IPTC 16616

A Case Study: Innovative Open Hole Well Completion Provides Superior

Results in Tight Gas Formation in Jilin District, China
Wang Feng, Changyu Liu, Yingan Zhang, PetroChina; Yong Wang, Hai Liu,Schlumberger; Ku, Ka Tong, Packer’s Plus

Copyright 2013, International Petroleum Technology Conference

This paper was prepared for presentation at the International Petroleum Technology Conference held in Beijing, China, 26–28 March 2013.

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Abstract
Drilling of horizontal wells has increased steadily over the last few years in China on land. As technology has developed,
operators have seen the economic and production benefits of drilling horizontally 1, 2. In the Changling gas field, the Deng
Louku formations are primarily low porosity (average 5.2%) and low permeability (average 0.17md) tight sand. Typically,
wells in this area are drilled vertically and completed with cemented casing. Proppant fracturing was necessary to produce the
well economically due to the low permeability nature of the formation. However the production results from the conventional
vertical fracturing completions were not very promising and most of the wells experienced rapid production decline once they
were put on production. Thus it became crucial to find an engineering solution to effectively unlock the reserves and obtain
sustained long term productivity.
Multistage fracturing of the DP2 horionatal well is a milestone for the operator due to: 1) the deepest, and most stages in a
single horizontal well in a tight sand formation in China was completed and fractured; 2) the biggest fracturing job for a single
well in terms of proppant and fracture fluid volume was successfully pumped continuously by first time application of the
precise continuous mixer (PCM) in China; 3) an innovative multistage fracturing design workflow was developed to optimize
the horizontal well completion design including several disciplines: geology, reservoir modeling and fracturing. This workflow
was set as the standard design process for multistage fracturing design in the field.
The DP2 horizontal well was completed in ten stages in the 837 m openhole section and the ten fracturing stages were pumped
continuously in 3 days. The PCM was used to improve the fracturing operation efficiency. A total of 1425 tons of 30/50
proppant was successfully placed into the formation using 4870 m3 fracturing fluid. The well produced 320,000 m3/day
initially and was stabilized at 180,000 m3/day with 20 MPa wellhead pressure, which is 5 times higher than the average offset
well.
The application of real time hydraulic fracturing monitor technology helpped to verify that the optimized fracture half-length
was achieved, and to adjust the fracturing schedule in real time for the second stage.

Introduction
The Changling gas field was discovered in Songliao basin with the reserves of 17.28 billion m3 gas. It is one of the most
important resources to support the Jilin Oilfield development strategy. The Deng Louku formation is the main reservoir section
at a depth of around 3540m TVD. The formation consists of a thick sand body imbedded with many discontinuous thin shale
barriers and the reservoir pressure and temperature are 37.8MPa and 133oC respectively. The formation porosity varies from
2.2 to 10.1% and the permeability varies from 0.01 to 0.2md (the average porosity was 5.2%, the average permeability was
0.17md). The image logs show the presence of the natural fractures (see the Figure1).
The conventional vertical wells can only offer limited contact between the wellbore and the production interval. Even with
hydraulic fractures, it still does not ensure a sustained and long-term production rate due to the tighter nature of the rock 3. As
since 2006, a total of 21 intervals out of 12 vertical wells have been fractured in the Deng Louku formation to improve
production with traditional hydraulic fracturing technology. Massive amount of proppant (up to 297 tons of proppant) were
placed into a single well. However the productivity of the vertical wells with a conventional fracturing completion was either
low or initially high but with rapid decline. A new engineering solution was required to address and solve this challenge.
Horizontal well completion with multistage fracturing has been applied in tight gas reservoirs for many years and considered
to be an effective method to substantially increase reservoir contact and therefore increase productivity2. Thus the DP2
horizontal well was planned and drilled in the field as a pilot experimental well. The well was drilled toward the field
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minimum horizontal stress direction so that the preferred transvers fracturing can be placed along the wellbore to maximize the
gas well productivity 4. Several completion options were evaluated to seek for the best solution including 1) slotted liner
completions, 2) cased-hole perforated completions, 3) openhole with multistage completions. After comparing the advantage
and disadvantages of the different completions (see the Table1), the openhole completion with multistage completion tools
was selected for the well 2.
The multistage completion tools is run as the un-cemented liner and spaced out by the mechanical packers based on the
required number of treatment sections and the hydraulic fracturing fluid is pumped through the mechanical sleeve which
placed between the two openhole packers. By dropping gradually increased ball to open the corresponding sleeve and isolate
the previous fracturing stages, the system allowed us to treat each pay zone separately and fracture the entire horizontal section
continuously. The system would enable us to improve the well productivity and recovery through increased stimulation
efficiency and fit for reservoir property stimulation treatment: 1) treat each stage separately and precisely; 2) allow fracturing
the well without the rig; 3) improve the operation efficiency by allowing the fracturing operation continuously. Therefore the
decision was made to deploy this innovative field proven completion tool system for this horizontal well in Changling Gas
Field.

Multistage Fracturing Design Workflow

In order to solve the challenges and make the project success, a systematic workflow was developed to maximize the well
productivity which took into account the geology, reservoir quality and completion. The multistage fracturing design
workflow include the following steps: 1) First build a 3D-reservoir model to reflect the geological structure and reservoir
properties around the horizontal well controlled area; 2) Second build a simulation model to optimize the number of stages and
fracturing geometry based on maximizing the well productivity. 3) Third build a stress profile model based on the offset well
logs and combine the well’s reservoir and stress profile model together for the fracturing geometry simulation; 4) Finally the
fracturing treatment was further optimized in the real-time with the success application of Hydraulic Fracturing Monitor
(HFM) technology. The workflow for multistage fracturing design is shown in Figure 2. As illustrated in the figure, the
workflow is including different domains which reflect the multi-discipline nature of the horizontal well multistage fracturing
design process.

3-D Near Well Reservoir Modeling

Because the nature of the formation property is heterogeneous, it is critical to understand the formation variation near the
horizontal wellbore as well as far field. Since the openhole logs, cutting and cores can give us fairly accurate formation
property information, the challenge became how to describe the far field reservoir property. The formation sand distribution is
the most basic reservoir property which can reflect how the reservoir sand body developed in the field across the well. The
understanding of the formation sand distribution helps us visualize where to place a fracturing into formation to maximize the
reservoir contact.
Because the full scale 3-D reservoir modeling is very time and man power consuming, the basic 3D near-well reservoir
modeling is built to provide 3D heterogeneous model of sand distribution for horizontal well fracturing design and well
simulation. The study area had intensive openhole logs and several FMI images and core data which provided rich input data
distributions, variograms and sand trends for modeling (see the Figure 3). SGS (Sequential Gaussian Simulation) method is
applied to get multiple realizations of 3D sand distribution with the same model parameter 6 (see the Figure 4). This probability
model minimized the sand distribution uncertainty among wells and can provide the mean for further optimize the fracturing
design which will be discussed later in the paper (see the Figure 5).

Multistage Fracturing Optimization Design

The first horizontal well DP2 was drilled in 2010. The total well depth is 4,557m MD and 3,533m TVD. The horizontal
openhole length is 837m. The well was completed with 244.5mm (9-5/8”) production casing at 3228m and 215.9mm (8-1/2”)
openhole to TD. The analysis of the offset wells’ fracturing treatment showed that the potential differential pressure of 74MPa
could apply on the openhole packer (see the table 2). Thus the 83MPa tool system was selected for the horizontal well.
A simulation model was built based on the petrophysical information and well data to optimize the treatment parameters:
number of stages, fracture half-length and the proppant concentration (see the table3). The model takes considering the non-
Darcy effect, multiphase flow and initial fracture cleanup. Both one year cumulative production and stabilized production after
300 days were analyzed against number of fracturing stages, fracture half-length and propprant concentration with selected
30/50 mesh size proppant.
The number of stages is optimized based on maximizing the horizontal well production. The sensitivity analysis of the number
of stages versus both one year cumulative production and production rate after 300days was carried out. The conclusion of the
optimized stage is 8~10stages can be drawn from the cumulative production rate versus number of fractures plot (see the
figure 6). Although the Figure 7 showed that the optimized stages is 7~8, with the nature of the low porosity and permeability
of the reservoir, the well productivity will benefit from placing more transverse fracturing along the wellbore. So it is
concluded that 10 stage fracturings will be optimum. The results are show in Figure 6~7.
The similar sensitivity analysis of the fracture half-length and proppant concentration was also conducted following the same
rules. It is showed the optimized fracture half-length is 180~200m and the optimized proppant concentration placed in the
IPTC 16616 3

formation is 7.5~8.5 kg/m2. The results are show in Figure 8~11.

Ten intervals were selected for the proppant fracturing treatment based on horizontal well petrophysical and reservoir
evaluation. Each treatment intervals varied from 64m to 158m. The 139.7mm (5-1/2”) casing was selected as fracturing string
so that the whole completion will not be failed even when the near wellbore screen out occurred during the fracture pumping.
The target reservoir sections, the packers and the frac-port locations are shown in the table4. The multistage completion design
is shown in the Figure 12.

Stress Profile Model

At the Deng Louku formation depth, the minimum principal stress is the minimum horizontal stress. The FMI image logs
showed the maximum horizontal stress is in E-W direction (see the figure13). The DP2 well drilled in N-S direction thus the
preferred transvers fracturing will be placed along the wellbore for this well.
The two closest offset wells’ stress profile were put at the toe and heel of the horizontal well respectively. The fractures were
then grouped up by the distance between the fracture initiating point (position of the frac-port) and the offset wells. The
Figure 14 showed the fracture1~7 close to well1 and will be put as group A, the fracture 8~10 close to well2 and will be put
as group B. The two fracture simulation modelings using different stress profile were run for these two groups of fractures to
achieve the design goal of 180~200m fracture half-length and 7.5~8.5 kg/m2 proppant concentration in formation. The 3-D
near well reservoir model of the DP2 also showed: the formation of group A section is characterized with thick and continuous
Deng Louku sand; the group B section consists of several thin sand and shale layers overlapped each other. Comparing with
the Group A, the group B need place relatively larger volume of proppant fracturing to have a better chance of connecting this
sand-shale comingle formation.
Because the first and last fractures (toe and heel) will have bigger drainage areas compared to those of the inside fractures 7, In
addition to the above optimization process, the last fracture volume was increased by 25%. However the first fracture volume
remained the same in order to reduce the operation risks.
The fracture pumping summary table for each stage is shown in table5.

Treatment Execution
The caliper log was run to determine the best spot of setting the openhole packers after the drilling operation. It is critical to
place the packer in the preferred size of openhole section so that the packer will be in good function. Prior to running the open-
hole completion into the wellbore, a bit and scraper run was made using 215.9mm bit to check the wellbore integration. It was
then followed by the dummy run with openhole reamer assembly. The purpose of running the reamer assembly is to simulate
run-in-hole process of actual multistage fracturing tool string and remove any restrictions or tight spots in the openhole
section. After the reamer run was conducted successfully, the multistage completion tools were carried into openhole with
139.7mm casing at the depth of 4536.2 m MD in the drilling mud. The liner hanger packer was installed inside 244.5mm
casing at the depth of 3001.5m MD. After reaching TD, the open-hole packers and the liner hanger packer were set by
isolating the toe circulating sub and hydraulically pressurizing up the 127mm drill pipe by dropping a 38.1mm shut-off ball.
After release the hydraulic setting tool and POOH the drill pipe, the tie-back seal assembly was then run in hole with 139.7mm
fracturing casing, which was then landed on a tubing head spool with Christmas tree on the top.
After the drilling rig was demobilized, a ten-stage fracturing treatment was prepared. The precise continuous mixer (PCM) was
used to improve the fracture pumping operation efficiency. The surface fracturing equipment layout is shown in the Figure 15.
The ten stages were pumped continuously in 3 days since the operation was done during the daylight time only (see the figure
16). Total 1425 ton of 30/50 proppant was successfully placed into the formation using 4870 m3 of fracturing fluid. Each stage
has a positive pressure signature during the opening the frac-port and formation breakdown, may indicate that all the openhole
packers were set and sealed properly.

Evaluation
The real time hydraulic fracturing monitor technology was applied for the stage 1 to 5 (see the figure 17). The micro seismic
event dots showed that during the stage 2 fracturing stage2’s dots overlapped with stage1’s, which mean the stage2 have
communicated with the stage1 during the pumping. The decision of cutting the stage 2 earlier and proceeding with stage 3
fracturing was made with the help of the real time interpretation result. Such decision would be very difficult to make or may
not even be considered if the real time hydraulic fracturing monitor technology was not applied for this well.
The hydraulic fracturing monitor interpretation results are shown in table6. It shows that the hydraulic fracturing extended near
east-west direction which matches with the maximum horizontal stress direction in Deng Louku formation in the field. The
result helps to decide the horizontal well drilling direction and create better chance of having transverse fracturing in Deng
Louku formation in the future field drilling projects.
The interpretation results showed the fracturing half-length for stage 1/2, 4 and 5 varied from 165 to 210m, which verified that
the optimized fracturing half-length was achieved for there stages. The results showed stage2 fracturing half-length was 77m.
In stage2 less micro seismic events were detected may due to the less energy release during the rock failure when fracturing
was proceeded. The overall interpretation results of stage1 to 5 showed that the fracturing half-length achieved the design
objective.
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Conclusion and discussion

The well was opened immediately using a 3mm choke for flow back and cleanup after fracturing treatment. The gas started to
breakthrough after 7 days flow back with more than 16% flow back ratio. The well produced 320,000 m3/day initially. After
40 days of flow back, the gas production was stabilized at 180,000 m3/day with 20 MPa wellhead pressure (see the figure 18).
The horizontal well production is 5 times higher than the average offset vertical wells.
Based on these results the operator has decided to apply this completion model in the future wells in Changling gas field. The
similar completion design workflow need to be applied for all the future multistage fracturing projects.
Conclusions of the project can be drawn:
1. A multistage completion system, being a deepest and the most number of stages in China, was deployed successfully
in a deep hot tight sand gas well.
2. The most number of the stages, the biggest single well fracturing in terms of fluid and proppant volume was pumped
successfully by first time ever using the PCM to increase the operation efficiency in China.
3. The efficiency of utilizing openhole completion with mechanical packer system was clear seen. It leads to fast
cleanup and less fracture fluid damage to the formation, in return brings best gas production.
4. The 3-D Near Well Reservoir Modeling helps to better understand and visualize the formation property which leads
to select the best completion method and optimize the fracture placement parameter for the well.
5. The systematic multistage fracturing design workflow provides an engineering design optimization solution for the
horizontal well multistage fracturing completion.
6. The real time hydraulic fracturing monitoring can help to verify the fracturing extended toward the field maximum
horizontal stress direction: near east-west direction. The result helps to decide the horizontal well drilling direction
and create better chance of having transverse fracturing in Deng Louku formation in the future field drilling projects
7. The optimized fracturing half-length was achieved for most of the stages.
8. The technology has proven to be an effective stimulation method for the horizontal wells in the heterogeneous tight
sand formation. This has set a milestone for the horizontal well completion in Changling Gas Field.

Acknowledgement
The author thanks Schlumberger and PetroChina for permission to publish this paper. The authors would like to extend the
special thanks to PetroChina Jilin Oilfield Company and the associated servicing companies who were willing to attempt this
novel project and provide us the opportunity to run and test this completion technique in this field. Without their valuable
inputs and support, these projects would not have been possible. The authors also wish to thank Schlumberger colleagues Yu
Yang for his invaluable works that were used in this manuscript.

Reference
1. Yongping Li, Yonghui Wang, Xingsheng Cheng, Mingguang che, Fuxiang Zhang, Jiamxom Peng, Raoyun Zhu. (2010); Case Study
of Multistage Isolating Stimulation in High Temperature Deep Carbonate Horizontal Wells; the paper SPE 125854 presented at the
SPE Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition held in Mumbai, Idia, 20-22, Jan 2010.
2. Jing Zhang, Yikai Zhou, Jianghua Zhang, Yong Wang, Hai Liu. (2010); First Ever Multi-stage Proppant Fracturing on an Openhole
Horizontal Gas Well in Deep Natural Fissure Volcanic Reservoir in West China; the paper SPE 133677 presented at the SPE Asia
Pacific Oil & Gas Conference and Exhibition held in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 18-20 Oct 2010
3. Zillur Rahim, Adnan Al-Kanaan, Bryan Johnston, Stuart Wilson, Hamoud Al-Anazi, Daniel Kalinin. (2011); Success Criteria for
Multistage Fracturing of Tight Gas in Saudi Arabia; the paper SPE 149064 presented at the SPE/DGS Saudi Arabia Section
Technical Symposium and Exhibition held in Al-Khobar, Saudi Arabia, 15-18 May, 2011.
4. M.J.Economides, A.N.Martin. (2010); How to Decide Between Horizontal Transverse, Horizontal Longitudinal and Vertical
Fractured Completion; the paper SPE 134424 presented at the SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition held in Florence,
Italy, 19-22 Sep 2010.
5. Alberto Casero, Loris Tealdi, Roberto Luis Ceccarelli, Antonio Ciuca, Giamberardino Pace, Brad Malone, Jim Athans. (2009);
Multiple Transverse Fracturing in Open Hole Allows Development of a Low Permeability Reservoir in the Foukanda Field, Offshore
Congo; the paper SPE 119140 presented at the 2009 SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference held in The Woodlands,
Texas, USA, 19-21 Jan 2009.
6. Philip Ringrose, Kjetil Nordahl, Peimao Zhang, Helge Langeland, ect. (2004); Permeability Rescaling and Near-wellbore Modeling
Of Heterogeneities in Lower Jurassic Tidal-influenced Tilje Formation, Heidrun Field; the paper presented at SPWLA Annual
Logging Symposium, 2004
7. Eric S. Sennhauser, Shunyi Wang, Xiangping Liu. (2011); A Practical Numerical Model to optimize the Productivity of Multistage
Fractured Horizontal Wells in the Cardium Tight Oil Resource; the paper CSUG/SPE 146443 presented at the Canadian
Unconventional Resources Conference held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 15-17 Nov 2011.
IPTC 16616 5

Completion Slotted liner completion Cased-hole perforated Openhole with multistage

options completions completions
Advantage - Avoid hole collapse - Offer zone isolation - Full exposure to formation
- May provide sand control - May offer some production - Minimize the damage to natural
control fractures
- improved diversion placement - Provide the isolation for
along OH effective stimulation
- Offer production control
- Easy wellbore access
Disadvantage - Zonal Isolation still - High cost - Cost of the completion hardware
problematic - Difficult to achieve a good
- Difficult to abandon cement bond
- No mechanical diversion - May damage the natural
means available fracturing systems during
cementing
- Complex operation and time-
consuming
Table 1- The comparison of different horizontal well completion and stimulation techniques

Well Interval Breakdown pressure Down hole pressure Max pressure on the OH packer
name (m) (MPa) (MPa) (MPa)
D1-3 3528.0-3534.0 76 112.0 74.2
D103 3498.0-3501.0 66 101.7 63.9
D1-1 3547.0-3553.0 72 108.2 70.4
D1-5 3491.0-3498.0 63 98.7 60.9
D1-4 3531.4-3535.0 75 111.1 73.3
Table 2 – the offset well treatment pressure summary table

Parameter Value Parameter Value

Initial reservoir pressure 37.9MPa Formation thickness 17.7m
Bottomhole temperature 130oC Openhole skin +5
Formation porosity 5.2% Number of fractures 1~15
Formation permeability 0.17md Fracture half length 10~300m
Gas saturation 60% Proppant concentration 2.5~10 kg/m2
CO2 content 8% Production control Constant Pwh=25MPa
Horizontal wellbore length 837m Production time 365 days
Minimum horizontal stress 61.5MPa

Table 3- Basic simulation model parameters

Stages Top (m) Bottom (m) Length (m) Frac-Port (m)

1 4493 64 4515
2 4417 4493 76 4460
3 4337 4417 80 4400
4 4257 4337 80 4290
5 4136 4257 121 4220
6 4000 4136 136 4032
7 3902 4000 98 3948
8 3804 3902 98 3840
9 3708 3804 96 3773
10 3550 3708 158 3628
Table 4- Summary of the segmentation of horizontal intervals for fracturing treatment
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Stage1 Stage2 Stage3 Stage4 Stage5 Stage6 Stage7 Stage8 Stage9 Stage10 Total
Pump Rate
5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
(m3/min)
3
PAD (m ) 168 168 168 168 168 168 168 171 171 216 1733.9
3
Slurry (m ) 227.8 227.8 242.2 227.8 227.8 227.8 227.8 236.3 236.3 299.9 2381.4
3
Flush (m ) 54.7 54.8 53.5 52.5 51.7 50.5 49 48.5 46.8 38 500
Total slurry
450.5 450.6 463.7 448.3 447.5 446.3 444.8 455.8 454.1 553.9 4615.4
(m3)
Proppant
107 107 107 107 107 107 107 111 111 139 1110
(ton)
Table 5- Ten stages fracturing pumping summary table

1st and 2nd Fracture 3nd Fracture 4rd Fracture 5th Fracture
Azimuth N89.5°E N86°E N75.8°E N84.9°E
Fracture half-length (m) 197 77 210 165
Fracture width (m) 78 48 72 66

Fracture Height (m) 106 61 102 127

Seismic Events 1244 109 209 204

Table 6- The real time hydraulic fracturing monitoring interpretation results

Figure 1 - Image log showing the presence of the natural fractures.

Figure 2 - The multistage fracturing design workflow.

IPTC 16616 7

a b

Figure 3 - The openhole logs and some FMI images and core data in the study area provided rich input for 3D reservoir modeling.

Figure 4 - The modeling provides multiple options of 3D near-well heterogeneous lithological model for fracturing design.

Figure 5 - Cross section along the horizontal well trajectory shows sand distributions of the interest payzone.
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Figure 6 - Number of fractures versus one year cumulative production.

Figure 7 - Number of fractures versus production after 300 day.

Figure 8 - Fracture half-length versus one year cumulative production.

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Figure 9 - Fracture half-length versus production rate after 300 days

Figure 10 - Prop concentrations versus one year cumulative production

Figure 11 - Prop concentrations versus production after 300 days

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Figure 12 - Multistage fracturing completion design.

Figure 13 – The induced fracture from FMI image log showing the maximum horizontal stress direction of E-W

Figure 14 – The horizontal well and the 2 offset wells’ stress profile
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Figure 15 – Fracturing equipments layout plot

Figure 16 – Treatment plot for DP2 10 stages multistage fracturing treatment

Figure 17 – Real time hydrolic fracturing monitoring plot

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Figure 18 – Flowback and gas production plot