Managed Pressure Cementing in Deep Water Restores Production

_ This article, written by JPT Technology Editor Chris Carpenter, contains highlights of paper SPE 221446, “Managed Pressure Cementing in Deepwater Environment, Evolving From Saving the Well With Perfectly Executed Challenging Primary Cementing Operations To Bring Back Wells to Productive Life With State-of-the-Art Remedial Cementing Jobs in a Controlled Pressure Manner,” by Pier Alvarado, Sundar Ramasamy, SPE, and Juan C. Valecillos, Weatherford, et al. The paper has not been peer reviewed. _ Managed pressure cementing (MPC) has been used in many applications where managed pressure drilling (MPD) equipment is installed on the rig. This development has been a consequence of operators challenging the initial scope of using MPD technology not only for drilling through a narrow operating window, in many cases by using a statically underbalanced mud weight, but also for tripping, logging, coring, and running casing, followed by cementing and guaranteeing the isolation required for a subsequent successful hole section or simply a well-set production tubular. The complete paper provides examples for planning and execution of primary and remedial MPC in deepwater drilling operations. Introduction This project consisted of drilling four wells in the Gulf of Mexico with a water depth of approximately 5,900 ft and a total average depth of 31,000 ft measured depth. The wells were drilled with an eighth-generation ship-shaped drilling unit. The production section of each well was planned to be drilled using managed pressure technology. For the primary cementing job of the first Well (Well A), a basic MPC approach was used during the job in which surface backpressure (SBP) was applied to compensate for bottomhole pressure (BHP) during the pauses to drop the darts. The second well (Well B) considered a conventional primary cementing job, but the results were not as expected. A remedial cementing job was then planned and executed using managed pressure technology. The results obtained were satisfactory. The third and fourth wells (Wells C and D) considered MPC for the primary cementing job of the production section, and the results were satisfactory. Additionally, on Well D, five cement plugs were used to abandon the main hole and perform a sidetrack with MPC. Background The main objective of the wells drilled during this campaign was to provide drainage for reservoir development in the leased area. The rotating control device used for this application was a below-tension-ring type, complemented with an applied-backpressure MPD system at surface, which included an automated drilling choke. MPD was used to drill the production hole section on Wells A, B, C, and D. A simple approach was used to perform MPC during the primary isolation for the production 10-in. liner on Well A. SBP was used to maintain BHP during pump shutdowns. A conventional approach was used to perform the cementing job of the production liner on Well B and proved to be insufficient because of high losses encountered during the job. A remedial cementing job for the 10-in. liner subsequently was planned and performed. The remedial job, using MPC, proved successful.