Coiled Tubing: The Nex t Generation
Ali Chareuf Afghoul Zaku m Dev elopment Company (ZADCO) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Sridhar Amaravadi Stav anger, Norw ay
Abderrahmane Boumali Sonatrach
Algiers, Algeria
Joã o Carlos Neves Calmeto Petrobras
Rio de Janeiro, Braz il
Joe Lima John Lovell Scott Tinkham Kean Zemlak Su gar Land, Tex as, USA
Timo Staal Inv eru rie, Scotland
For help in preparation of this article, thanks to Marc Allcorn, Rex Burgos, Luis Cabanzo, Lambert Dilling, Frank Espinosa, Richard Luht, Robin Mallalieu, Mark Oettli, Radovan Rolovich, Stuart Wilson and Warren Zemlak, Sugar Land, Texas, USA; Tommy Andreassen, BP, Stavanger, Norway; Alastair Buchanan, Stavanger, Norway; Curtis Blount, ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc., Anchorage, Alaska, USA; Jeremy Kinslow, Rock Springs, Wyoming, USA; Ronald Knoppe, Shell Internation Exploration and Production B.V., Rijswijk, The Netherlands; Jerry Murphy, Kellyville, Oklahoma, USA; Randal Pruitt, BP-Sharjah, United Arab Emirates; Iuri Frederico de Oliveira Santos, Macae, Brazil; and Jodi Wood and Jamal Zakaria, Hassi Messaoud, Algeria.
Blaster, Bridge Blaster, CoilCADE, CoilCAT, CoilFLATE, CoilFRAC, CoilLIFE, CoilSAFE, CoilTOOLS, CT Sim, CT EXPRESS, CT InSpec, CT SEAS (Coiled Tubing Safer, Ef cient Automated Solutions), DepthLOG, Discovery MLT, FIV (Formation Isolation Valve), Friction Deployed, IIC (Intel- ligent Injector Control), InterACT, Jet Blaster, MultiSensor, OptiSTIM MP, OptiSTIM ST, Phoenix, PipeSAVER, PowerCLEAN, REDA, REDACoil, Scale Blaster and Sterling Beads are marks of Schlumberger.
Once considered high-risk and applicable only for niche services, coiled tubing (CT) is now an essential tool for many well-intervention opera- tions. In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, this technology gained wider acceptance among operators because of its ability to reduce overall costs, greatly improved reliability and an expanding range of applications, which resulted in signifi cantly increased CT activity (next page).1 Used generically, coiled tubing describes con- tinuous lengths of small-diameter steel pipe, related surface equipment and associated workover, drilling and well-completion tech- niques. Since its introduction to oilfield operations in the early 1960s, CT utilization has increased because of better manufacturing, larger tube diameters and advances in equip- ment that improved operational efficiency (see
“ A History of Coiled Tubing,” page 42). Coiled tubing is spooled onto a reel for stor-
age and transport. These strings can be 31,000 ft [9,450 m] long or more, depending on reel size and tube diameters, which range from 1 to 41
⁄ 2 in.
A hydraulic power pack, or prime mover, con- trolled from a console in a central control cabin
drives the injector head to deploy and retrieve coiled tubing. The large storage reel also applies back-tension on the tubing. The continuous tubing passes over a goose- neck and through an injector head before insertion into a wellbore through well-control equipment that typically consists of a stuffing box, or packoff, riser and blowout preventer (BOP) stack on top of the wellhead. This process is reversed to retrieve and spool coiled tubing back onto the reel. Modern CT equipment and techniques have several advantages over conven- tional drilling, workover and snubbing units. These include quick mobilization and lower cost, expedited operations with no need to stop and connect tubing joints, and reasonably high load capacities for deeper vertical and high-angle reach compared with wireline and slickline. The flexibility of working under pressure in “ live” wells without killing a well and the unique capability to pump fl uids at any time regardless of position in a well or direction of travel are also advantages.
Building on a technological resurgence during the 1990s, this unique well-intervention technique rmly established a place in mainstream operations. We review advances in surface equipment and downhole tools that increase operational ef ciency and safety , improve wellbore and reservoir remediation methods, and also facilitate drilling and completing wells with coiled tubing.
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Oilfi eld Review
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