WELL CONTROL AND INTERVENTION

Simultaneous operations in the Rocky Mountains. New methods of conducting simultaneous drilling, completion and production operations are making it possible to beat deadlines in a multiple-horizon gas field in central Wyoming. Operating within feet of drilling rigs, snubbing units, equipped with dual BOPs and dual annulars, allowed significant time savings during wireline, fracturing and completion operations. Self-moving drilling rigs quickly moved between wells, followed by space-saver snubbing units used for perforating, fracturing and setting plugs above each of up to 22 zones. Careful maintenance of pressure between the annulars during annular-to-annular stripping made it possible to quickly drill out the plugs and safely snub in the production string against up to 4,000 psi.

When Snorre blew out, what was the right thing to do? Do you mine the wisdom? Do you flee at the first chance? Do you follow safety procedures to the letter? Which path is more likely to result in the least injury? This article presents a different take on how to determine the correct course of action. Despite safety regulations, main power was restored and several attempts were made to mix and pump drilling mud for bullheading into the well before it was successfully killed. This article argues that the loss of control was due to vulnerabilities induced by the entrainment of safety critical work in a culture of business performance optimization, and that the successful recovery reveals that recovery was only possible by violation of safety regulations and depended critically on the imaginative capabilities of the platform crew in trying to understand what was happening and in deciding on courses of action.

Controlling an underground blowout. Author Neal Adams continues his successful series in part four of learning how to identify and control and underground blowout.

 SUBSEA PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

New technology, years in the making is finally being installed on the seafloor. This report gives the type, operating theory and status of several seafloor production systems, including multiphase pumping, subsea separation, all-electric actuator systems and more.

 DEEPWATER TECHNOLOGY

Mexilhão field drilling was affected by high downhole vibration from hard sandstone formations, causing repeated failures in directional drilling and MWD/LWD tools. The deepwater field in the Santos Basin offshore Sao Paulo, Brazil, was becoming expensive in non-productive time. Authors from Petrobras and Halliburton’s Sperry Drilling Services explain how in the 45° well was drilled to save over a month of NPT expense.

How does a company decide to insulate, install heaters, hot-oil treat, or use chemical injection to produce through a shorter subsea tieback? Authors from Walter Oil and Gas and Champion Technologies describe how Ulysses Field in the GOM is producing from an uninsulated tieback and how the most cost-effective approach was chosen.

 DRILLING

Drilling and cleaning difficult horizontal holes effectively. Authors from Talisman Energy, Certified Oilfield Rentals and VAM Drilling explain how drilling performance on Bunga- Kekwa field development in Malaysia was optimized using downhole hydraulics and drillstring behavior with a new hole-cleaning system to improve cuttings transportation and frictional loads management.

Depth control issues. You might think that, over the years, depth control has become a well-honed science. Well, in some ways, you’re right. However, in other ways, it’s changed very little over the past 20 years. So, there’s still a lot of work to be done, and special interest groups have been formed to advance the art of depth control. This article discusses the issues for depth control in LWD/MWD, as well as in wireline, both in openhole and cased hole/perforating.

 GEOPHYSICS

AVO has arguably been the one of the most useful techniques ever developed for looking at seismic data. There have been several ways to employ it. This article overviews the methods of Goodway, Shuey and Russel, among others, and discusses the utility of each method in the appropriate situation.

 OPEC SUMMIT REPORT

An exclusive report from Riyadh describing the results of the upcoming OPEC Summit. Can the data get any better? Does extra capacity really exist? These and other questions will be put to the OPEC ministers.

 RMOTC

This highly useful feature is published in association with the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center. January’s article shows how a new application of production technology helped improve revenues for an operator.

 TUBING TABLES

World Oil’s industry-standard reference guide for tubing up to 5-in OD and production-tubing couplings. The reference gives connection dimensions, steel grades, coupling type, sealing mechanism and minimum joint-tension strength. Illustrations and connection manufacturer contact information is provided.