Cement Packer Completions Using Liquid Cement Premix

Plug and Abandonment (P&A) operations are integral to the decommissioning phase of an offshore installation. The most critical aspect of the P&A is the cementing operations, in which cement slurry is used as barriers to isolate potential flow zones and verify abandonment. Typically, this is conducted at the rig site where bulk cement, water and specialized additives are mixed and pumped downhole. While the practice of cementing is well established, it can be challenging to conduct such operations efficiently in P&A environments such as dealing with ageing equipment or where a rigless solution has been adopted. This paper will highlight the use of a Liquid Cement Premix (LCP) system on a rigless P&A project in the North Sea in which three wells required permanently abandonment. The LCP system was used as an alternative to conventional cementing operations due to its benefits in equipment reduction and more efficient logistical solution. Due to the importance of the LCP operations, significant measures were required in order to ensure the quality control of the LCP. This paper discusses these measures adopted in the onshore, offshore and laboratory phases of execution. It was found that LCP can provide a superior alternative to conventional cementing operations as the product behaved in a reliable and consistent manner. All three wells successfully abandoned with no nonproductive time (NPT) attributed to the LCP operations.

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Cement Isolation Packer - An Economic Method of Accessing Bypassed Marginal Reserves in Offshore Brown Field

Koshy¹,

Anand²,

Patil³

et al. 2016

Day 4 Fri, March 25, 2016

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Ravva is a mature field located offshore east coast of India with over 20 years of production history from Middle Miocene sandstone reservoirs. During the development phase of the field, Late Miocene (LM) sands were intersected in few wells at shallow depths. Due to the presence of more promising and critical zones below, these sands were not completed and fell above the production packer and behind the production casing. The marginal reserves in these sands did not justify workover operation to complete it. Rigless options were studied and a shut-in well was selected for implementation. In order to safely complete and access the bypassed shallow sands, a vessel based pumping operation was planned to place a cement packer in the tubing – casing annulus. The slurry was circulated into the production casing/tubing annulus through a circulation SSD installed above the production packer.The cement packer was thus placed across the zone of interest. Designing of the cement slurry was based on reservoir parameters and the setting time was optimized to prevent reversing of the slurry back into the tubing. The cement mix had a bonding agent to exhibit good metal-cement bonding providing prolonged endurance of the cement with the capability of holding the expected pressure differential. The cement packer emulated a production packer providing zonal isolation for the new completion. Size of the platform precluded spotting of the complete Coil Tubing spread on the platform. High cost prohibited catenary coil tubing operations. As an alternative, the pump spread was placed on a DP vessel and the coil tubing unit was spotted on the platform. A high pressure hose running up from the vessel to a standpipe on the main deck of the platform formed the main conduit for fluids being pumped from the vessel into the CT or wells. Onsite mixing of the cement slurry on the vessel required detailed planning and execution. The well was activated & tested at rates of 1500 bopd with no integrity concerns till date. This paper will emphasize on the operational procedure and challenges of successfully completing the zone and bringing the shut-in well online. The execution of this operation was done at 1/10th of the cost of a rig based workover. This has also opened up new opportunities to access similar bypassed reserves resulting in incremental production from reservoirs which would have otherwise been left untapped.

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Gulf of Mexico Cement Packer Completions Using Liquid Cement Premix

Cited by 3 publications

References 15 publications

Cementing Problems

Cementing Problems

Liquid Cement Premix System for Rigless P&A

Cement Isolation Packer - An Economic Method of Accessing Bypassed Marginal Reserves in Offshore Brown Field

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