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Horizontal or highly deviated well section abandonment?

January 31, 2019 By Lenin Diaz 6 Comments

Horizontal or highly deviated well section abandonment?

This is a guide for those who are facing plugging and abandonment challenges of a horizontal or deviated welI. To be honest, it is only recently that I had the opportunity to place frequent cement plugs in such conditions and for good purpose. 

Yes, I did those only occasionally before …

However, “frequency” is important, and besides what everybody knows, (so-called best practices), frequency is how the significance of all the variables can be really appreciated.

You might ask yourself some time; Why if I have implemented all the best practices in the book, still the cement plug wasn’t successful? 

Well, eventually, anybody can normally get it … after all, probing (trial and error) is a way of learning, yet always costly and not necessarily long-lasting.

Let’s go back to the creed …

Do your best initial assessment of the circumstances …

  • (a) Understand your objectives, the well, the challenges and hole conditions; build your best model and be ready to adjust …
  • (b) Engineer your job; deploy as planned …
  • (c) Controlled, supervised execution and the most important;understand the outcome …
  • (d) Take the learnings through post-job analysis, sustain or change.

This is particularly true for cement plugs in highly deviated or horizontal sections. But what is highly deviated? A wellbore at an angle from vertical that exceeds 80 degrees.

Here is what we need to address:

  • Plug cementing in highly deviated and horizontal wells is increasingly challenging, particularly as the reach and depth increase;
  • Hole cleaning (static cuttings) and “proper” before-job conditions;
  • Mud displacement becomes more challenging as inclination and horizontal section length increase (longer sections result in higher ECD limiting displacement rate); and
  • Density hierarchy does not play a significant role.

Now, let’s start from the beginning … Can We place a cement plug using the Balanced Plug Technique across a horizontal or highly deviated well section?

Not really, because there is very little to no balancing with gravity pulling perpendicularly (or close to) and making anything heavier than the mud to slump low side, unless the difference in fluid properties comes to equilibrium at some time.

Remember: the force to balance the cement plug is the hydrostatic differential pressure between the inside of the placement pipe and the annulus, and this force needs to overcome the resistance to flow given by the mud and the cement slurry.

Calculate here the length of the slump

Filed Under: General, Plug Cementing, Remedial Cementing Tagged With: Horizontal, plug, Pump-and-pull

Article Posted By:

Lenin Diaz is an oil industry specialist with 26 years of technical and operational expertise in fluids, cementing, water control and shut-off. A distinguished track record spanning BP, Schlumberger, and NAPESCO. Lenin lives in Tenerife, Spain and is the creator of this website. Read More…

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Paul Howlett says

    February 2, 2019 at 9:11 pm

    Have you actually used Aluminium Tubing as a disposinle stinger?

    Reply
    • Lenin Diaz says

      February 5, 2019 at 12:43 pm

      Hi Paul, glad to see your comment. Personally, I haven’t used Aluminum tubing as tail pipe or stinger to leave it inside the cement. Compared with fiberglass, aluminum appears as the best alternative for deeper open hole applications. The use of either of these pipes can be as a contingency, in case of aggressive and quick setting stuff like cement for severe lost circulation, long cement plugs, etc., or planned (very interesting) to increase success rate of cement plugs (no POOH).

      Please if you (or anybody) have an actual case, please mentioned here in the discussion

      Cheers
      L. Diaz

      Reply
      • Jeff Long says

        February 5, 2019 at 6:58 pm

        Hi Lenin, very good post. Another placement method to consider is a pipe release tool. This allows you to create the sacrificial stinger with whatever pipe you like. A dart is dropped behind the cement and a tool releases the pipe. These have been used extensively in deepwater with good success.

        Reply
        • Lenin Diaz says

          February 6, 2019 at 3:16 pm

          Thanks a lot Jeff, for sharing your experience. Definitely another method to consider

          Reply
  2. Steve Hauxwell says

    March 29, 2019 at 2:37 pm

    Hi Lenin,
    This is a great article, and tackles a subject that is always the topic of heated discussions. In general, Drilling Engineers are very aware of poor success rates associated with setting plugs in highly-deviated, or horizontal hole sections. If there is a way to avoid setting plugs, then it is often found. Common mitigations often include setting deeper casing shoes from the previous hole section, thereby offering the opportunity to set mechanical plugs and the perform cased hole side-tracks.
    Dealing with permanent hole abandonments, there is often no alternative solution, with cement being the only proven method for permanent isolation. Both Paul and Jeff often sound alternatives with the solution being to leave the cement stinger in-situ. In operations where this technology is perhaps not immediately available (e.g. geological sidetracks where waiting on tools carries an unacceptably high waiting time cost exposure), your suggested methods of ensuring the plug stays balanced are surely very welcome.

    Reply
    • Lenin Diaz says

      March 30, 2019 at 4:58 am

      Thanks, Steve, it is good to hear from you again. Setting cement plugs is not one of my favorites operations, honestly, but it is one of my favorites jobs to engineer. No contradiction in this last statement. Let me explain, operationally setting cement plugs has many variables and you can see how the success rate varies from one location to another. Failed Jobs occasionally included by force in the pages of the “book of oilfield mysteries”. This is because when used as a mean to resume drilling or well operations, there is always a rush to get it done, sometimes underestimating the importance of time in cementing operations: time for proper lab testing a slurry that was probably not foreseen, time for logistics, time for the cement to set and ultimately the Non-productive time if it fails.
      So, why it is one of my favorites jobs to engineer? Because of the TOC prediction. A task that requires proper engineering acknowledging all the variables that play a role.
      The last thing you want to hear is that the rig is washing down through soft cement … should they wash down or wait more time? Not always easy to answer, but in my experience wait some extra time has been best choice more than 75% of the time, if I have to put a number.

      Thanks for your comment
      Cheers
      L. Diaz

      Reply

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