MULTIPLE-ZONE COMPLETION IN MARGINAL
PRODUCTION WELLS
Guillermo Pitrelli and
Maximiliano Giraldo,
Repsol-YPF
SPE 108173
1
Abstract
• Concepts on well multiple zone completion systems applied in marginal wells in Los Perales Oil Field, located in the Gulf of
San Jorge Basin, Santa Cruz province Argentina.
• The field is fully operated by Repsol-YPF.
• The paper narrates the challenge and experience of completing three marginal production wells (LP-2384, LP-2354 and
Hue.xp-10), using concepts on:
Ø Well zone isolation,
Ø Flow control capability,
Ø Production management and
Ø Easy well access in future workovers.
• The field is characterized by a stratified reservoir which is created by changes in depositional condition therefore each layer has
different rock properties and flow characteristics (fluvial type reservoir).
• Gas oil and water are being produced commingle from different layers.
• The traditional method used to avoid production of a specific layer was cementing the layer or leaving it below a drillable plug
(type N-plug). Despite difficulties, three wells were completed based on these concepts:
• LP-2354: Selective zone completions, allowing reservoir and production management of three different gas sand beds.
• LP-2384: Selective isolation of gas and water sand layers.
• Oil zone was put into production, allowing for ultimate gas recovery using pulling rig and a wireline unit instead of a workover
2
recompletion.
• Hue.xp-10: Gas ultimate recovery increased with a rig less workover completion. Killing the well, thus damaging the
formation, was avoided.
• Each well completion and intervention was designed, based on a cost effective and fit for purpose, criteria.
• Different arrays of tools (straddle retrievable packers, side pockets mandrels, mandrel valves and tubing screens) were run into
the wells.
• The main enhancements were the following:
1. Cost-effective rig less workover.
2. Higher artificial lift performance by avoiding commingled flow using multiple zone isolation (no gas pound on the pump,
no unwanted producing fluids).
3. Cross flow and formation damage prevention due to commingled production.
4. Easy well access to increase gas ultimate recovery, using a pulling rig instead of a workover recompletion.
5. Recompletion of gas wells by means of wireline conveyed casing guns and wireline setting packers without killing the
well in order to pull down tubing string and therefore preventing formation damage.
3
•
Introduction
This paper presents the experience of completing three marginal well in Los Perales Oil Field.
• In 1936 the well was drilled.
• Los Perales is being operated at 100% by Repsol-YPF, and is located in the western section of the Gulf of San Jorge basin in Argentina
(figure 1).
• Actual Los Perales oil production is 4100 m3/d and gas production is 1.9 Mm3/d.
• Los Perales is considered to be a marginal field, because average well oil production is 2.5 m3/d (14 STB/d), this fact makes cost
effective solutions a paramount in Los Perales field.
• Geologically Los Perales is characterized as a multilayer fluvial type reservoir.
• Average sand beds thickness is 3 m, and they can produce water, oil, gas or all of them together.
• A typical well completion is perforating every layer that is considered, by logs interpretation and then swabbing each of them.
• Upon the results of the swabbing, engineers and geologists decide which layer will be put in production, cementing or isolating the ones
that are out of interest.
• Finally a rod sucker pump is run in hole and the well starts producing with a commingle flow of oil gas and water.
• The main idea to enhance production in these wells was zonal isolation.
• Even though in each case the completion was designed to accomplish a different objective, the main target to meet in LP-2384 was to
isolate temporarily a gas layer at the bottom of the well, and a water layer just above of it, leaving the opportunity to produce several oil
layers on the upper section of the well.
• A similar idea was used in the completion of the well LP-2354 which was designed to produce selectively from each gas sand bed,
avoiding commingle flow and optimizing ultimate gas recovery.
• On well Hue.xp-10 not only layer isolation was done but also other techniques were used to enhance productivity.
• For example, recompleting the well into a gas well without killing it, perforating the well with a more powerful wireline conveyed
casing guns, using an electric wireline setting packer, and an anchor tubing seal assembly to connect the packer and the tubing4string.
Fig 1 Los Perales geographic
5
• As mentioned before cost reduction is the most important point to tackle in Los Perales field.
• Cost efficiency in the completions was obtained by low cost tools and lessens workover rig time.
• The fluid in Los Perales wells is not very corrosive, (the tools installed downhole that have been working for a couple of years
and then pulled out with a pulling rig, can be checked, repaired, tested and reused in other wells.
• The most common cause of pulling intervention in the field is due to pump worn out and rod string fishing or well
optimization.
• Some of these tools are shown in figure 2.
6
Figure 2: LP-2384 set of repaired tools used in the completion.
7
Well completion design and criteria
• LP-2384 case study
• The swabbing test results in the well LP-2384, from the perforated layers are summarized in figure 3.
• The design criteria was to isolate temporarily the fractured water layer at 1592/95 m and the gas layer at 1630.5/35 m both in
the bottom of the well.
• The easiest, but not the most efficient, method to isolate the gas and water is setting an N-drillable plug with a dumb bailer at
the top of the water layer at 1590 m.
• In order to be able to recover the gas in the future, a workover operation must be done to drill the plug, kill the well and run in
hole a new completion string.
• Engineers design a cost effective completion string to obtain ultimate gas recovery with a safe and quick pulling rig and
wireline intervention.
• As shown in figure 3, in LP-2384 the solution was to set a side pocket mandrel with a dummy valve inside it, a retrievable
Packer, a Tandem, a perforated tubing and a no-go nipple.
• The purpose of using a side pocket mandrel with a dummy valve below the Packer was to isolate gas layer at 1630.5/35m.
• The fractured water layer at 1592/95 m was isolated between the packer and the tandem.
• Above the tandem perforated tubing and a no-go nipple was placed, the rod sucker pump was finally land in the no-go nipple
thus viscous oil (22 °API) production would be sucked through the special perforated tubing joint.
• On the other hand artificial lift performance was enhanced because flumping and gas pounding was avoided.
• If the well had not been completed with multi-zone isolation, the commingle flow from all the layer would have made the well
to flump blocking the pump with gas, until the gas layer declines and a gas pound appeared in the dyna cards.
• Commingle flow situation not only turns the artificial lift system inefficient but also produces crossflow between layers
8
and
backpressure to oil associated with production loss.
Figure 3: LP-2384 swab test results and completion string.
Nomenclature
Pr: Reservoir Pressure.
THP: Tubing head pressure.
Spf: Shots per foot.
SPM: Side Pocket Mandrel.
PKR: Packer.
TDM: Tandem. 9
• Figure 4 shows dynamometer cards that represent good pump performance with a small fluid pound that means that the well is
being extracted at its maximum potential.
• The advantage of this completion is that while the oil declines to non-economic level, ultimate gas recovery can be easily
achieved, just pulling the pump out of the well with a pulling rig and unset safely the dummy valve using slickline.
• Because there is no need to drill a plug and recomplete the well with a workover rig to produce the gas, this completion design
saves 75% of ultimate gas recovery cost, maximizing well life.
• Since there is no need to pull the tubing string out, the well is always under control and the intervention is much safer.
10
Figure 4: LP-2384 dyna card with no gas pound
11
• LP-2354 case study
• The swabbing test result in the well LP-2354 (figure 6), show that there were three different gas sand layers.
• In this case the fit for purpose criteria was to install a completion that would allow the production of these gas beds separately,
avoiding cross flow and increasing gas reserves.
• The completion was done by running a side pocket mandrel a packer to isolate lower zone (1467.5/1483 m), another side pocket
mandrel above of it, two tandems to isolate intermediate zone (1108/1431 m) and upper zone (659/1057 m), finally on top of the
tandems a side pocket mandrel and tubing string up to surface.
• The completion string is shown in figure 5.
• This completion permits flow control by placing different types of valves inside the side pocket mandrels using a slickline.
• Taking advantage of this fact, during start up production, the bottom mandrel was left open landing dummy valve with slickline
in the two mandrels above of it.
• A test of the lower zone was done and it showed that the production potential was far below the expected.
• Afterwards, the intermediate zone was left in production, while lower and upper zones were closed landing dummy valves in the
mandrels with a slickline.
• LP-2354 production history is shown in figure 6; its average production is 38500 m3/d of dry gas.
• If the well was produced with commingle flow from different pressure gas sand beds, backpressure and crossflow between
layers would have occurred causing production loss and formation damage.
• Therefore, the selective isolation zone completion prevents all this issues to happen.
• Expense reduction was achieved by using repaired tools (three side pocket mandrels, three mandrel valves, one packer, and two
tandems in this completion string).
12
Figure 5: LP-2354 swab test results and completion string.
13
• HUE.xp-10 case study
• In this last case study even though zonal isolation was done other fit for purpose criteria was used in other to tackle the
challenge of recompleting this oil well into a gas well.
• The Hue.xp-10 well was drilled and completed in December-1995.
• During the first completion five gas layers at the top of the well between 586 m and 812 m were cemented and left for gas
ultimate recovery.
• During 2006 it was decided to recomplete the well to take profit of this gas reserves.
• A usual recompletion job with a workover rig is:
a) Rig up workover.
b) Pull out old rod sucker pump, rod and tubing string.
c) Rig up wireline unit.
d) Set N-drillable plug and dumb bailer at 818 m.
e) Perforate 4 in wireline conveyed casing gun 32 gr, 4 spf and 90° phasing.
GAS Layers: 567/70 m, 586/88 m, 606/08 m, 790/92 m, 810/12 m
f) Rig down wireline
g) Kill the well with high density mud.
h) Run packer and tubing string in hole.
i) Swab the well until it starts to flow (6 hours).
j) Isochronal well test.
k) Rig down the workover. 14
• This type of jobs has two main disadvantages.
• The first one is killing the well with high density mud.
• The experience in Los Perales field shows that some type of formation damage is done in the gas layer and productivity
index slumps sharply
• when gas wells have to be killed with high density mud.
• The second undesired situation is to have a long workover job which would make the recompletion very expensive and
unprofitable.
• After a long brain storming and searching for tools availability in the local market, the engineering team decided to use an
electric wireline setting packer with an anchor tubing seal assembly, another interesting point was agreed for the
recompletion, perforating with a more powerful 4 in wireline conveyed casing guns 39 gr, 6 spf and 60° phasing.
• Finally the recompletion job was as follows: g) Set packer with wireline at 548 m
a) Rig up pulling. h) Depressurize well and rig down wireline
i) Rig up pulling.
b) Pull out old rod sucker pump, rod and tubing string.
j) Run anchor tubing seal assembly and tubing string in
c) Rig down pulling. hole.
d) Rig up wireline k) Rig down pulling rig
l) Fish dummy plug inside the packer with slickline and
e) Set drillable plug and dumb bailer at 818 m. flow well to manifold.
f) Perforate 4 in wireline conveyed casing gun 39 gr, 6 spf and 60° phasing.
GAS Layers: 567/70 m, 586/88 m, 606/08 m, 790/92 m, 810/12 m.
15
Figure 6: LP-2354 production history.
16
• This recompletion procedure not only is fit for purpose because it avoids the two undesired situation explained before, thus
increase productivity index (figure 8) due to better perforation job (Karacas and Tariq, SPE 18247).
• Although the packer, the anchor tubing seal and the bigger perforating gun were more expensive than in typical completions, the
rig time was minimum, productivity uplifted hence cost effectiveness was accomplished in this recompletion.
• Figure 7 shows a scheme of the recompleted well.
• By simulating the well performance using nodal analysis with PROSPER software (Repsol-YPF corporate license), first
matching the isochronal flow test results and then changing the perforation parameter spf, it can be seen how the well
productivity leaped hence the use of more powerful perforating guns.
• Nodal analysis results are presented in Figure 8, where the increased gas production is more or less 15000 m3/d (25% more
gas).
17
Figure 7: HUE.xp-10 recompletion string.
18
Figure 8: Gas production increased with more powerful perforating guns.
19
Conclusions
• In spite of differences in the three cases studied in this paper, all of them present a challenge for engineers creative ideas were
used to achieve fit for purpose and cost effective solutions to complete the wells:
• The main enhancements of these well completions were:
1. Multiple-zone isolation prevents backpressure, crossflow, and production loss and formation damage.
2. Safe easy and cheap well access for gas ultimate recovery.
Cost reduction slumped down to 75% respect to a typical recompletion job.
3. Avoid killing and damaging the well, using a wireline setting packer and an anchor tubing seal assembly.
4. Higher well productivity using more powerful perforating guns (Hue.xp-10 production increased
5. 25%, figure 8).
6. Enhanced artificial lift performance by preventing gas pound and flumping effects (Dyna cards in figure 5)
7. Cost effective completion by reducing rig time and using reliable repaired tools.
Well reliability was achieved and developed for marginal production wells. The repaired tools were run in hole and set
with no failure.
20
THANK YOU
21
