Enhanced Sand-Control System Successfully Treats Six Zones in Offshore Indonesia Well
Authors: Carpenter Chris 
Published: February 2015

This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper OTC 24879, ’Enhanced Multizone Single-Trip Sand-Control System Successfully Treats Six Zones in Offshore Indonesia Well,’ by Leon Zhou and Indra Gunawan, ConocoPhillips, and Ricki Jannise, Casey Suire, and Tyson Eiman, Halliburton, prepared for the 2014 Offshore Technology Conference Asia, Kuala Lumpur, 25-28 March. The paper has not been peer reviewed.

Although multiple-zone, downhole sand-control-tool systems have been in use since the early 1990s, these systems have been designed for jobs that require only low pump rates with low pressure differentials. Multiple-zone systems capable of high fracturing pump rates and the associated differentials only recently have been introduced to the oil field, but most of these completions have been limited to four or five treated zones. This paper presents a case history from Indonesia in which six discrete zones in an offshore deployment were treated successfully in a single trip.

Field History

The Bawal field is located in Block B, 1000 km north of Jakarta, in the South China Sea. The average water depth across the field is 280 ft. The Bawal field was discovered in 1979; the field is approximately 5 km long and 2 km wide. The Bawal reservoirs consist of subangular-to- rounded, well-sorted silt to extremely fine quartz sand. The initial development concept was to drill and complete two to three subsea wells and tie them back to a nearby production facility, Hangtuah, 43 km away. The first-gas-production target was 2012. The reservoirs all require sand control, varying degrees of stimulation, high-rate water packing at rates of 8 to 20 bbl/min, and fracture treatments at rates of 22 to 35 bbl/min.

The operator has completed multiple fields with two dominant completion methods: openhole standalone screen (OHSAS) and cased-hole frac pack (CHFP). The OHSAS completions typically are installed in horizontal wells or very-high-angle wells. The OHSAS requires special reservoir-drill-in fluid with calcium carbonate to drill the reservoir section, run the premium screen, wash the pipe, and conduct mudcake cleanout. Typically, a CHFP is conducted with tubing- conveyed perforation and alternative- flow-path sand screen being run in one trip; then, a frac pack is pumped with viscoelastic fracturing fluid.

Historically, the operator has completed subsea wells with downhole sand control using the OHSAS method for single- zone completions and singletrip frac-pack/high-rate water packs for multizone commingled production. For frac-pack completions, the completion system used previously was capable of treating only up to three zones; therefore, the treatment rate per zone became lower, and there was always an issue with slurry distribution. If more than two to three zones were required per well, a stacked frac-pack completion was implemented.

Completing these wells with conventional stacked sand-control methods meant spending many rig days tripping pipe in and out of each well. The single-trip multizone methods previously used in the area typically would provide only a limited pump rate of up to 10 bbl/min per zone and pressure ratings of 6,000 psi. For the new wells, the fracture treatments would require a more-robust system that would include a pressure rating of 10,000 psi because of sandout conditions.

Another challenge was that commingling these zones into one well has historically resulted in 50% less recovery compared with single-zone completions. Early water breakthrough coming in from one of the zones would cause the well to load up and die. Therefore, the operator also wanted to include installation of an intelligent-completion system that would allow zonal isolation without intervention, to optimize reserves recovery. The multizone frac-pack completion not only would have to be capable of completing up to six zones in one run but also would have to be compatible with the planned intelligent-system equipment.