An ExpandableĆSlottedĆTubing,
FiberĆCement WellboreĆLining System
R.B. Stewart, SPE, D.S. Gill,* and W.C.M. Lohbeck, Shell Intl. E&P B.V., and M.N. Baaijens, SPE, Shell U.K. E&P Ltd.
Summary
An expandable-slotted-tubing, fiber-cement wellbore-lining sys-
tem has been developed. Its purpose is to temporarily secure the in-
tegrity of a wellbore section to allow drilling operations to continue
through deeper overpressured or depleted zones. The lining is
installed below the previous casing with no or minimal reduction in
hole diameter.
The technology makes it possible to realize major reductions in
well costs by avoiding the use of certain intermediate and contin-
gency casing strings. It also helps in high-pressure/high-tempera-
ture (HPHT) well designs where the requirement for additional cas-
ing strings may become excessive.
The paper outlines the technologies involved and installation/
evaluation procedures. Details are given of onshore and offshore
field trials in Europe and the U.S.
Introduction
Existing technology requires that we drill and complete wells in a
telescopic fashion with successively smaller casings/liners and
completion components being set at successively greater depths. As
a consequence, large-diameter top and intermediate holes have to be
drilled and cased to allow relatively small-diameter production cas-
ings and tubings to be run and installed. This is a wasteful process
and a number of developments are in progress throughout the oil in-
dustry to make well designs more diameter efficient. Ideally we
would like to drill wells with one hole size from top to bottom and
line them with one size of casing. Alternative borehole linings
(ABL’s) are one step toward helping us to achieve this goal.
The ABL system reported in this paper was developed to replace
selected intermediate casing strings and to do so without reducing
the diameter of the wellbore. The section of the wellbore to be lined
is underreamed and a steel-reinforced, fiber-cement wellbore lining
placed in the overgauge hole. The lining is designed to withstand
1,000 psi pressure differentials between the borehole and the forma-
tion, in either direction, and to be sufficiently robust to maintain this
capability while drilling deeper formations.
Reasons for Development
The business drive for this development was two-fold: to reduce
well cost and to remove deep HPHT well-design limitations.
The penalty for incorporating a contingency casing string in a well
design is high, and is not just the cost of the extra casing. All borehole
sections and casings above the contingency casing section have to be
one size larger in case the contingency casing is required. Most of
these cost penalties are incurred irrespective of whether the contin-
gency casing is used. Larger holes may take longer to drill and may
involve more drilling trouble time. In offshore locations, larger risers
may be required for the larger casings, and larger platforms for the
larger risers. There is a strong cost incentive to be able to design a
wellbore in such a way that no provision needs to be made in the de-
sign for contingency casing installation. If the need arises, an ABL
could be installed instead and no diameter-reduction penalty paid.
In many deep HPHT wells, the requirement to install additional
casing/liner strings to secure narrow kick/loss windows at depth can
result in the target not being reached or being reached with a non-
optimum production casing size. This was the main business drive
to develop the ABL system reported in this paper; i.e. to allow deep
*Now at Shell Venezuela S.A.
Copyright 1997 Society of Petroleum Engineers
Original SPE manuscript received for review 6 October 1996. Paper peer approved 9 June
1997. Paper (SPE 36583) first presented at the 1996 SPE Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition held in Denver, Colorado, 6–9 October.
SPE Drilling & Completion, September 1997
HPHT exploration and development prospects to be drilled, eval-
uated, and produced with adequately sized production tubulars.
Precursor Systems
Van Vliet et al. summarized our earlier developments in the use of
cement borehole linings.1 They described the use of stabilization
and soft-centered cement plugs, and then went on to show how these
techniques could be made more effective with the use of fiber ce-
ment. The highly advantageous characteristics of fiber cement with
respect to wear severity, friction coefficient, and stress/strain
(toughness) behavior were demonstrated. Details were also given in
this publication of a mathematical model that could be used to de-
sign fiber-cement wellbore linings to comply with specified burst-
and-collapse pressure requirements. These practices, capabilities,
and materials are now in routine use.
However, for the very demanding requirements of deep HPHT
applications, there was some doubt as to whether the standard soft-
centered technique would be sufficiently robust. For the specific
case in question, it was expected that, below approximately 18,000
ft, three different formations could be encountered with pressure un-
certainties of up to "800 psi. If encountered, they would have to be
individually lined with an ABL. Because drilling might take place
below the lowest ABL for weeks, the ABL’s would be required to
be sufficiently robust to maintain their seal integrity while being
subjected to prolonged drillstring wear and impact forces. It was de-
cided to increase wear/impact resistance of the ABL by using steel
reinforcement. Fiber cement would still be responsible for provid-
ing the pressure seal, but the steel reinforcement would give it
much-enhanced wear and impact protection.
Expandable Slotted Tubulars
An expandable slotted tube (EST) was selected to provide the steel
reinforcement. The EST2,3 is a pipe with a series of staggered, over-
lapping axial slots cut into it. This slot configuration allows the pipe
to be radially expanded more easily than a solid tube (Fig. 1). Expan-
sion is achieved by pushing a conical expansion mandrel through the
EST in an axial direction. The expansion forces required for an EST
are an order of magnitude less than the force required to expand a
similar unslotted tube, and are dictated by the slot configuration.
The EST can be expanded up to several times its initial diameter,
depending on the slot geometry and dimensions. Moreover, the EST
expands to achieve an internal diameter greater than that of the ex-
pansion mandrel itself (typically by 10%).
For the specific development in question, an EST was designed
(and tested in the laboratory) that could be installed through 8.5-in.
drift casing and then expanded in the wellbore to provide an internal
drift diameter of 8.5 in. To allow for the wall thickness of the EST, the
drilling program for the openhole section to be lined required under-
reaming to 10 or 11 in. A 6.6-in. outside diameter (OD), 0.275-in. wall
thickness EST was found to provide the necessary expansion behav-
ior to ensure a minimum cement sheath between the expanded EST
and borehole of 0.6 to 1.6 in. and a drift diameter of 8.5 in.
It was not expected, for the wells in question, that EST lengths of
greater than about 500 ft would be required. This was considered to
be too short a length to perform a reliable primary cementation. It
was therefore decided to cement EST’s using a balanced-plug tech-
nique. After the cement had set, the cement inside the EST was
drilled out using a bit with poor gauge protection.
Fiber Cement
When uniform linings of neat cement fail in tension, one or more
large cracks are formed and the pressurizing fluid or mud easily
163
 Fig. 2—Stress-strain curves of cements under flexural loading.

(a) cement without fibers

Fig. 1—Comparison of forces required to expand solid and

slotted pipe.

flows through the crack(s). When fiber cements fail in tension, they (b) cement with 1% BWOC fibers
usually form large numbers of small cracks. The cement matrix fails
first by forming microcracks, and then the fibers take over the load-
ing. As the strain is increased, the fibers stretch and the microcracks
open. These fiber-laced cracks give a high resistance to fluid leak-
off. Figs. 2 and 3 compare typical stress/strain and leakoff data for
neat cement and fiber cement. The leakoff tests were conducted with
a hydraulic oil. In similar tests where mud was used (rather than hy-
draulic oil), the mud sealed the small cracks and leakoff was greatly
reduced. To date, most of the fiber cements we have pumped in op-
erations have used polypropylene fibers in concentrations of 1 to 1.5
wt%. Above about 250°F, nylon fibers are used.
When fiber-cement samples are subjected to high-impact loads, the
cement matrix shatters but the fibers hold the broken matrix together.
Structural integrity is therefore retained. This is not the case with nor-
mal cement formulations. It has been hypothesized that the reason fi- Fig. 3—Comparative leakoff characteristics of neat and fiber ce-
ber cements have high wear resistance is because of a similar phe- ments.
nomenon. The worn cement chip is kept in place in the cement matrix
by the fibers, and only a small new wear surface is exposed.
EST’s and associated running equipment were manufactured and
Yard Tests run by Petroline Wireline Services Ltd.
In a series of yard tests, 6.375-in.-OD EST’s up to 16 ft long were
cemented and expanded inside 10-in. casing using an 8.125-in. ex- Montrose Trial
pansion mandrel. The cement within the EST was drilled out in The first trial was undertaken in an onshore test well in Montrose,
Shell Intl. E&P’s (SIEP’s) 50-ton drilling machine (Fig. 4) and the Scotland. The openhole 8.5-in. section of the well was plugged back
hydraulic sealing capability of the lining was successfully tested. to 2,500 ft and 180 ft of the bottom section underreamed to 10-in. di-
ameter. Underreaming of the hard sandstone proved to be very diffi-
Field Trials cult with a polycrystalline diamond compact (PDC) underreamer and
Three field trials were undertaken to evaluate the system: an on- a tricone insert tool was used to obtain the required hole diameter.
shore trial in a test well, an offshore trial from a large semisubmers- Caliper and array sonic auxiliary measurement sonde logs were re-
ible, and a final land trial to check that items identified as requiring corded to confirm the correct hole geometry. The installation and ex-
attention in the first two trials had been successfully attended to. pansion procedure is illustrated schematically in Fig. 5.

164 SPE Drilling & Completion, September 1997


Fig. 4—Drilled-out section of EST in fiber cement.
The top of the EST was connected to the expansion mandrel with
shear screws and run into the well on drillpipe. A drillable and ex-
pandable aluminium shoe was connected to the bottom of the EST
with Allen screws to distribute loads, act as a receiver for cement
darts, and allow circulation of the cement through the bottom of the
EST to the annulus. Specially designed expandable bow centralizers
were installed on the EST to ensure an even cementation in the de-
viated hole. To provide a minimum cement annulus after expansion,
0.31-in. studs were equally distributed over the EST. The EST was
run into the deviated hole without incident until the final 300 ft (the
hole had 40° deviation with doglegs of over 0.304°/ft). The assem-
bly then stood up (on the drillstring stabilizers located above the
EST and expansion mandrel), mud circulated, and the set-down
weight increased to 15,000 lbf to pass the restriction (most likely a
severe dogleg). The EST was run in without further problems. Be-
cause expandable connections had not yet been developed, the
EST’s on all three field trials were welded together on site.
To prevent bypass of the cement through the EST slots, a lost-cir-
culation pill was pumped to seal them. This was followed by a
spacer. Because of operational difficulties, a cement dart could not
be launched and the fiber cement (10% excess) was pumped and dis-
placed as a balanced plug.
The shear-screws on the expansion mandrel were set at 20,591
lbf. However, drag in the hole resulted in some jarring being re-
quired to shear the screws. The EST was then expanded in compres-
sion (designed expansion force of 5 to 7 tons) to bottom. Because
of friction, the force recorded on the Martin-Decker was somewhat
higher (about 13 tons).
The expansion cone was pulled up inside the top 10 ft of the EST
and the excess cement circulated out to mud. This practice was to
aid subsequent entry with the drill bit since the existing well design
(8.5-in. drift casing) prevented the top of the EST from being tied
back into the casing string. Once the excess cement had been circu-
lated out, the cement was allowed to set for 24 hours.
The top of cement was tagged at 10 ft inside the EST and drilled
out without difficulty. Caliper and ultrasonic borehole imaging
(UBI) showed that the EST had expanded to the same diameter (8.5
in.) as the casing and openhole section above (Fig. 6).
It was not possible to confirm the increase in leakoff strength by
this technique because the formation could not be fractured, even at
a gradient of 1.3 psi/ft. A drawdown of 1,000 psi was applied to check
the inflow seal capability of the ABL, and no flow was observed. Sim-
ilar pressure differentials were applied over the length of test packers
and no axial flow through the annular cement was observed.
From this test it was concluded that the EST had performed well
but that there was a potential problem with underreaming hard sand-
stone using PDC underreamers.
North Sea Trial
The trial was repeated in an offshore well to see if any new problems
would occur when the system was installed from a semisubmersible
SPE Drilling & Completion, September 1997
rig (Henry Goodrich) in a North Sea environment and to confirm the
integrity of the fiber cement.
Problems with underreaming were again encountered, which
meant that only 137 ft of the planned 360-ft section could be under-
reamed to the minimum acceptable diameter of 10 in. It was also not
possible to achieve a baseline leakoff test because of the high
strength of the formation.
The EST 351 ft was installed over the 30° interval 11,125 to
11,476 ft, which had a dogleg severity of less than 0.1°/ft. Fiber ce-
ment was then displaced into this interval and the EST was then ex-
panded over the first 137 ft. Positive indication of the shearing of the
screws on the expansion mandrel was seen (at a set-down weight of
about 22,400 lbf). The expansion force was noted to be between
11,200 and 15,680 lbf. The pickup, installation, and expansion of
the EST was performed very smoothly.
When the top of cement was tagged after some 30 hours, it was
found to be soft and was washed out with relative ease. It was subse-
quently found that massive contamination of the cement had taken
place because of several factors, including the failure of the wiper-
plug system.
The UBI log showed that the EST had expanded uniformly to give
the designed internal diameter. Modular dynamic formation tester
tests showed that the poor cement quality prevented the 0.6-in. ce-
ment sheath from providing a barrier against inflow of formation
brine. The lack of baseline data meant that a leakoff test would not be
meaningful. It was noted, however, that despite its poor quality the ce-
ment did prevent flow of drilling mud in the axial direction (behind
the 23.5-in. long packer) even with a 1,100-psi pressure differential.
From this test it was concluded that the EST had performed up to
expectations. However, it also reconfirmed that some fundamental
work on hard rock underreamer design had to be done and that the
cementation procedures/equipment were inadequate.
Texas Trial
A third field trial was conducted in a Texas land well to resolve prob-
lems which had occurred with underreaming and cementation in the
earlier trials. At our request, a new 11-in. underreamer and three-
plug cement-placement system were developed. Both worked well,
and good ABL inflow and leakoff performances were obtained.
Also, for the first time, the EST slots were filled with a polyurethane
resin to assist running and cementing operations.
In the trial, 250 ft of EST was run in a vertical 11-in. underreamed
section of hole just below the 9.625-in. casing at 8,300 ft. The EST was
cemented, expanded, drilled out, and successfully pressure tested.
Following this field trial, the technology has been commercial-
ized through the normal service company channels.
FollowĆUp to Field Trials
The ABL system works. However, its full potential can only be real-
ized if its breadth of application can be increased. Steps have been
taken to develop EST connectors and to identify cheaper steels; ex-
pensive 316L-grade steel was used in the trials.
All ABL’s run to date could be considered to be wellbore patches.
It is our intention to run full strings of EST’s with the same lengths
as casings/liners. These would not necessarily be set in underreamed
holes. ABL’s would be run with normal hole clearances and then ex-
panded after cementing. A slimmer telescopic well profile is obtained
that is much more diameter efficient than the conventional casing/lin-
er system. Since both the conventional system and the ABL system
are compatible, most ABL applications are likely to be in hybrid
wells; e.g., those containing both casing/liners and ABL’s. Cemented
EST’s are seen as temporary devices and are always likely to be cased
off behind a cemented casing in the completed well.
Longer lengths of EST’s could be primary cemented rather than
balanced-plug cemented, avoiding the requirement to drill out the
cement after placement.
The system has been licensed to the service industry and made
available for general use. In this way it is expected that competitive
third-party development initiatives will further improve the poten-
tial of the system to the benefit of all concerned.
165
 Fig. 5—EST installation/expansion procedure.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to express their appreciation to Shell Intl. E&P B.V.
(SIEP) in The Hague and Shell U.K. E&P for permission to publish this
paper. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the numerous
participants in this project, especially C.A.C. van der Valk (SIEP),
J.P.M. van Vliet (Brunei Shell Petroleum Co. Sdn. Bhd.), H. de Jong
(Shell Expro), G. Wright (Shell Expro), J. Simon (Shell Oil Co.), J. Ni-
cholson (Shell Oil Co.), and Petroline Wireline Services Ltd.
166
References
1. Van Vliet et al.: “Development and Field Use of Fibre-Containing Ce-
ment,” OTC 7889, presented at the 27th Annual OTC, Houston, Texas,
1–4 May 1995.
2. Lohbeck,W.C.M.: Method of completing an uncased section of a bore-
hole. Patent publication number: Wo 93/25800. Publication date: 23 De-
cember 1993.
3. Gill, D.S. et al.: Method of creating a casing in a borehole Patent No. PCT/
EP96/0000265. Filing date: 16 January 1995.
SPE Drilling & Completion, September 1997
 SI Metric Conversion Factors
ft 3.048* E*01 +m
in. 2.540* E)00 +cm
psi 6.894 757 E)00 +kPa
lbf 4.448 222 E)00 +N
*Conversion factor is exact. SPEDC

Bruce Stewart coordinates the tubular expansion team at Shell's

Research and Technical Services establishment in The NetherĆ
lands, and was the project leader for the ABl project. Over the
last 20 years, he has supervised various drilling, completion, enĆ
gineering, and production engineering sections in Shell ReĆ
search and Shell operating companies. He has a BC (Hons) deĆ
gree in applied chemistry and a PhD degree from Strathclyde
U. Daljit Gill joined Shell Intl. E&P in 1991 upon completion of an
MBA degree. He has held various positions in production and
petroleum engineering with Shell and BP Exploration, his preĆ
vious company. He was responsible for EST systems and transĆ
ferred to Shell Oil after the first systems were successfully field
tested and commercialized. He is currently head of production
technology in Shell Venezuela. He has a PhD degree in chemisĆ
try from Bristol U. Wim Lohbeck is a technical physics graduate.
He joined Shell Research in 1973 and worked for 11 years on jet
drilling, PDCĆbit, downhole motor, and sand prediction research
before transferring to Shell Expro. He spent 4 years with them as
a wellsite operations engineer and project engineer. In 1987 he
returned to Shell Research to work on expandable tubular sysĆ
tems and invented the EST concept. Since 1996 he has been a
core member of the tubular expansion team. Photograph and
biography of M.N. Baaijens are unavailable.

Stewart Gill Lohbeck

Fig. 6—UBI log of cemented EST.

SPE Drilling & Completion, September 1997 167