HORIZONTAL/EXTENDED REACH DRILLING

Fishing operations in horizontal & extended-reach wells

Computerized jar placement extends fishing to lateral positions
Steve Williamson, Bill Reeves
Bowen Tools (IRI International)
Fishing has changed substantially since the days of cable tool drilling, when drillers would
routinely lower a device similar to a barbed fish hook downhole, to retrieve cable that had
parted. In today's horizontal and extended-reach wells, every fishing application is unique and
requires the use of computer modeling in addition to practical considerations such as hole
conditions, how the fish is stuck, and limitations of the drillstring and hoisting equipment.
Even so, the reasons for fishing remain much the same as they are for more conventional wells.
This includes:

• Freeing stuck drillstrings/production tubing

• Retrieving broken or lost tools (and now, mud motors and MWD's)

• Pulling packers/plugs

• Repairing casing
In most cases, the same fishing tools used in conventional wellbores can be used successfully
in horizontal and extended-reach wells. For example, overshots continue to be effective for
catching outer diameters of fished tools or equipment, and spears continue to be used to catch
inner diameters. The main differences are in the design of the drilling or fishing strings used to
convey the tools to the fish, and in jar placement.
Friction is high in horizontal and extended-reach wells. This greatly affects axial and torsional
loads along the drillstring. Additionally, in high-angle holes, the beneficial effect of gravity to
push the drillstring to bottom is partially or totally negated. To compensate for these factors,
inverted drillstrings are often used. In the inverted drillstring, weight members, such as drill
collars and heavyweight drillpipe, are kept in the vertical sections of the hole, far from their
conventional position, immediately above the bit.
In the vertical position, weight members are effective in pushing the lower drillpipe sections to
bottom. This is allowed because drillpipe in the curved and high-angle portions of the well can
withstand large compressive loads without buckling (Figure1) schematically depicts an inverted
drillstring.
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Role of jars
Hydraulic jars are used to impart impact loads to free
tools or equipment that need to be fished. Their
effective use requires a thorough understanding of
the drillstring and its interaction with the wellbore, as
their operation depends primarily on exploiting axial
loads from, and elastic energy (stretch) of, the
drillstring.
Jars work by delaying release of pull loads until after
the fishing string has undergone its stretch, thus
providing sudden impact instead of gradual force to
pry the fish free. To move a fish, the jarring force, or
impact load, must exceed the sticking force. How far
the fish moves depends on the duration of the impact
load.

The combined effect of impact load and

duration is called impulse (Figure2) shows
impact and impulse). Optimum jar
placement occurs with the largest impulse
for an impact load greater than the
sticking force. The effectiveness of fishing
jars, then, depends not only on their
design, but also on their placement in the
drillstring relative to the attachment to the
fish and to the other components of the
string.
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Jar placement
The difference in performance between jars that are properly placed and those that are
improperly placed can be a factor of as much as 3 to 4. Historical rules of thumb for jar
placement can often lead to poor jar placement. This is especially true for horizontal and
extended-reach wells.
Instead, a computer program is required to precisely determine optimum jar placement. The
program must take into account
hole angle and curvature, friction,
and drillstring design. It must also
account for impact and impulse.
Bowen's fishing and drilling jar
placement programs base impact
and impulse calculations on stress
wave theory, which is also used to
model the collision of solids, water
hammer in piping, and other cases
where loading occurs in a very short time frame.

The energy for jarring comes from the spring effect of the drillstring (and jar intensifier TM) when
it is either stretched or compressed. When the jar trips; however, the sudden release of the
energy does not instantaneously go to the stuck point. Rather, the energy is transmitted by
stress waves which travel at the speed of sound in metal (Figure 3) shows the basic equation
for the stress wave). Though the equation is simple, three additional factors can further
complicate the energy transmission:

• Stress waves are partially transmitted and partially reflected at any change in drillstring
cross section (Figure 4)

• Friction between the drill string and hole acts to dissipate the stress wave's energy.

• Sometimes moving the jar only a few feet up or down in the fishing string can drastically
change how the stress waves add together to create the jarring force on the stuck point
(Figure 5) shows an example of how jar placement affects impact and impulse in a
particular horizontal well).
HORIZONTAL/EXTENDED REACH DRILLING

To account for all of the factors,

the Bowen placement program
uses stress wave analysis
techniques to track all stress
waves. It also allows for an
unlimited number of section
changes, which enables
modeling of virtually any
drillstring and bottomhole
assembly.
HORIZONTAL/EXTENDED REACH DRILLING
Placement guidelines

Having said that each fishing application is

unique, there are certain practical guidelines
pertaining to jar placement in horizontal and
extended-reach wellbores:

• In hole curvatures of 15°/100 ft or greater, it is usually best to avoid operating the jar in
the curve because bending stresses due to the curvature, combined with axial stresses,
can severely shorten the life of the jar.

• If jars are located below the curve in a medium-radius hole, consideration must be given
to whether adequate pull (or push) loads can be transmitted to the jar. As much as 50%
of axial loads can be lost to friction in the curve.

• When jars are located above the curve, the magnitude of the stress waves are reduced
by friction as they travel to the stuck point. However, good impact loads can be
achieved, even with very long horizontal extensions below the curve.

• It has been found that in an inverted drillstring jars are more effective when located in
the heavyweight drillpipe rather than in the drill collars. The reason for this is that the
stress waves are reflected to a higher degree when going through a cross section
change of large to small than when going from small to large.

• When placing drilling jars, it is important to anticipate where the string is likely to become
stuck. In some cases, it is optimum to have the jar at one location for jarring up and
another location for jarring down. A jar that can allow separation of its up and down
sections is ideal.
HORIZONTAL/EXTENDED REACH DRILLING
In other cases, where there may be a likely sticking spot far below the curve and in an uncased
curved section of the hole, it may be found useful to have two complete jars (up and down
sections) in the drillstring.
One jar may be required below the curve in the bottomhole assembly nearer to the bit, and
another jar may be required above the non-cased curved section of the hole. For such cases,
special operation of the jars is required to avoid firing both jars at one time, which would
severely damage the tools.
Case study
An operator with a horizontal well with a kickoff point at approximately 8,000 ft, built angle at 10-
12°/100 ft to 90° of hole angle. Casing was run to the bottom of the curve. Drilling of the
horizontal section proceeded only 300 ft before becoming stuck at the mud motor.
Initial thinking was to back off in the drillpipe in the vertical portion of the well and begin jarring
with drill collars located between the jars and jar intensifiers. However, the jar placement
program showed that results for delivering impact at the stuck mud motor with the planned
scheme would be poor (impact loads only slightly greater than the pull load at the jar.)
An alternate scheme was run by computer simulation, placing the fishing assembly in the casing
near the bottom of the curve. Heavyweight drillpipe was placed between the jar and the jar
intensifier. The results showed that the impact loads increased by a factor of four. The operator
chose to follow this alternate scheme.
After backoff, with two joints of drillpipe inside the casing, the fishing assembly was run in the
hole, and the fish was engaged. Jarring operations began with 50,000-60,000 lb jarring loads,
which was later increased to 80,000-90,000 lb, just before the fish came free.
HORIZONTAL/EXTENDED REACH DRILLING
Next steps
Technological advances such as the computerized jar placement program described here have
done much to improve fishing operations in horizontal and extended-reach wells. Efforts are
also under way to further improve fishing tools and techniques for these applications.
An example is the fishing of mud motors, wherein the tool's hardcoated rotor is left exposed in
the hole. Some hardcoatings are too hard to allow an overshot to adequately latch onto it. One
solution is to use custom overshot extensions designed to pass through the medium radius
curve, yet allow the overshot to swallow the rotor and catch on the motor housing below.
For situations where hole constraints make it impractical or impossible to catch the motor body,
the authors suggest the use of mud motors which provide an area on the uphole end of the
rotor, for fishing recovery.
In some horizontal and extended-reach applications, the frictional drag may be so great that one
can only get to bottom by continuous drillstring rotation. Though not currently available, future
fishing tools and techniques will allow latching and unlatching a fish even under these
conditions.
Advancements such as these provide support for drilling and workover operations that is crucial
as the oil and gas industry continues to push the envelope in horizontal technology