Techbits: Workshop Covers Scope of Deepwater Completions
Authors: JPT staff _ 
Published: February 2015

One hundred forty attendees participated in the SPE Deepwater Completions Applied Technology Workshop (ATW) held in Galveston, Texas, and organized by Steering Committee Chairperson Syed Ali of Chevron. Kevin Lacy of BP presented the keynote speech, "Deepwater Completions—Failure Is Not an Option!" Seven informal technical sessions were conducted during the 2-day workshop. Topics includedDrilling/Completion Interface, chaired by Earl Coludrovich of Chevron and Lee Nirider of Marathon Oil.Upper-Completion Design, chaired by Stu Gosch of BP and Travis Hailey of Halliburton.Sandface Completion, chaired by Hugo Morales of Schlumberger and Brian Stewart of Devon Energy.Completion Evaluation, chaired by Mike Hecker of ExxonMobil and Tim Walker of Energy XXI U.S.A.New Technology Gaps, chaired by Jackie LaFontaine of Shell and Mike Loudermilk of Baker Oil Tools.Life-Cycle Management, chaired by Mitch Cornette of Chevron and Kevin Renfro of Anadarko.Best Practices, chaired by Sam Larkin of ConocoPhillips and John Mather of Chevron.

Lacy kicked off the ATW, noting the industry's fundamental mission to find new resources, convert resources to reserves, monetize reserves at a "fair" profit, and reinvest profits to find new resources. Companies and managers that can effectively recognize, develop, and reward "mission-critical" skills not only survive but thrive, he said. Completions engineering is mission critical—for example, a successful single-well subsea tieback can provide a net present value of U.S. $136 million, but if the completion fails after 3 years, the net present value can drop by $65 million. He noted that completion costs had risen from 10–20% of total well-construction costs in the 1970s to today, where they are 40–50% and, in the near future, will be more than 50%. In the 1970s, drilling was considered a separate operation from completions, but today, drilling and completions usually are integrated into one "well construction" department. However, those departments usually are managed by people with drilling backgrounds; therefore, the complexities of completions—especially in deep water—and their "mission criticality" are often neither well understood nor appreciated, he said. He challenged the completions-engineering community to work toward driving cultural changes in drilling and completions to attain leadership and commitment at all levels of the organization and to attain data-based communication, effective supplier partnerships, and common processes.

Drilling/Completion Interface

Jack Burman of Exploitation Technologies discussed 10 wells developed for Anadarko and pointed out a number of rig-logistics opportunities that were exploited to save rig time. These included an annular "slick joint" of SM 2550 material to reduce blowout preventer wear between overhauls and improve control while doing multiple frac packs; the use of long (approximately 93 ft) assemblies lifted into place with a riser skate to reduce "invisible lost time" during completion operations and use of equally long intelligent-well packer assemblies; and working from this riser skate to use greater than 30-ft assemblies in wellbore cleanouts, tubing-conveyed perforating, pulling packer plugs and wear bushings, and in placing gravel-pack assemblies.