An Innovative One-Trip Optimized Wellbore Solution for Non-Cemented Liner, Wellbore Cleanup, and Sand Screen Placement Completion

Abstract An innovative optimized wellbore solution (OWS) has been developed to change how the industry completes lower or intermediate completion installations. In an openhole, non-cemented liner and sand screen type of completion, traditionally two trips are required. The production packer area is cleaned, the wellbore fluid is filtered, and fluids are displaced in the first trip. In the second trip, the sand screen with liner hanger will be deployed. Sometimes a third trip is run with a retrievable packer to perform negative liner top inflow test. This optimized wellbore solution allows for setting the lower completion, cleaning the wellbore, and enabling displacement from drilling fluid to completion fluid in the wellbore in a single trip. On wells where there are concerns over equivalent circulating densities (ECDs), the optimized wellbore solution would include tools to isolate tubing pressures to the formation. This method would use the wellbore test packer (inflow test packer) and drillpipe shut-in valve while conducting the upper clean up and fluid displacement. It significantly reduces operating cost without impacting operating efficiencies. A number of wells have been completed by this system. One completion was conducted for a major operator west of Shetland. An integral wellbore clean up string, along with the liner hanger and sand screen, were successfully deployed and helped the operator achieve their commercial goal of reducing operating cost. The saving was a reduction of approximately 32 hours. In this paper, the one-trip optimized wellbore solution will be presented, along with the case history west of Shetland.