Challenge
Tullow Oil in West Africa wanted to deploy a lighter well architecture for their upcoming drilling campaign, including six low reach-out wells. The lighter architecture would remove the standard surface casing and run a combined surface/technical casing after the conductor pipe had been jetted in place. The operator had concerns that, should there be cement shortfall and if the conductor pipe is unable to support the axial load, the loads applied to this casing string would exceed the design factor of the casing due to the high bending stresses generated from excessive buckling.
Solution
As part of Advisory Solutions, H&P’s Advanced Well Engineering team performed an in-depth pre-analysis that considered several sensitivities related to the well architecture, cement shortfall, hole over gauge and expected loads. Their industry leading stiff-string Torque & Drag model allowed the contact forces, deflected shape, and bending stresses to be assessed along the casing string length. The results and conclusions led to the refinement of the final architecture, considering all the unknowns from the operations.
Tullow Oil in West Africa wanted to deploy a lighter well architecture for their upcoming drilling campaign, including six low reach-out wells. The lighter architecture would remove the standard surface casing and run a combined surface/technical casing after the conductor pipe had been jetted in place. The operator had concerns that, should there be cement shortfall and if the conductor pipe is unable to support the axial load, the loads applied to this casing string would exceed the design factor of the casing due to the high bending stresses generated from excessive buckling.
Solution
As part of Advisory Solutions, H&P’s Advanced Well Engineering team performed an in-depth pre-analysis that considered several sensitivities related to the well architecture, cement shortfall, hole over gauge and expected loads. Their industry leading stiff-string Torque & Drag model allowed the contact forces, deflected shape, and bending stresses to be assessed along the casing string length. The results and conclusions led to the refinement of the final architecture, considering all the unknowns from the operations.