Abstract
Best Practices for cementing are well established in the industry however there remains the continuous challenge of effectively employing these best practices in balancing the need for drilling performance and the need for delivering the best possible well to production. For multi-zone monobore completions where the cemented tubing annulus is the single means for zonal isolation, this becomes a critical goal. Such is the case with the majority of wells drilled in the Gulf of Thailand. Desire to meet this challenge led to the creation of a full-circle process that both provides the methodology and initiates the inter-disciplinary communication necessary to improve zonal isolation and the added value it will bring. Components of the full-circle process employed in Thailand include: creating a cementing "scorecard" to focus operations on cementing best practices; forming a cross-disciplinary team of drilling, completion; production and contractor personnel to review bond logs, adjusting drilling practices; and communicating to all involved in the process.
An integrated team approach developed within the context of the full-circle process has successfully linked the goals of the Subsurface Operations and Production Departments resulting in the creation of more production opportunity and maximized recovery rates. The CBL Review Team (CBLRT) created in late 2002 consists of drilling, completions and reservoir engineers, along with logging and cementing experts from the representative service providers. In many cases members of the Asset Management team also attend the regular weekly meetings. To date, the team has reviewed over 450 wells.
This paper presents the full-circle process model and shows how improving zone isolation, evaluation methods and field results can be adapted for application in other operating environments.
