bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Re-Discovery of a Lost Zone through Successful Carbonate Rock Solids Cleanout in Open-Hole Section Using Coiled Tubing
Authors: Al-Ibrahim Abdullah , Al-Bader Haifa , Packirisamy S. , Sagar Vidya , Manimaran A. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to present an uncommon challenge of formation solids production from open-hole section while testing and completing deep HPHT carbonate formations and successful application of coiled tubing technique for effective wellbore cleanouts to rediscover the exploratory well.
A discovery of oil and gas from a new field was lost because of well complications during well completion operation. Re-entry was made in the existing exploratory well to reactivate the discovered zone since the zone of interest could not be cased due to drilling complications and completed the well in 3-7/8″ open-hole section for production purposes. Open-hole completions are difficult to manage due to the various stabilizing and destabilizing factors. While tubing check by slick line it has been found that the well was filled with sludge/solids up to the kick of point (15,830 ft.). Deeper, deviated and open-hole well presents challenging task of carrying out interventions to unlock the reservoir potential. Cleaning of rock solids in the open-hole section in this deviated well is more challenging and critical which requires new methodology in order to achieve effective well bore cleaning.
Carbonate formation solids production is different from the common problem of sand production from the unconsolidated sandstone reservoirs. As there is possibility of solid production from the open-hole section, a methodology for cleaning of solid fill in open-hole section using 1-1/5″ coiled tubing with modified jetting tool was applied. While circulating 1.5 ppg brine to clean out fill, the well became active.
The uncommon problem of formation solid production was managed well within the available resources. Mechanical restriction in a highly deviated and open-hole section was cleared successfully by using coiled tubing intervention to improve efficiency, reduce cost, reduce operating time and allow early production. The lost discovery was rediscovered by overcoming all challenges. During production phase it was observed that the solid plugging in production tubing is occurring frequently in this case study well. The solid production problem faced during testing was re-evaluated and the risks are properly addressed in future well test procedure.
This paper addresses the relevant testing, completion, solid cleaning and production issues and discusses the solutions arrived at. This paper also details the application of CT in open-hole well bore cleaning, post cleaning well performance, and lessons learned. The best practice applied in this discovery well will be useful for the future exploratory/delineation wells planned to be drilled in similar reservoir.
Radial Jet Drilling: A Technical Review
Authors: Kamel Ahmed H. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
Radial jet drilling, RJD is an unconventional drilling technique that uses the jet energy of high velocity fluids to drill laterals with different geometries in both conventional and unconventional reservoirs. Many case studies are available worldwide have proven RJD as a viable alternative to traditional stimulation techniques, especially in marginal fields. RJD has a lot of application in the oil and gas industry. It is a cost effective completion technique to reach the untapped sweet spots, by-pass damaged zones near wellbore, re-complete old wells, etc.
The present paper outlines the basics of newly developed radial jet drilling technology. Advances in technologies, developments, forces imposed, jet fluid hydraulics, procedures, applications, and challenges of RJD are reviewed in this paper. Simulation studies and several worldwide case studies are discussed to evaluate the RJD technology.
Maintaining Injectivity of Disposal Wells: From Water Quality to Formation Permeability
Authors: Al-Taq Ali A. , Al-Dahlan Mohammed N. , Alrustum Abdullah A. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
Sustaining injectivity of disposal wells is a challenging task in oil industry because of inconsistent injected water quality and the need to meet disposal capacity of produced water. Disposal water contains large amounts of carry over oil, suspended solids and other associated water treatment chemicals. Such water property will damage near wellbore formation permeability and consequently decline well injectivity as documented by lab and field reported data.
An extensive lab work was carried out to: 1) evaluate the effect of water quality on injectivity of disposal wells using reservoir core plugs, and 2) restore injectivity of damaged wells. Parameters such as core permeability and water quality in terms of suspended solids, particle size and oil content were examined at reservoir conditions using coreflood testing. Effect of natural clean up and different chemical treatment systems was also studied. The experimental work included water characterization in terms of geochemical analysis, total suspended solids (TSS), particle size distributions (PDS) and oil content. Solubility and compatibility tests were conducted to assess different cleanup systems.
In this paper, water quality guidelines to minimize/prevent formation damage are recommended. In addition, an optimization of conventional chemical treatments for horizontal sandstone water disposal wells is discussed. Based on lab work, a novel chemical treatment was successfully applied to restore injectivity of several damaged disposal wells. This novel treatment reduced the long operation time and cost of a typical treatment practice, while effectively stimulated the well with over two folds increase in well potential and over 70% reduction in treatment cost and operation time.
Production Optimization through Casing Vapor Recovery System for Gas Locking & Gas Interference Challenges in Beam Pumps for Highly Fractured Tight Carbonate Reservoirs
Authors: Al Kooheji Hamza , Gluscevic Andreja 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
This paper discusses the challenges to production caused by gas interference and gas locking in beam pump wells in highly fractured tight carbonate reservoirs in the Bahrain field. It will describe casing vapor recovery (CVR) project that was implemented in the Bahrain field to overcome these challenges. It will also highlight the project strategy that was adopted to reduce the uncertainty on gas measurements and production performance.
Case study on the Bahrain field showed a small amount of produced gas can significantly reduce beam pump efficiency and production. Therefore, this paper will describe the profound positive production and pump efficiency impact of removing all produced gas from the well annulus via casing vapor recovery system. It will illustrate a "Design of Experiment" before implementing a full field system. The paper will also describe the phase approach for implementing the project to reduce the uncertainty on gas measurements and therefore, insure cost efficiency for project implementation.
Beam Pumping as a method of oil production has been used for more than 100 years in a vast variety of oil fields due to its simple operations. The usage increases in pressure-depleted reservoirs due to pumps’ ability to maximize drawdown; hence production. Nevertheless, even after 100 years, production engineering challenges persist in dealing with issues such as gas production. Complication is also added when operating beam pumps in low reservoir-pressure highly-fractured tight and complicated carbonate reservoirs.
Many gas interference issues can be solved with some success by different well completion configurations such as gas anchors or optimizing the pumping parameters. However, casing recovery system in the Bahrain field was proven to be the most efficient and technically suitable. The project started by proving the CVR concept through Design Experiment. Then, phase approach for project implementation was taken place.
The CVR project is considered a great success not only because of oil production improvement but due to its implementation strategy which led to proper designing of CVR surface network and therefore, cost efficiency.
Steam Forced Imbibition in the Tight and Naturally Fractured Rubble Reservoir, Awali Field, Bahrain
Authors: Mohamed A. , Lambert M. , Khalifa A. A. , Al-Muftah A. , Zhang E. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
A customized thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR) process is being piloted in the heterogeneous, tight and heavily fractured Rubble formation of the Bahrain Field to overcome reservoir drainage challenges. High viscosity reduces the oil's mobility in the low permeability matrix where most of the oil resides. Steam is used to increase the matrix oil's mobility. However, due to the large contrast in permeability between the matrix and fracture systems, injected steam tends to preferentially flow into the highly permeable fractures, bypassing the tight matrix and resulting in poor thermal oil recovery. Extensive fracturing also increases the risk of pre-mature steam breakthrough by connecting injectors to producers.
On the other hand, due to the very low matrix permeability, it would be difficult to inject enough volumes of steam to sufficiently heat the matrix and reduce oil viscosity if fractures did not exist. Such a dilemma highlights the need to think of engineering designs that would manage the presence of fractures or utilize them as pathways that efficiently deliver heat to the matrix; this is when the Forced Imbibition (FIM) concept evolved.
The concept implies injecting large slugs of steam at high pressure simultaneously into closely spaced horizontal wells that are in direct communication through the fracture system, allowing the heat to soak into the matrix, and then producing all the wells together. Essentially FIM is a high pressure multi-well "huff-and-puff". The first FIM test was conducted in late 2014 and steam-oil ratios (SOR) of 5 bs/bo (barrels steam per barrel oil) or less were achieved in all 4 cycles.
This paper describes the FIM test concept and design, discusses the inputs into reservoir simulation, and examines the actual pilot results.
Parallel Implementation of Ensemble Kalman Smoother for Field-Scale Assisted History Matching
Authors: Lin Binghuai , Crumpton Paul , Dogru Ali 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
The objective of this work is to overcome the computational barriers that arise during large-scale ensemble-based history matching using massively parallel computers. This parallel ensemble-based method is employed to characterize the uncertainty of large-scale Middle East oil fields.
In this work, generating geologically sound ensembles conditioned on prior knowledge is decomposed into the unconditional simulation and a vectorized kriging process. The unconditional simulation utilizes the computationally efficient circulant embedding algorithm based on the Fast Fourier Transform. For each realization, the simulation is done in parallel. Parallelism of the time-consuming kriging process is achieved through decomposition of the reservoir into multiple sub-grids. The resulting prior ensemble is then applied to an improved iterative ensemble Kalman smoother, where hundreds of simulations are required for each iteration. Here each iteration exploits a large parallel cluster, both to run each reservoir simulation within the ensemble independently, and then to run each reservoir simulation in parallel. To minimize spurious long-distance correlations, localization is performed by element-wise multiplication of the localization matrix and the covariance matrix during the ensemble updating step. Due to memory consideration of the large matrices involved in the history matching procedure, the HDF5 file format is utilized for efficient out-of-core memory reading/writing of the large matrices and facilitating the matrix operations.
The iterative smoother has been applied to a 3.5 million cell dual porosity, dual permeability full field model on a 3,000-node cluster with 24 cores on each node. Each prediction run takes about 2 to 3 hours on 500 cores. For an ensemble size of 100, the parallel algorithm manages to finish the history matching process within about 10 hours. The results of the models are then combined together to reconstruct the original reservoir. The results have shown a better match to the observed data than that achieved by traditional methods. Moreover, compared to history matching results from months of effort of the engineers, the ensemble smoother (ES) takes much less manpower to achieve a better match to the data.
This parallel iterative ES has demonstrated the feasibility and performance of history matching large-scale complex real field reservoirs. By exploiting the supercomputers, the systematic history matching workflow can also be applied to large Middle East reservoirs, which generally cannot be achieved using other methods.
Evaluation of Carbonate Rocks Integrity After Sequential Flooding of Chelating Agent Solutions
Authors: Hassan Amjed M. , Al-Hashim Hasan S. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
Recently chelating agents flooding have been emerged as an effective enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique for carbonate and sandstone reservoirs. The exact recovery mechanisms leading to the significant incremental oil recovery from the use of those chemicals are not fully understood. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the impact resulting from the application of chelating agent having different concenrtations as an enhance oil recovery fluid on the limestone rock integrity. Core flooding experiments were conducted using Indiana limestone core samples under reservoir conditions using different concentrations of chelating agents at the tertiary mode after seawater flooding. In those tests, significant improvement in the permeability of all core samples used indicting significant rock dissolutions.
The effect of rock dissolution created by chelating agent on the rock properties was investigated. Computed tomography (CT) scan and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements were conducted on the core samples before and after flooding experiments. Experimental results show that, channels/wormholes have been created inside the core samples which may lead to bypass more oil; then increase the residual oil saturation and reduce the ultimate oil recovery. Therefore, the optimum concentration of chelating agent must be determined to maximize the oil recovery without severe rock dissolution. Small improvement of rock porosity was observed, while the absolute permeability was increased significantly, with more permeability improvement observed in the core sample closer to the core inlet.
Ion concentrations in the effluents were measured to evaluate rock dissolution casued by chelating agent flooding. Significant increase in the Ca+2 concentrations was observed which indicates considerable rock dissolutions was taking place. This result revealed that leaching of calcium ions from the rock lattice should be controlled and optimized in such a way to alter the rock wettability to produce more oil, and prevent severe rock dissolutions which will result in creating wormholes inside the core samples. This can be achieved by controlling the chelating agent concentration at small level, and maintaining the solution pH at moderate to high levels to avoid strong acidic conditions. In addition, multicomponent ion exchange (MIE) phenomenon was investigated by measuring the Mg+2 concentration, slight decrease in Mg+2 concentrations below the reference concentration during chelating agent injection indicate replacement of calcium ions by the adsorbed magnesium on the rock surface.
Monitoring Landuse Changes and Encroachments Using Advanced Remote Sensing and Gis Techniques
Authors: Zhang Larry , Ab Alharth Mahdi H. , Mashoog Husain A. 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
Geospatial techniques of change detection by using temporal high-resolution satellite imagery and advanced GIS helps in understanding and monitoring local, regional and national landscape dynamics, including land uses and land covers like social-economic and natural characteristics on the earth surface, which are mainly used to monitor economic activities and natural disasters over time.
The paper initially reviews how the current landuse change detection workflow and land management system in Saudi Aramco are designed and implemented with advanced geospatial technology, which have been operating for a decade. And also, some of new operational challenges that we are facing will be briefly discussed.
The study comes with an innovative pilot by applying the advanced big data analytics and machine learning techniques to tackle those new operational challenges. The pilot aims to boost the innovations to find a breakthrough technique and define a new workflow through processing very-high-resolution optical satellite images and intelligently detecting landuse changes by seamless integration of "GPU-accelerated" machine learning models, which are mainly referred to deep neural networks (MxNet) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) in R and Python, especially characterized with automated landuse change detection and encroachment recognition.
Finally, the paper will report the promising results as a prototype in a purely GPU-accelerated computing environment, which demonstrate obviously potential capability to deal with time-serial raster imagery for landuse change detection through deep machine learning.
Reservoir Drill-In Fluid Minimizes Fluid Invasion and Mitigates Differential Stuck Pipe with Improved Production Test Results
Authors: Al-Ansari Adel , Parra Carlos , Abahussain Abdullah , Abuhamed Amr M. , Pino Rafael , El Bialy Moustafa , Mohamed HadjSadok , Lopez Carlos 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
A properly designed reservoir drilling fluid and precise control of its properties are essential to prevent formation damage issues that hamper production. An essential prerequisite for a reservoir drilling fluid are nondamaging specialty products and reduced fines and fluids invasion. This paper describes the case history of two deep gas wells in Saudi Arabia, one well showed impaired production due to screens plugging and was put on workover drilling operations whereas the other well was a regular development well. The offset data showed differential sticking, partial losses and tight spots while drilling the 8⅜ and 5⅞ in. hole sections.
The well reservoir data including the bottom hole-temperature – 300°F, permeability – roughly 10 to 20 micron pore throats and lithology – sandstone intercalated with shale, for the reservoir section were determined from offset analysis. Extensive lab testing was performed with nondamaging specialty and optimized PSD for minimized fine and fluids invasion. This engineered fluid was used to drill a 5⅞ in. vertical side track of ± 300 ft for the workover well whereas on the regular development well about ± 400 ft of the 5⅞ in. section was drilled. The fluid was continuously monitored for PSD at the rig along with the particle plugging test for fluid loss control. The hole cleaning and equivalent circulating density was monitored and programmed with a proprietary hydraulics software. All the fluid properties were determined to be within planned range. The wells were drilled without any of the offset problems as discussed above followed by running the 41/2 in. conventional sand screens to the bottom without any issue. Initial flowback production testing was performed on the workover well, which took 8 hours as compared to the usual 48 hours in the offset wells. The BS&W (basic sediment and water) from day 1 of production was 9% as compared to the 25% observed in the offset wells. The gas production rate was 200% more than was expected as per the offset information.
This paper shows the successful use of reservoir drill-in fluid on two gas wells: one was a workover well and another a regular well. The abstract presents a mutual approach between Halliburton and Saudi Aramco to address the issue of minimizing formation damage and mitigating differential sticking. Offset well data learnings, optimized PSD design, monitoring at the rig site, and the use of nondamaging specialty products delivered production optimization.
First Worldwide Successful Implementation of Coiled Tubing Compatible Novel Fiber Laden Diverter for Matrix Stimulation Using a New Generation High Rate Fiber Optic Real-Time Telemetry System
Authors: Malik Ataur R. , Yaseen Ali H. , Ogundare Tolulope M , Asiri Mohammed A. , Younis Abdulmohsin A. , Driweesh Saad M. , Shammari Nayef S. , Ahmed Danish 
Published: February 2017

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to highlight first worldwide implementation of coiled tubing (CT) compatible self-degradable fiber laden diverter for matrix stimulation treatment using enhanced high rate fiber optic real time telemetry system.
The self-degradable fiber laden diverter has been used in bullheading acid stimulation treatments aimed to maximize reservoir contact and enhance gas production. Recently, the physical properties of fiber has been re-engineered enabling them to be pumped down coiled tubing to enhance diversion and stimulation effectiveness. Coiled tubing with fiber optic real-time telemetry has been utilized for many years in Saudi Arabia for matrix stimulation treatments and well interventions as it provides real-time bottom-hole parameters such as pressure, temperature, casing collar locator, gamma ray, tension and compression as well as distributed temperature sensing (DTS) to optimize fluid placement. The successes achieved with previously used 2 1/8-in. bottom-hole assembly (BHA) for coiled tubing with real time telemetry system offered the maximum rate of 2.0 barrel per minute (bpm), whereas this rate became a limitation to achieve the desired fiber concentration for diversion when fiber laden fluids were used. The low rate provision by 2 1/8-in. BHA led to the need of a new generation high rate 3.25-in. BHA to be used for coiled tubing fiber optic real-time telemetry system that can enable higher pumping rates, help in achieving the desired fiber concentration.
For the first time in Saudi Arabian Carbonate reservoir, the novel fiber laden diverter was used during matrix stimulation treatment through 180 ft. perforated interval with new generation 3.25-in. bottom hole assembly (BHA) for coiled tubing fiber optic real-time telemetry system. The DTS used with the new generation coiled tubing high rate fiber optic real-time telemetry system helped in pre- and posttreatment evaluation. After successful high pressure coiled tubing stimulation using self-degradable fiber laden diverter with visco-elastic surfactant based acid system, the well performance exceeded expectation.
The encouraging result was achieved by uniform stimulation coverage throughout the long perforation interval. The operation also proved the feasibility of using the new generation of fiber optic real-time telemetry system in challenging environment.