Tunu and Tambora gas fields are located in the Mahakam river delta in the province of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The fields consist of wet gas bearing sand bodies over a height of 13000 ft. The main producing zones are developed by intensive drilling with wells simply completed to allow a bottom up perforation strategy. The main objective is gas production from the deeper Main Zone layers. The shallow reservoirs prone to sand production are not primarily targeted. When sand production after additional perforation is observed, gas production is normally limited to maximum sand free rates or the wells are shut in to avoid damage to surface equipment. Sand consolidation has been used as a sand control method since the 1940’s. However, it had never been attempted in operator’s fields in Indonesia. To author’s knowledge sand consolidation is not commonly used in South East Asia, in general. Unlike widely used conventional sand control methods this alternative method allows production from sand prone reservoirs while maintaining full wellbore access below treated zones. The treatments presented in this paper were to validate sand consolidation as a viable sand control option in operator’s fields in the Mahakam Delta, utilizing new internally catalyzed epoxy consolidation fluid. The treatments were performed with 1.75’’ coil tubing and a packer. To date three Tunu/Tambora wells have been treated. The treated reservoirs have been producing without sand production after treatment. This paper describes candidate selection, job execution and treatment results.

Tunu and Tambora gas fields are located in the Mahakam river delta in the province of East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The fields consist of wet gas bearing sand bodies over a height of 13000 ft. Most of the wells are multizone gas producers completed with cemented tubing without primary sand control, and are produced with a bottom-up perforation strategy. The main objective is gas production from the deeper Main Zone layers. The shallower reservoirs prone to sand production were not targeted until recent years. With progressing depletion of deep reservoirs in the Main Zone and bottom up perforation strategy the operator started perforating upper zones. This resulted in an increasing number of interventions or shutting wells in due to sand production. Due to this fact the operator started considering remedial sand consolidation about 5 years ago. The first successful trials using internally catalysed epoxy resin fluid were prepared in late 2008 and results presented at the 2010 SPE International Symposium and Exhibition on Formation Damage Control (Chaloupka et al. 2010). Initially, these consolidation treatments aimed to find a remedial solution for existing wells choked back or shut in due to sand production. These successful trials, however, quickly turned the project into using consolidation essentially as a primary sand control method. First treatments targeted weakly consolidated sands in both Tunu and Tambora fields (5,000 to 8,000 ftTVD) using high temperature internally catalysed epoxy consolidation fluid. The treatments showed encouraging results and confirmed this as a viable option for sand control. In 2010 with growing confidence in the method the operator considered performing sand consolidation in very shallow fully unconsolidated Tunu Shallow zones (2,300 to 5,000 ftTVD) as an alternative to standard single trip multi-zone gravel packs which are conventionally pumped in Tunu Shallow. Five treatments have been performed using a low temperature version of the consolidation fluid with encouraging results. The preliminary performance envelope validated from the treatment is 3 MMscfd of gas per meter perforated or a drawdown of 300 psi. The paper aims to describe the experience from the initial trials to field application including placement and fluid QAQC procedures as well as treatment results. The failures and difficulties that have been encountered are looked at in more details.

In the last few years, Indonesia has experienced a significant increase in offshore activities requiring support from tender barges. This type of operation has helped overcome most of the offshore well-intervention challenges, in terms of crane capabilities, space, load, etc. However, operating in high waves and strong currents has introduced other technical and safety challenges, especially when performing coiled-tubing (CT) operations.In this kind of operation, the coiled-tubing reel and pumping spread are kept on the tender barge, while the injector head and well-control stack are set on the platform. The possibilities of losing the barge anchors or a catastrophic situation at the platform generated the need to develop a system to quickly disconnect the equipment on the barge from the platform by safely cutting the coiled tubing at the reel while minimizing the personnel exposure time to at-risk conditions, as well as avoiding the loss of treatment or hydraulic fluid to the environment. The new system was designed to be hydraulically capable of (1) releasing the injector and blowout-preventer (BOP) hoses while containing the hydraulic fluid, (2) holding the string reel end in place, and (3) cutting the string at the reel. This paper will document the system components' design processes, field testing, and field implementation.

No abstract