Development Update and Applications of an Advanced Composite Spoolable Tubing
Authors: Fowler S. Hampton , Feechan Mike , Beming Scott A. 
Published: October 2008

Development of advanced composite spoolable tubing offers several new solutions to many challenging well servicing and well construction operations. Attributes such as excellent corrosion resistance, low material density and weight, coupled with high working pressure and extensive fatigue resistance, make this product attractive for a number of oilfield tubular applications. These include well servicing strings and corrosion resistant completion strings. The advantage of an advanced composite spoolable pipe over steel pipe is that it can be "engineered for particular applications to take advantage of the composite's enabling attributes while optimizing the cost. Development efforts led by a spoolable composite products company and an oilfield service company have produced a novel composite spoolable tubing design targeted to meet these well servicing and construction challenges. This paper will review the development efforts and operation issues the developers have addressed to qualify the advanced composite spoolable tubing for several enabling applications and explore how it will provide operators future solutions. This paper is an update on the development achievements made toward commercialization on the advanced composite spoolable tubulars (emerging technology) presented in the 1997 OTC Paper 8456: "Development and Application of a Novel Coiled Tubing String for Concentric Workover Services. "

Introduction

Since the original research and development efforts originated by Conoco, Inc. and E.I. DuPont in 1989, great strides have been achieved in developing commercial products from advanced composite spoolable pipe technology for the oil and gas industry1,2. After successfully performing a full-scale field trial in 1995 on a 1.5-inch advanced composite coiled tubing design, Conoco assigned all their intellectual property rights over to Fiberspar, Inc., a leading manufacturer of advanced composite tubular products. Fiberspar then formed an alliance with Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., a leading service supplier in the oil and gas industry, to commercialize the Conoco advanced composite tubing technology for downhole oilfield applications. These applications include the advanced composite coiled tubing for well servicing and permanent completions. The permanent installations include both new primary completions as well as secondary completions such as velocity or siphon strings. The main benefits the advanced composite tubulars offer over steel tubulars include increased corrosion resistance, significant weight reduction - 113 the weight of a like size steel tubing, and increased fatigue resistance - a order of magnitude greater than steel3. The commercial markets targeted for the advanced composite spoolable pipe will take full advantage of these benefits in competing against the various grades of steel tubulars including the corrosion resistant alloys. In some cases, the advanced composite tubing will be a direct alternative to steel while in other applications their enabling attributes will provide solutions where existing steel tubulars will not perform. In either case, to truly be successful, advanced composite tubulars must provide value to the end user. Recent activity has been focussed on gaining a full understanding of the performance characteristics of the composite tube technology, particularly under complex loading conditions, and the evolution of standard products and standard qualification tests which will give a wide margin of safety, and cost effective life under normal operating conditions. Extensive testing has been performed on various advanced composite tubular and connector product designs to improve their performance