Innovative CT Abrasive Hydrajetting Perforating Approach in A Complex Saudi Arabian Gas Well Overcomes Initial Inability to Perform A Proppant Fracturing Treatment and Achieves Better Than Expected Results: A Case History

Abstract

One of the key components for a successful hydraulic proppant fracturing treatment is an efficient perforating strategy capable of ensuring good communication with the formation while reducing near wellbore pressure losses. It is not unusual to encounter unexpected high fracturing fluid injection pressures and low injectivity conditions in wells requiring stimulation to increase their productivity, due to a variety of reasons including inadequate perforation tunnels. The problem gets compounded further in wells drilled in high pressure and temperature formations, in which performing proppant stimulation treatments poses a considerable challenge.The general approach used in wells selected for proppant fracturing treatments is to use conventional perforating techniques that create relatively short tunnels with entry holes with a diameter several-fold larger than mean proppant diameter. However, due to formation damage related effects caused by drilling practices or other operational steps long tunnels are frequently required to bypass the near-wellbore damage and connect with the reservoir.Saudi Aramco has been successfully using hydrajetting technology while stimulating open-hole horizontal wells. However, application of the technique in vertical wells drilled in sandstone reservoirs had been successfully tried only once before its application in Well A. This paper describes how the inability to perform a proppant fracture treatment in a well drilled in a sandstone reservoir, which had originally been perforated using conventional methodology, was overcome by applying an innovative approach involving the use of hydrajetting technology. The proppant fracture stimulation treatment had to be aborted after very low initial injectivity and abnormally high stress at maximum allowable treating pressure were encountered during the DataFrac diagnostic test. However, after implementing the innovative approach a large size proppant fracturing treatment was successfully performed, and it improved well performance from a gas rate of 0 to 25 MMSCFD at high FWHP. The successful approach provided a viable cost-effective alternative to the conventional methodology, and it has since been applied with equally excellent results in several additional cases.