Evaluating 25 Years of Nondrilling Operations, Morgan Field Drilling, Gulf of Suez, Egypt
Authors: Ghazaly S.M. , Khalaf F. 
Published: October 2008

El-Morgan Field of Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company (GUPCO) was discovered in 1967. Since its discovery, more than 184 we11s have been dri1led using 19 different jack-up and tender assisted rigs. The majority of the wells are deviated with hole angles varying between 20 and 60 degrees. So far, about 1.5 million feet have been drilled in this single field.

This paper presents the chronological development and the optimization of non-drilling operations in El-Morgan Field leading to current field practices. It also documents the impact of these changes on performance and how these changes have resulted in the reduction of the total time and cost of drilling.

As a result of these optimization efforts, the total non-drilling time dropped to 13 days per well in 1988. Consequently, the most recent wells in El-Morgan Field were drilled in less than one half of the time and cost required to drill and complete a well 10 years ago, and less than one third of time of the early wells drilled in El-Morgan Field 25 years ago.

I INTRODUCTION

In the past 25 years, optimization efforts concentrated basically on techniques that have considerably improved drilling rates. we realized earlier that to further reduce total operation time, substantial efforts were devoted to improve the performance area of non-drilling operation. The following defines the non drilling time, the basic indices for improvements and summarizes some of the major modifications in non-drilling operations. The non-drilling time (NDT) involves the operations before spudding the well (rig moves, drilling conductors, conductor clean-out and survey), the operations conducted after reaching the total depth (Logging, running and cementing liners, and completion operations), and operations between spud and total depth such as logging, casing, and cementing.

How can performance of drilling and non-drilling operations extending over 25 years be appraised? Exploring past performance, and defining areas of improvement in similar operations is much needed, but correlating similar operations over that time span (25 years) is not a simple task. For this purpose, several indices can be used to measure the influence of a wide range of drilling and non-drilling parameters:Indices to evaluate the performance of operator experience (equipment, personnel factors, and the impact of modern drilling techniques).Indices based on rig related operations such as tripping, moving and nippling up. These indices are then used to evaluate relative rig performance.Indices based on classification of operations into drilling (that include tripping, drilling and other rotating operations)and non-drilling operations.

These indices were then used to evaluate the non-drilling performance in El-Morgan Field of Gulf of Suez Petroleum Company.

II RESULTS OF DEVELOPMENT DRILLING BETWEEN 1965 AND 1990

Between 1965 and October 1990, a total of 184 wells were drilled in E1-Morgan Field using 19 jack-up and tender-assisted rigs; The location of the Morgan Field is shown on Fig. 1. The majority of the wells are deviated with hole angles varying between 20 and 60 degrees.