Sand Control Completion Reliability and Failure Rate Comparison With a Multi-Thousand Well Database

Abstract

Through inter- and intra-company cooperation, an Excel database has been constructed with sand control reliability/failure information on over 2000 wells. The database makes possible the study of completion performance and the comparison of reliability for various forms of sand control, and common causes for sand control completion failures. This paper shares the general reliability results of this database without any reference to producing company name, service provider names or product names. The database contains information regarding general reliability and has information from many wells on cumulative production, maximum rates, drawdown, skins, pay deviation, screen length, and pay interval sorting, fines content, depth and length. The database is open to any company willing to share anonymous well data. There are no costs, no contracts and no meetings. Introduction During planning for BP's deepwater fields and many other developments where sand control completions are considered necessary, there have been considerable discussions on the type of sand control completion to use for specific areas and well types. Since many of the wells were sub-sea wellhead operations, the appropriateness of the sand control completion decision is made more critical by the economic necessity to minimize, or preferably eliminate well re-entry to repair or re-stimulate these wells after the initial completion operation. There were many competing forms of sand control reliability information, both from service providers and operators, but a direct, relatively unbiased comparison between sand control types, based on well location and age of completion was not available. After consultation with various asset teams within BP and even in other companies, we decided to use inter- and intra-company networking to gather general sand control completion performance information that could be used to do high level comparisons of sand control reliability. The sand control completion reliability database was initiated with Gulf of Mexico (GoM) data from BP shelf operations and expanded with data from Angola, Indonesia, North Sea, Mid East and other areas. Deepwater completions data was added as it became available. This sand control reliability database has always been free and open to participation from any company or group. Its general operation is governed by some very basic guidelines:The well data may come from any company as long as all the data for all the wells in a field are reported.Recent data with modern completion techniques were preferred over historical information with early completion systems. A completion cut-off of the late 1980's was generally applied.Any company that contributed data would be entitled to the full database, free of charge, with field, well and company names removed.There are no agreements, contracts, lawyers, fees or meetings.All well data that can be freely collected is reported, but every attempt is made to omit product brand names, service provider names, and other identifiers. Comparison of products or service companies was not in the scope of the work.Erroneous data points and/or well information is expected. Any accuracy of the database is attempted through sheer number of wells in a population.No data interpretation, warranty, guarantee or accuracy on the data is given or implied.

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