To meet rising demand from oil companies for more efficient wells, CSIRO scientists are developing an advanced analysis and design tool to handle the delicate task of well completions and workover operations.
The new tool is an evolution of CSIRO’s internationally-recognised GENESIS software package for drilling analysis and well design, which is all about capturing both technical and financial knowledge from previous wells drilled to plan and execute more productive wells in similar areas.
GENESIS currently consists of two elements: the Analyzer, which explores all available data about previous wells in the area, and the Designer, which uses that information to optimize the design of the new well and to evaluate its time and cost uncertainties.
“The advantage of this approach is its ability to take advantage of all the historical experience gathered in drilling previous wells, to minimize the risks and costs in the new well,” says team leader Dr Edson Nakagawa.
Another advantage is in returning to a previously explored area with new tools: the knowledge from past wells is preserved in the data, without having to rely on the frailties of human memory or for a new drilling team to make the same mistakes over again.
“Genesis not only gives you fast answers, it also keeps your ’memory’ of different drilling areas alive over long time spans. You don’t have to learn how best to drill a particular area all over again,” Dr Nakagawa explains.
Over the next two years, Completion and Workover modules will be coupled into Genesis to offer oil companies a complete system for enhancing well quality over the life-span of the well.
The original GENESIS software has recently been commercialized through Texas-based Noble Engineering and Development Ltd, and the new arm of the software is being developed by CSIRO in conjunction with NOBLE, Brazilian oil giant PETROBRAS and US company ANADARKO. Other companies are being invited to join the project.
“A good well completion process involves successfully setting the well casing, production string and all accessories in place, with the appropriate procedures, minimum time and costs and maximized productivity”, says Dr Nakagawa.
“The new Completions module will help the user to retrieve past knowledge to use in similar areas and conditions since, in general, the procedures for well completion can be quite similar in terms of the production string used and the set of operations necessary to be able to place the well into production.”
Like the Drilling module, the Completions module will make use of a database of previous completions knowledge from similar areas to help companies make better decisions.
“The principle will be the same for the Workovers module where the database will keep a well’s life history in terms of the sorts of intervention and maintenance it required. The system will make use of this information to determine the most appropriate equipment and techniques to be used in future cases.”
Another critical aspect for the industry is data management. One of the challenges in modern oil exploration and production is the vast amount of data which it generates – data that can exist in many forms from paper notes to incompatible computer records, rather like supermarkets before the era of the bar code system.
CSIRO’s GENESIS team are tackling this problem too, investigating ways of improving data collection to create a system that makes data entry easy, accurate, complete, automated, not repetitious and that make the data immediately available to the end user.
“Oil companies spend millions of dollars amassing data, much of which they hardly ever use due to lack of quality and accessibility,” says Dr Nakagawa.
“By mining their database effectively – and that includes controlling the quality of the inputs – they can, in effect, open up a new income stream consisting of the money saved through improved well quality and reduced risk.”
Applications of the GENESIS tools are not confined to the oil industry: it can also be used in drilling for water and for geothermal energy, says Dr Nakagawa.
Dr Nakagawa and his team of scientists from CSIRO Petroleum are now working at ARRC (the Australian Resources Research Centre), the South-East Asian Region’s new centre of expertise for Petroleum, Mining and Minerals research. ARRC is located in Perth’s Technology Park and also houses CSIRO’s Exploration and Mining division and Curtin University of Technology’s Department of Exploration Geophysics, Centre of Excellence in Petroleum Geology and Department of Petroleum Engineering.
More information:
Dr Edson Nakagawa, CSIRO Petroleum
+61 8 6436 8752
Email: edson.nakagawa@csiro.au
Deanne Paisley, CSIRO Petroleum
+61 8 6436 8707
Email: Deanne.Paisley@csiro.au