The first international East Siberian International O&G Congress took place in Irkutsk. It was organized by national trade magazine "The Oil & Gas Vertical", oil company Rosneft and administration of Irkutsk region. The organizers meant that the event would help to thoroughly study the opportunities of cooperation and coordination of actions in the region in order to improve the production infrastructure and optimize costs. The first day of the congress touched upon the information exchange in plans and service strategies. For instance, the participants discussed the avenues of East gas program implementation, mechanized extraction developments, promotion of drilling equipment, service market development, offering services to O&G companies, cluster drilling in the conditions of East Siberia and development of hydrocarbon deposits in Irkustk region.

 

The East Siberia is poorly explored because of harsh environment and lack of qualified personnel.

 

The second day featured seminars on the following themes: construction of exploratory and production wells, geophysics and seismic surveys, automatic control and mechanized extraction, capital projects (infrastructure development, power generation, pipelines) and transport  infrastructure.

 

Baker Hughes held a presentation seminar at the congress. The event was attended by over 50 representatives of the leading Russian and foreign production and service companies, firms engaged in exploration and oilfield geophysics, well construction and service, capital projects and energy supply.

 

Konstantin Kempf, head of well technologies division at Rosneft's department of drilling, well technologies and supervising, told the participants about new promising technologies for well construction and reconstruction. A system of new drilling and well completion adopted by the company allows it raising the oil recovery factor (ORF), overall drilling speed and improve the performance quality. For instance, this year they applied a new ORF improving technology.

 

The company used sidetracking, stations of geotechnical studies and inflow control devices and remote drilling monitoring. As a result it got experience in running and locating equipment in the producing stem. Besides, in order to improve the quality of well construction and reconstruction high technology cementing fleets and swell packers were used. The quality of cross spacers was improved by making offshoots. In order to cut the terms of well construction and reconstruction infill drilling from a mobile unit was applied. The principal objective of infill drilling is involvement of unexpended deposits at old fields that are unavailable during sidetracking. One of the advantages of drilling from a mobile unit is an opportunity to use the existing cluster sites. It cuts the time of the preliminary job and doesn't require additional expenses for engineering, back filling and arrangement of new clusters.

 

According to Konstantin Kemf, one of the most advantageous methods is dimensional geo-steering, which allows drilling horizontal wells without pilot hole and provides for effective location and harness of the well bore in the productive horizon. In April 2008 Russia used dimensional geo-steering (Periscope) to drill its first horizontal well with ultra-long displacement at the offshore field Odoptu. Due to the increased effective span the additional daily production per 1 well has amounted to 80 tons.

 

Among the leading technologies Konstantin Kempf named a controlled rotor system applied for making designer wells. It increases the cutting rate by 15-25% and substantially cuts the time of borehole reaming before the landing. Diamond bits of large diameter double the speed and cut the drilling cycle by 2 days. The only constraint here is high equipment cost. TDS drilling units can improve the borehole cleaning and bring downs the risks of tool sticking.

 

Konstantin Kempf also presented an idea of "drilling brain trust". 5 corporative Rosneft's groups involved in well engineering and tracking will merge into a single Corporative Engineering Center on Well Construction and Reconstruction.

 

Its principal office will be located in Samara. The new structure will employ some 200 specialists to collects and analyze well construction and restoration information, hold a database on design specifications and estimates, provide engineering, technical and scientific support, monitor troubles and hazards and do extension services. The initiators aim the center to make a working document out of every document so that it could be easily carried out.

 

MI SVAKO (Moscow) presented an interesting idea at the congress. The head of MI SVAKO's technological service Sergey Medentsev demonstrated new technologies of preventing mud loss. The problem is very typical of Western Siberia. It should be noted that loss of mud and slurry is a hard to predict and to mange in spite of many technologies, methods and reagents meant to cope with it. Ideally, lost-circulation control should be automatic and prompt no stops in drilling. The antidote should be simple and cheap. The system should be environmentally friendly and protect the collector from impurities. The IM SVAKO's representative thinks that one of the most effective lost-circulation control systems, corresponding to all the mentioned requirements is Driplex. Its basic component is microcrystal of mixed magnesium and aluminum oxide, which instantaneously produces solid thixotropic structure with high gel strength rates, when the circulation is stopped. Besides, Driplex provides for high quality of well bore cleaning, minimal caving and walls erosion, low level of impurities in the collector. It also effectively prevents mud loss in fractured horizons, produces external FC, has high level of environmental security and thermal repeatability. The success rate of the system is about 80% with absorption intensity decreased by 10-20 times.

 

Director of Ecobur Plus Raisa Kateeva made a report about technical means for well completion with better cementing quality. Her presentation paid attention to hydrojet reaming, technical resources for casing hardware including standard set of steel positive centralizer.

 

Hydrojet reaming implies high-pressure jets at the bore bit during reaming operation. The jets remove FC from the well walls and at the same time clog up pores and rips in the damaged zone of collector with mud solids excluding repeated wall building. High-pressure jets destroy the structure of gel mud within caverns and during cementing they fully substitute the mud with cement solution in 2 hours after reaming.

 

A patented complex technology is available today, which includes KPS-230 device (bristle type scratcher with the diameter of 230 mm) installed between the bit and the casing.

 

The congress finished with a technological workshop organized by Baker Hughes. The major report of the Well Construction Section was the speech of business development manager of Baker Oil Tools Sergey Budlov dedicated to completion and well service technologies.

 

The expert pointed out that the principal problem of horizontal wells exploitation prompting unbalanced reserves production is early breakthrough of water and gas, early coning, production of behind-the-casing flaws (between the well wall and the filter). All these factors can destroy the filter. The company uses passive control and equalizers (fir-tree fastening) to manage these problems. Such technologies level the movement profile along the horizontal well section. Sergey Budlov noted that packer systems, equipment for flow control (irregular circular valves, systems of landing nipples and keepers, running and auxiliary tools), gas lift and safety valves are used in such kind of operations.

 

The active control includes the co-called "intellectual" well systems providing for real-time distant monitoring of operational characteristics (and respond to changes in parameters), organize hydrodynamic, complete several items in the well bore.