Cost Effective, Reduced Trip Completions? Problem Solved

Abstract

It is often stated that necessity is the mother of invention. Never is this proverb more relevant than in the offshore oil and gas environment we currently operate in where real step changes leading to reduced capital and operational expenditure opportunities are sought and embraced by field operators. This paper discusses the pre-job planning, field execution and lessons learned from one such technology that challenged conventional thinking of sand faced completion, casedhole completion and well integrity to successfully deliver a single-trip, interventionless, sand control completion in deepwater Bonga Field, located on the continental slope of the Niger Delta.

Convention dictates that the vast majority of offshore completions be run in two and sometimes three trips which routinely takes in excess of eight to ten days to deploy. Given the day rate of high specification rigs capable of drilling in deep water environments, the ability to reduce this time was deemed paramount to the economics of the project. Utilizing a collaborative approach to initial concept design, risk assessment, extensive testing and contingency planning at component and system level, a single-trip, interventionless, sand control completion system was designed and successfully installed. This paper describes the completion architecture, operational sequence and challenges leading to the installation of an interventionless completion.

A clearly defined set of deliverables and design principles were drawn up to guide the direction of the project including: successfully deploying the upper and lower completion in one trip, and testing all barriers. Adopting a simple, low risk and high reward design, meeting clients well barrier requirements and utilizing proven cost-effective technology are examples of design principles used. The system was tested and evolved through a number of iterations in an onshore trial well environment on a number of occasions leading to the first successful deployment completed in the second half of 2018, resulting in an average completion installation time of 5 days, versus the average 10 days for deploying multi-trip completions. Details of the successful installations, lessons learned, along with planned future activity are outlined within the body of this paper. While several of the components incorporated in the single-trip system had been run previously in isolation, this paper also discusses the steps taken to facilitate the first full-system approach to the application of radio frequency identification (RFID) enabled tools in the first single-trip, interventionless sand control completion system. Several components within the completion have been equipped with this technology including a multi-cycle ball valve, wire wrapped screens fitted with inflow control device (ICD), remote operated sliding sleeve for annular fluid displacement.