Case History: Hydraulic Workover Unit Utilized to Recover Highly Corroded 30-Year Old Completion from a Live Gas Well in the United Arab Emirates

In the UAE, an Operator needed to perform a completion change out in a gas well, where the existing completion has been installed for over 30 years. Logging operations had revealed several leaks point in the production tubing due to corrosion. To rectify the situation, a Hydraulic Workover (HWO) Unit was proposed integrating a punch ram in the Blowout Preventer (BOP) Configuration to manage the bleed off of potential pressure trapped between the isolated sections of the completion at surface. This document describes how the highly corroded completion tubing with eleven retrievable plugs set in a live gas well was recovered. The HWO Unit was modified so that one of the cavities in the BOP stack was dressed with customized punch rams for five inch pipe, with the objective of allowing control of any potential leaks due to plug failure. The pressure relief operation could then be completed by means of punching the tubing in the controlled environment that a Stripping BOP Stack provides. This paper compiles the details of the BOP configuration and operating procedures to recover the completion by stripping out of the well and operating the punch rams with the snubbing unit. This includes the pre-job preparation required for a successful operation and the overall design with where to locate the collars and plugs for an accurate punch, and how to confirm that the plugs are holding the pressure to continue retrieving the next completion section. In the end, a safe operation was completed with zero incidents or down time allowing the intervention to continue to the next stage of recompleting the well and putting it back to production. The customer was able to get the well back to production with an alternative solution to what was initially considered, representing a significant cost and time saving.