Improved Decision Making for Coiled Tubing Well Intervention With Downhole Video Camera DVC

Abstract

Conventional Coiled tubing well intervention has been carried out in oil and gas wells for more than 30 years with not real-time data acquisition. With the advent of Coiled Tubing Telemetry (CTT) e-line/fiber optics/mono conductors in coiled tubing industry, a wide variety of opportunities has become available - downhole video camera (DVC) being one of them, to go beyond the conventional parameters and optimize the well intervention operation. DVC is used in the oil and gas industry with high success rate reported by several operating companies and service companies around the world. Video cameras have mostly been deployed using e-line; however, Coiled tubing camera runs provide the ability to clean the wellbore (by pumping fresh water or solvent) for capturing clearer, crisper videos and images. As the oil and gas industry is moving towards improving operating efficiency, minimizing the coiled tubing runs based on actual downhole data is of utmost importance. Therefore, having the ability to inspect downhole obstructions using the video camera, and to observe the downhole conditions is phenomenal. In this paper, the well intervention performed on multiple oil and gas wells in Middle East shall be discussed. Whenever an obstruction is encountered in the well bore, the primary form of detecting it is to run a lead impression block (LIB) on slickline or e-line. In most cases the LIB results do not provide a clear indication of the anomaly or obstruction. Not only that it sometimes adds to further confusion leading to inappropriate job design and planning, which results in potential misruns, inaccurate tool selection resulting in extensive and costly operations. This paper aims to highlight the unique integration of DVC and telecoil application to enhance the reliability of data acquisition and job success. The custom designed downhole camera shroud, along with the robust CTT system is deployed in each of the candidate wells. The camera chosen is designed to withstand the maximum anticipated downhole temperature. All the camera runs were analyzed and the obstruction in the wells was determined, which enabled the team of engineers to decide on the appropriate real-time course of action to gain access into the well bore or detect functionality of downhole jewelry.