Cardinal Points to Achieve the Excellence in Horizontal Open-hole Gravel Packing Operations in Deep- and Ultra-deepwaters

In many instances Campos Basin has been a place of milestones in horizontal open hole gravel packing (HOHGP) in deep and ultra-deepwaters scenarios. However, to achieve the excellence in this field, we have continuously fine-tuned our operational practices and procedures to overcome different hurdles, such as: paucity of formation sand distribution analysis, poor understanding of the deposition profile of our turbidites and/or reservoir heterogeneities; poor understanding of gravel transport phenomena, use of newly-developed HOHGP tools (which had not been extensively field-proven yet), inadequate wellbore clean-up procedures, inadequate sand screens, excessive corrosion of screens during post-acid treatments, non-optimized well geometry, poor drilling-in practices, bad-tuned sand placement simulators (we ended-up developing our own one), unsuitable filtration practice, the need to complete - and gravel pack - long open hole wells with low fracture gradient in ultra-deepwaters scenarios and other Gordian knots.

After a somewhat-bumpy beginning, which is typical of any learning process, we have successfully managed to perform circa 350 horizontal long-interval open-hole gravel packs, and 170 frac packs (Statistics of 2011) in Campos Basin. Based on reliable and abundant data we have managed to gather from these operations, we have developed a field-proven bias in favor of gravel packs and frac packs (not a subject of this technical paper) as well. The following are the advantages associated with the application of these sand control measures: a higher-performance completion, a longer mean-time to failure, and a lower skin factor. So, when it comes to sand control, gravel pack and frac pack - wherever they can be applied to - are the first recipes we go for.

In summary, this paper describes the cardinal points to deal with in order to achieve the excellence in HOHGP operations. Case histories and lessons we have learned in this "no two wells are alike" scenarios are discussed as well. Statistics on our well-completion efficiency are also presented. A list of the cardinal points to achieve the excellence in HOHGP is presented below.