Abstract
Long horizontal laterals with challenging well geometries and fracturing operations with 20-30 stages are commonplace in the US. Planning for successful completions operations that push the envelope of equipment and lateral reach is critical, and the ability to more accurately account for drag prior to running swell packers and frac sleeves downhole is needed to assist with the reliability of completions operations.
This paper will include an in depth look at the rig data, torque and drag models and the post job friction factors, which are an overall indication of the hole condition, for six wells. The post-job friction factors will be calibrated for drilling the final hole section and running the completions string, then analyzed to consider a link between the two operations. Production data will also be taken into account.
By creating a database of friction factors for completions operations that consider completion type, fluids used, use of centralizers, lithology and work string data, past experience has shown that even offset wells in the Bakken can have significantly varying amounts of drag. Analyzing the friction factors for drilling the final hole section will provide an opportunity to predict the level of drag prior to running the completions string.
This paper will provide the torque and drag analysis of both the drilling and completions operations for seven wells, along with a method to link the two operations. Conclusions will be drawn related to the variance between wells and the ability to predict the success of running completions strings to TD after gathering the hookload data and calibrating a post-job friction factor for the final drilled section of a well.
Although the results of the analysis will best apply to shale plays with similar geometries, the work method presented in the paper is applicable to any well construction scenario.
