Abstract
An appraisal well in the KG Onshore Block (a joint venture of Cairn India Ltd and ONGC) has provided key engineering and operational learning's. The objective of this well was to appraise two separate low permeability reservoirs (~ 0.1md) which are ~4300m deep and falls under HPHT conditions. Due to their low permeability; hydraulic fracturing was necessary to verify the production potential of these reservoirs. To cater this, the discovery well was re-designed and sidetracked so that it could handle the expected fracturing loads. Hydraulic fractures (~387,000 lbs of Proppant); biggest in terms of proppant placed in any single stage in India, were executed and then the well was completed with slim-hole selective completion in challenging underbalanced conditions to test these reservoirs selectively.
This paper primarily talks about the key constraints while planning and designing this well and then deals in detail on the learnings while executing this unique completion operation. Details on the fracturing design were already covered by Barasia et al. in SPE-171421-MS. The paper concludes with production results and the key reasons which led to ~7 fold increase with respect to previous appraisal well, as observed while production testing.
