[CCoE Notice] Karaaslan Defense Invitation

[Knudsen, Rachel W]

The Petroleum Engineering Department

Invites the Cullen College of Engineering
To the
PhD Dissertation Defense
of
Mehmet Karaaslan



Topic: A Comprehensive Methodology for Well Ramp-Up of

Open Hole Stand-Alone Screen Completions



Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2020



Location: Technology Bridge (Formerly ERP) Building 9, Room 125

Time: 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm



Committee Chair: Dr. George K. Wong



Committee Members:

Dr. Mohamed Y. Soliman, Dr. Lori Hathon, Dr. Konstantinos Kostarelos, Dr. Majeed Yousif

Abstract

     Following the unloading of completion fluids, wells face the most critical step of ramping up production toward a peak rate for the first time.  The challenge is delivering the maximum rate with limited well performance information and without damaging the completion integrity at the same time.  Surveillance information during the ramp-up process is critical in making proper adjustments and avoiding well impairment or failure before reaching the peak production rate.

     This research develops a production surveillance methodology to monitor and ramp-up production for open hole stand-alone screen (OH-SAS) completion that optimizes production by considering risks of production impairment and screen erosion failure. The developed methodology incorporates the following components and observations.  Laboratory evaluations of open hole drill-in fluids showed non-uniform filter cake clean-up or presence of “pinholes” resulting in concentrated inflow around the wellbore.  A combination of laboratory return permeability tests, computed tomography scans of test samples, and reduced order modeling determines the pinhole size and filter cake properties.  They are inputs for calculating the total pinhole flow area or concentrated inflow velocity using an established relationship between pressure drop and fluid flow through pinholes.  By substituting this pressure drop with the completion pressure drop, derived from pressure build-up (PBU), the completion performance can be directly assessed or surveilled.  The pinhole inflow velocity is distributed into the radial and axial annular flow velocities in the OH-SAS wellbore using a network flow model.  This discretizes the wellbore-completion assembly into sections as a network system.  The radial and axial flow velocities are used to assess the screen erosion failure risks from direct impingement and convergence at the top of the screen assembly, respectively.  The ramp-up strategy is to use successive PBU data of increasing production rates and evaluate the absolute and relative changes of completion pressure drop, impingement velocity and convergent velocity against established failure criteria.  This surveillance method is used to help adjust or modify during the ramp-up process.

      The application of filter cake properties and PBU data from surveillance showed the filter cake permeability has the most dominant effect on the concentrated inflow velocity.  The completion pressure drop as a function of flow rate is non-linear and higher than the case without pinholes (100% flow area). By applying the wellbore-completion network flow model, we calculated the screen impingement velocity and convergent velocity at the top of screen assembly.  Results showed that convergent velocity is higher than the impingement velocity.  Adding screen above the pay interval (screen overlap) reduces this erosion risk.  The effectiveness of screen overlap depended on the wellbore-completion geometry and reservoir fluid properties.  We also found the scouring velocity, in the annulus, is significantly higher than the convergent velocity.  This highlights the need to consider screen failure due scouring erosion.  The convergent velocities for pinhole and non-pinhole cases were similar.  The implementation of pinhole in this methodology only affected the completion pressure drop or the completion impairment risk.  In addition to screen erosion the surveillance method for OH-SAS completion should also consider the effect of reservoir depletion and drawdown on borehole collapse and its impact on screen deformation and flow distribution.















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