Wireline Well Tractor Technology Experience in Extended Reach Horizontal Well

Abstract

Abstract Horizontal wells with extended reach drilled in Ghawar field awarded significant improvements, maximizing hydrocarbon production and attained ultimate recoveries. Over the life of those wells, intervention work is necessary to maintain hydrocarbon production by conducting remedial action, such as acid stimulation or water shut off. Necessary data for decision making can be obtained through running surveillance tools, which has proved to be a challenge, considering that these sensors will have to be deployed to total depth (TD). Many well intervention methods have been developed over time to overcome these challenges, such as coiled tubing (CT) and several types of wireline tractors. Wireline tractor technology has evolved to reduce time, cost and improve data quality and increase wellbore coverage. The use of a wireline tractor imposes fewer personnel on the job, much less equipment and less lifting of heavy loads resulting in a smaller footprint impacting the environment. In addition, the fast rig up of the wireline tractor and the running in hole (RIH) and pulling out of hole (POOH) speeds the highly deviated section, and cuts down on operating time. This paper will demonstrate horizontal logging experience gained from trial testing a new deployment solution for the production logging tool (PLT). A new generation of wireline tractors was utilized successfully to deploy the PLT for the first time in the Saudi Arabian field and showed exceptional performance. The tractor proved its capability to overcome different challenging wellbore conditions, such as rugosity, washouts, and high dogleg severity (DLS). Moreover, the tractor was able to efficiently pass through very short sections with large changes in the inclination and azimuth, This paper also covers the whole cycle of candidate selection, job design, execution challenges, post job evaluation, lessons learned and experience gained to optimize similar future jobs.