Driving efficiency to ensure cost and risk reduction in well operations is paramount for any operating company; to achieve this, the main objective was to implement a continuous improvement process that measures performance to then improve it, acquiring lessons learned and finally implement new technologies to reduce non-productive time, invisible loss time and push the technical limit to the limit. The first step was to measure the current performance to determine average and best references to compare against. The drilling operations and engineering teams defined KPIs for each well type and respective sections and activities involving all levels of the organization including every individual, ensuring effective communication inclusive of Rig Crew and Service Providers. The initial KPIs were defined, discussed, validated and agreed by both operations and engineering management, all engineers were informed and challenged to measure their performance against KPIs. Once new records were achieved, a workflow to document best practices initiated, once identified, validated and documented, becoming the new standards. Similarly, once average performance was not achieved, a ‘Lessons Learned’ workflow was initiated. Aiming to get the team engaged a communication protocol of the Highlights and Lowlights was put in place, including recognition during operations meeting and emails. The primary results of the deployment of this initiative include the delivery of a 10% additional well count compared to the initial year's plan. An overall improvement of the overall Drilling and Completion Performance was also noted. An important improvement of the overall Rate of Penetration (ROP) was observed, as one of the key performance indicators. It was also notice a considerable reduction of the Flat time. New practices for losses mitigation in hazardous areas were stablished. The lower completion design was enhanced. The upper completion design and utilize Dual Hydraulic Packer in Oil producer well was optimized. Finally, the 1st Maximum Reservoir Contact Well was completed for two of the three Fields in the Team. The added value achieved by the implementation of these innovative practices includes the implementation of the KPI Gauges as a visual instrument to be used on daily operations meeting by the engineers and management, to quickly and effectively understand performance and improvement in multiple dimensions. Additionally, the implementation of a continuous improvement mind-set, focus in introducing changes gradually instead of radically to ensure a soft and solid adoption embraced by all team members. Finally, the improvement of the office-field communications, including a sense of ownership and achievement for each goal to achieve and record to break, to the point that every colleague involved in a specific operation, independently of their organization (Operator, Contractor or Service Company) is equally committed and engaged.

A large operator of a brown field offshore in the middle east has decided to provide full lower Completion accessibility and ensure prevention of open hole collapse as it can lead to various gains throughout the life of the well. Among those benefits, it provides a consolidated well bore for various production logging & stimulation tools to be deployed effectively, as well as full accessibility, conformance control and enable to provide production allocations for each zones. However there are multiple challenges in deploying lower completion liner in drains involving multiple reservoirs and geo steered wells: Well Bore Geometry, dog legs/ tortuosity etc. & differential sticking possibilities and of course the open hole friction. Due to the size of the open hole, restricted casing design and utilization of limited OD pipes further add to the complications of deploying the Lower completion liner in such brown Field wells. This paper intend to review the multi-step methodology approach implemented in recent years by the company to effectively deploy 4-1/2″ Liner in 6″ Horizontal Open Hole section. Among the techniques used to assist successful deployment of lower completions are: Improving hole cleaning, ensure smooth well bore with the use of directional drilling BHA, reduction of the Open Hole friction by utilizing Lubricated brines, fit for purpose Centralizers, use of drill pipe swivel devices to increase weight available to push the liner & reduce buckling tendency. With the length of open hole laterals reaching up to 10,000 ft for 6″ Lower drains, open hole drag, friction & cleanliness are major components that causes challenges in deploying the Liner till TD. The use of specially formulated brines with fixed percentage of lubricants proved to significant reduce friction compared to the drilling mud used for drilling the horizontal drain. The combination of low friction brine with proper centralization / standoff which resulted in reduced contact area with the formation has also shown good results in preventing differentials sticking while running the liner through multilayer reservoirs having significantly different reservoir pressures. Another major constrain to deploy the lower completion liner in this offshore field is the very nature of the wells being primarily workover. This involves generally Tie back liners run to shallow depths to restore the integrity of wells. This limits our ability in the selection of drill pipe that can be used as only smaller OD drill pipes and HWDP can be utilized in order to deploy the Liner to bottom. On many occasions this provides only limited weight to push the Liner down to TD and impact our ability to set the liner top packer. Drill pipe rotating swivel devices have been utilized to improve our weight availability & transferability to push the liner down and to set the liner top packers. In order to provide independent deactivation mechanism for the drill pipe swivel and to have complete success in our liner deployments, a dedicated ball activated sub was designed to deactivate the swivel acting as back up in case primary deactivation methods fails during liner setting. The combined use of all these techniques enabled the company to deploy 4.5″ Liners in 6″ Horizontal drains with high success in this offshore Brown Oil field of UAE. This resulted in better well construction and complete access to lower drains over the life of the wells.

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