Course:PTE443

Oil Well Completion

‫استكمال ابار النفط‬
Object
This course is aimed to give understanding the principles and basic
techniques of how the well must be completed after drilling..

Contents
Part One ‫الجزء االول‬
■Introduction (Review ) ■ Concepts & Purpose of
Completion ■Completion Fluid, Equipments (( Down
hole, Surface, Tubular, Strings, Perforation, Sand Control,
Fluids Displacement, Well Bringing In, Swabbing,
Part Two ‫الجزء الثانى‬
■ Stimulation, ♦ Acidizing, ♦ Fracturing. ♦ Nitro-shootings
■Secondary Cementing Squeezes & Plug Back Cementing

Part Three ‫الجزء الثالث‬

■Design and Factors Effecting Completion ( Methods &
Types)■Workover( Cause, Problems, Remedies, Planning )

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References
1- CARL GATLIN (2006): Make by: Edwards Nava
email: haward_2006@yahoo.com.mx
Petroleum Engineer Drilling and Well
Completion Department of Petroleum Engineering,
The University of Texas
2- Jonathan Bellarby(2009): Well Completion Design
SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers) NACE International
and TRACS International Consultancy Ltd.
Aberdeen, UK
3- ELSEVIER (1995): Casing Design Theory and Practice
S.S. RAHMAN Center for Petroleum Engineering,
Unilver-sity of NeM, South Wales, Sydney, Australia
& G.V. CHILINGARIAN School of Engineering,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California,
USA 1995

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Part One ‫الجزء االول‬
■Introduction ( Review ):
The scope of completions is broad. The coarse aims to cover some major
considerations for completions, from the near wellbore to the interface with
facilities. The intent is to provide guidance for all those who use or interface
with completions, from reservoir and drilling engineers through petroleum
and completion engineers to production and facilities engineers.
The design of completions starting from low-rate land wells to highly
sophisticated deepwater subsea smart wells with stimulation and sand

control, covering most options in between.

►The creation and life of a well can be divided up

into five segments:
 An oil well is any bore drilled through the earth subsurface layers and
it is designed to find and gain hydrocarbons. The well is being drilled

by complex dangerous methods called (drilling process)

: Well planning.1
is perhaps the most difficult as aspect of exploration end then to decide
the plan of the construction of well drilling
: Drilling-2
Complicated methods used to create cemented(cased) oil or gas well use
heavy duty tools. The drilling process is very expensive and dangerous

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: Completion .3
Completion is the process of making the well ready for production or the
well is enabled to produce oil or gas
: Production .4
is the most important stage of a well's life, when the oil and gas are produced
:Abandonment .5
A well is said to reach an "economic limit" when its most efficient
.production rate does not cover the operating costs

●Drilling:
The well is created by drilling a hole 12 cm to 1 meter (5 in to 40 in) in
diameter into the earth with a drilling rig that rotates a drill string with a bit
attached. Mainly there are two types of drilling Percussion - Rotary

• The main purposes of drilling include:

a- Oil and gas production b- Water production c- Collecting earth samples

♦ Drilling fluid,
"Mud", is pumped down the inside of the drill pipe and exits at the drill
bit. The drilling mud is a complex mixture of fluids, solids and chemicals
that must be carefully tailored to provide the correct physical and chemical
characteristics required to safely drill the well.
Particular functions of the drilling mud include:
►cooling the bit,
►lifting rock cuttings to the surface,
►preventing destabilization of the rock in the wellbore walls

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 ► overcoming the pressure of fluids inside the rock so that these
fluids do not enter the wellbore
●What are the Oil and Gas Well
● Oil well - Is a general term for any boring through the Earth's surface
that is designed to find and acquire petroleum oil hydrocarbons.
Usually some natural gas is produced along with the oil.
Gas Well Define as a well that is designed to produce mainly or only gas
●Another way to classify oil wells is by their purpose in contributing to the
development of a resource.

►The wells also can be characterized as:

1- Wildcat Wells: are those drilled outside of and not in the vicinity of
known oil or gas fields.

2- Exploration wells: are drilled purely for exploratory (information

gathering) purposes in a new area
Objectives of Exploration well:
a -To determine the presence of hydrocarbons
b.To provide the geological data (Cores, logs) for evaluation
c.To flow test the well to determine its production potential, and obtain
fluid samples
3- Appraisal wells
Are used to assess characteristics (such as flow rate) of a proven
hydrocarbon accumulation. ● Appraisal wells are frequently overlooked as
opportunities for completion engineers.
Their primary purpose
(i-) to reduce uncertainty in volumetric estimations.

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(ii-)an opportunity to try out the reservoir completion technique that most
closely matches the development plan.
4- Production wells
Are drilled primarily for producing oil or gas, once the producing structure
and characteristics are determined
There are essential four categories or ways in which wells may be produced
flowed, gas-lift pumped, and intermittently each of these methods has its
own variation and overlap occurs between the categories :

a- Flowing wells ( Naturally ):

Simple flowing completion with the production taking place through the tubing
also completion may be slim-hole and a time- clock intermitter may be
used to control heading or to meet restricted allowable.

b- Artificial gas-lift system :

●May continuous or intermittent overlapping the fourth category various
types of gas –lift also technique may be combined with other types of lift,
for example in conjunction with a free – fall plunger.
●Intermittent: the production or (( production by slugs)) may result from
the use of a free – fall plunger from a chamber – lift installation from an
intermittent gas-lift operation

c- Pumping:
can take variety of forms ( Sucker-rod, Hydraulics, Electrical
Submersible and centrifugal pumping are all common ).
5- Development Well A well drilled in a proved production field or area
to extract natural gas or crude oil

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6- Abandonment Well A well is said to reach an "economic limit"
when its most efficient production rate does not cover the operating
expenses, including taxes.
7- Horizontal Wells
By oilfield convention, a horizontal well is defined as a well with an
inclination angle of 90 degrees from the vertical. A vertical well is one with
zero inclination angle
The industry that horizontal wells were introduced during the mid to late
1980’s.
There are three types of horizontal wells:
i. Short radius
Is the very high build-up rate of 60 – 150 degrees /100 ft with a radius range
of 40-100 ft. This type requires specialized articulated motors to affect the
high build angles
ii. Medium radius;
The build-up rate for this type is usually 8-30 degrees/100ft with a radius
range of 200 to 700 ft The horizontal drain is usually between 1000 – 3500 ft
Iii . Long radius (LRW)
This is the most common type of horizontal wells especially offshore. The
build-up rate is usually from 2 to 6 degrees/100ft.

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►Concepts & Purpose of Completion
●The completion define as the process of making a well ready for
production or( (injection ) This principally involves preparing the bottom of
the hole to the required specifications,
●In other words Completions are the interface between the reservoir and
surface production. The role of the completion designer is to take a well that
has been drilled and convert it into a safe and efficient production or
injection conduit

●Related Process:
1- Running in the production tubing and its associated down hole tools as
well as perforating and stimulating as required, sometime the process of
running in and cementing the casing is also include
2- Formation evaluation methods such as well logging, drill stem testing,
and coring were, for example, cited as the means of determining whether or
not a well could be completed for commercial production.

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►Basic Production Configurations
Majority of completions are based on the following
completion configurations
♦Reservoir interface
- Openhole
- Casing production
- Liner production
-Gravel pack wellbore
-Deviation

♦Production conduit
-Suspended tubing
-Basic packer
-Packer and tailpipe
-Packer with additional safety and production devices
-Multiple Conduits
►Methods And Types of Completions
- Various schemes are used to classify well completions, and some
overlapping always occurs,
These methods are also useful in defining certain individual characteristics
of the pay section which dictate the completion which have many types
such as: Lower , ( Barefoot - Open Hole Completions - Conventional
Perforated Completions - Sand Exclusion Types- Permanent-Type
Completions - Multiple Zone Completions )

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Lower Completion►
This completion refers to the portion of the well across the production
or injection zone Typically the lower completion is set across the productive
zone using a liner hanger system, which anchors the lower completion to the
production casing string
The well designer has many tools and options available to design the lower
completion according to the conditions of the reservoir

1-Barefoot Completion
This type is the most basic, but can be a good choice for hard rock, multi-
laterals and under- balance drilling.(( naturally fractured limestones and
dolomites)) also have a number of advantages beyond
their obvious low cost:
● - Interventions such as well deepening and sidetracking are easier to
perform without equipment such as screens or pre-drilled liners
●- The technique naturally lends itself to simple multilateral wells
●- Water and/or gas shut-off arguably easier in a barefoot well than in a
well with a pre-drilled liner
●- Tubing- less It involves leaving the productive reservoir section without
any tubular
►The main disadvantages compared to the use of a pre-drilled liner
i- Susceptibility to hole collapse
ii - Inability to deploy upfront zonal isolation equipment such as external
casing packers (ECPs)

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 iii- It is not suitable for weaker formations which might require sand
control, nor for formations requiring selective isolation of oil, gas and water
intervals.

2-Open Hole Completion

♦The production casing is made by setting case above the zone of interest
and drilling or coring into productive zone . The zone is open to the well
bore. Such a method is only applicable to highly competent formations
which will not slough or cave
♦ In competent formations the zone might be left entirely bare, but usually
some sort of sand-control or flow-control means are incorporated.
Key Points
-No downhole flow control or isolation
-Producing formation is unsupported
-Casing provides isolation between shallower formations
Advantages of Open Hole
a- Allows for special drilling techniques which minimize formation damage
b- Generally, no perforation required , open hole perforation is used in cases
of severe well damage
c- Full hole diameter available to flow
d- If zone, is not to be perforated log depth interpretation is not critical
e- Hole, is easily deepened or converted to a liner completion
Disadvantage

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 ●- No, way of regulating fluid flow into wellbore.
●- Cannot control gas or water production effectively..
●- difficult to select treat producing intervals, however open- hole packers
are available.
●-Wellbore may require periodic cleanout

3- Horizontal OpenHole Completions

♦The most common open hole completion used today. It is basically the
same described on the vertical open hole completion but Sand control on a
horizontal well is completely different from a vertical well
♦Oil and gas wells are drilled horizontally for a variety of reasons, chiefly to
improve production without drilling multiple vertical wells and to prevent
water or gas coning
♦Special Considerations
l-on a horizontal well it enlarges significantly the contact with the reservoir,
increasing the production or injection rates of your well.
II- Also rely on the gravity for the gravel placement.
III-The most service companies uses an alpha and beta wave design to cover
the total length of the horizontal well with gravel.
IV-It's known that very long wells (around 6000 ft) were successfully gravel
packed in many occasions, including deepwater reservoirs as example in
Brazil.

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●Openhole Sand Control
♦Sand production
The completion of a well in an unconsolidated sand is not as simple the
additional problem of excluding any sand produced with the oil Sand pro-
duction, if unchecked, can cause many problems such as:
a- Erosion of equipments and well borehole
In general, sand production sensitive to the rate of fluid production. At very
low rates, little or no sand may be produced, while at high rates large
quantities will be carried along in the production stream
b- Flow string plugging ((to the extent that well operation becomes
uneconomical.))
♦The most common methods of excluding sand employ some means of
screening. These techniques include:
1-Use of slotted or screen liners,
2-Packing of the hole with aggregates such as gravel.

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3-The concept of the critical bottomhole flowing pressure and its
dependency on the hole size (perforation or open hole), hole orientation,
reservoir pressure, and production interval can be used to delay or avoid
sand production
♦The basic requirement of these methods is that the openings through which
the produced fluids flow must be of the proper size to cause the formation
sand to form a stable bridge and thereby be the sand excluded

♦Types of Screen or Gravels

This is selected where the liner is required to mechanically hold-back the
movement of formation sand. There are three popular choices being:
i-stand-alone screens,
ii- openhole gravel packs Known as external gravel packs, where a sized
sand 'gravel' is placed as an annulus around the sand control screen.
iii-Expandable screens. designs are mainly two types wire-wrap or
premium;
a-The wire-wrap screens: type use spiral-welded corrosion-resistant wire
wrapped around a drilled base pipe to provide a consistent small helical gap
(such as 0.012-inch (0.30 mm).
b-The Premium screens type use a woven metal cloth wrapped around a
base pipe.
* Expandable screens are run to depth before being mechanically
swaged to a larger diameter. Ideally, expandable screens will be swaged
until they contact the wellbore wall.

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4-Pre-drilled ( Slotted liner)
The liner is prepared with multiple small drilled holes, then set across the
production zone
♦The purposes of the pre-drilled or pre-slotted liners are:
1. Stop gross hole collapse.
2. Allow zonal isolation packers to be deployed within the reservoir
completion for upfront or later isolation.
3. Allow the deployment of intervention tool strings such as production logs
♦Difficulties and Problems
a- Pre-drilled or pre-slotted liners are not normally a form of sand control as
it is hard to make the slots small enough to stop sand. Where slots are
manufactured small aperture (cut with a laser)
b- The flow area through the liner is so small that they become susceptible
to plugging.

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5-Screen or Liner Completions
In this case the casing is set above the primary zone. An un-cemented
screen and liner assembly is installed across the pay section.
The possible applicability as follow:
●- This technique minimizes formation damage
●Gives the ability to control sand.
●Makes cleanout easy.
●- Perforating expense is also low to non-existent.
Possible Difficulties
●Gas and water build up is difficult to control
● Selective stimulation not possible
●The well can’t be easily deepened and additional rig time may be needed.

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 Screen or Liner Completions

6-Conventional Perforated Completions

Category of completions is restricted to wells in which the oil string is set
through the pay section, cemented, and subsequently perforated at the
desired interval.
►Extremely common and are feasible in all formations except those in
which sand exclusion is a problem.

●Types of Techniques used in Perforating:

A . Bullet :
Essentially a multi-barreled firearm designed for being lowered
into a well, positioned at the desired interval, and electrically fired
from surface controls
B. Jet :
As the explosion method in which penetration of the target is
obtained from the jet stream's high velocity impact.
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●Comparison of the Bullet and Jet Methods:
- Generally shown that jet penetration is superior to bullets in dense
formations, and for penetration of multiple casing strings.
- In softer targets, bullet penetration may equal or even exceed that of jets

●The principal factors to be consider in Perforating:

1. Perforation diameter
2. Perforation density (number of holes per foot)
3. Depth of penetration (radial distance perforated )

●There are two types of Perforated Completions ;

a- Perforated Liner
The casing is set above the producing zone, the zone is drilled and the liner
casing is cemented in place. The liner is then perforated for production.
Difficulties:
● Excess time additional expense in perforating the casing is incurred
● log interpretation is critical
● Difficult to obtain good quality cement jobs.

b- Perforated Casing
Production casing is cemented through the zone and the pay section is
selectively perforated.
♦Advantages:
1- Gas and water are easily controlled.
2-The formation can be selectively stimulated
3-well can be deepened.
1- This selection is adaptable to other completion configurations
♦Disadvantages:
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1- Sometimes cause damage to zones
2- Needs good log interpretation.
3-The perforating cost can be very high.

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