First Rigless Water Shutoff and Reservoir Cross-Flow Leak Mitigation Performed in the United Arab Emirates on a Horizontal Extended Reach Well, Enabling Improved Reservoir Management

Abstract

The latest developments in well construction rely on advanced drilling and completion technologies to withstand increased wellbore deviation, tortuosity, and complex geometry challenges necessary to access reservoirs, which can create challenges to cement placement between reservoir zones. Hence, well integrity and reservoir management concerns can arise given the possibility for multiple reservoirs to communicate, resulting in undesired crossflow and water production because of poor cement isolation. Poor cement placement behind casings, ineffective zonal isolation, and well integrity issues have been traditionally addressed using workover or drilling rigs to remove production tubing and perform either a remedial cement squeeze or zonal abandonment for subsequent sidetrack. However, this generally entails production deferral, capital-intensive rig rates, the potential risks of pulling and running production tubing, which often translates in formation damage from killing the well, large wellsite footprint requirements, and higher logistic demands for rig support equipment. This paper describes the systematic process used to identify, diagnose, design, and execute a successful inter-reservoir crossflow mitigation operation in a naturally fractured carbonate formation in Abu Dhabi using a cost-effective solution with rigless coiled tubing-deployed technologies and a hydrocarbon-based microfine cement slurry that activates upon contact with water. The results enabled the operator to restore reservoir integrity, improve reservoir management, and enhance water sweep. Post-operation reservoir evaluation validated the successful use of the technology for rigless zonal isolation using coiled tubing (CT) for the first time in the United Arab Emirates, providing significant cost benefits and new best practices to reduce the water cut and restore wellbore integrity.