Customer’s problem

The HRDH-923 well was drilled and completed as a dual lateral gas well, in the Khuff-C formation, in Saudi Arabia, in January 2007.

A rigless coiled tubing clean-out was conducted to break the upper isolation valve in the completion string, but the well performance was unstable with wellhead flowing pressure declining steadily, from 5,000 to 30 psi.

At the choke manifold, several pieces of cement and formation rocks were recovered. A combined mechanical/chemical clean-out operation was then conducted, but was again unsuccessful as a hard obstruction was encountered at 4,645ft.

The well had been completed and due to a solids plug in tubing, operations were suspended which resulted in lost production and lost revenue to the customer.

Expro’s solution

For this non-routine job, Expro provided its Solids Management System, along with three phase test separators to be tied into the snubbing unit for the tubing clean-out program.

Specific procedures were implemented for the surface separation equipment design including the ability to handle solids slugs, and necessary HAZOP reviews, along with a supply of certified equipment and competent operations personnel for safe handling and disposal of produced well effluents.

Results

The customer was successful in cleaning out formation solids in the 5-1/2” x 4-1/2” tubing and was able to gain full access to both laterals. The customer was    also able to break the ceramic disc at 11,932ft allowing access to the lower lateral.
This eliminated the additional cost of a workover rig to pull the completion had this operation failed.

A total of 1,158 kgs of solids were recovered, some as big as small pebbles. The final FWHP was 1310 psig @ 58/64ths choke with gas rate of 8.0 MMscf/d and condensate rate at 619 bpd. 2170 Expro manhours were spent on this project without any incident or LTI.

Technologies used

The Expro Solids Management System (SMS) was employed for this well’s specific clean-out requirement. SMS removes solids from the well stream at the well head, and prevents erosion of the downstream equipment. This improves the safety during solids removal operations, and reduces the wear and tear on the downstream equipment. SMS consists of two major components; Wellhead Desander unit and Wellhead Filter Unit. The wellhead Desander removes 95-98 % of the wellstream solids and the Wellhead Filter Unit catched any fine solids that carry over from the Wellhead DeSander.

Customer quote

The Aramco foreman said he was under lot of pressure from above and consequently he pushed the testing crews extremely hard and was impressed by their dedication and professionalism.
“Thank you and good work to everyone who has supported this project.”