«Onshore and offshore oil and gas well construction»

Experience of drilling horizontal wellbores at the Astrakhan gas condensate field (GCF)

UDC: 622.24
DOI: 10.33285/0130-3872-2022-5(353)-5-10

Authors:

¹ Gazprom VNIIGAZ, Moscow, Russian Federation
² Ufa State Petroleum Technical University, Ufa, Russian Federation

Keywords: horizontal wellbore, filtration rate, cake thickness, mud lubricity, cuttings transportation, complications

Annotation:

Recently, the construction of directional wells with a horizontal ending in a productive horizon has been increasing at the Astrakhan GCF. Drilling of directional wells with a horizontal ending imposes more strict requirements on the technological parameters of the drilling fluids used. In a high permeability reservoir interval, it is believed that narrowing of the wellbore occurs due to the formation of a thick filter cake, thus increasing the likelihood of light sticking and differential sticking of the drill string. To prevent light sticking and differential sticking of the tool in such cases, the bottomhole filtration rate and the lubricating properties of the drilling fluid are reduced by maintaining the required lubricant concentration. At the same time, the conducted studies do not confirm the formation of a thick filter cake in high-permeable and low-permeable productive reservoirs of granular and cavernous-fractured-porous type, depending on the filtration index. The experience of drilling horizontal wells at the Astrakhan gas-condensate field did not reveal the superiority of some fluids over other ones due to more attractive bottomhole filtration, thickness and stickiness of the cake, and lubricant content in the fluid. When drilling directional wells with a horizontal wellbore, the time spent on reaming increases dramatically. The main reason for reaming, casing catching, slacking-off, sticking-slapping, dragging, light sticking, etc., affecting, to one or another degree,the free movement of the drill string along the open wellbore, is poor cuttings removal to the surface and drilling in slide mode. An effective measure to reduce the risks associated with light sticking, landing, tightening, leading to significant time spent on reaming and differential sticking of the drill string, is to improve the cleaning of the wellbore from cuttings and the use of a rotary-controlled system.

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