High-Pressure/High-
Temperature Cementing
A successful primary cementing job
is critical in high-pressure/high-tem-
perature (HP/HT) wells. The full-
length paper details cementing expe-
rience and practices in the HP/HT
Tuscaloosa Trend in Louisiana. A
procedure for cementing production
tieback casing to the surface by
reverse circulation also is discussed.
Introduction
The Tuscaloosa Trend is a 30-mile-
wide band of sands running east/west
north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Wells
in the Judge Digby field are approxi-
C e m e n t i n g Te c h n o l o g y
mately 23,000 ft deep with 400°F bot-
tomhole temperature and bottomhole
pressures ranging from 17,000 to
20,000 psi. In 2000, the 92 MMscf/D
production rate from a new well set a
Louisiana state production record.
A successful primary cement job is
critical to achieving high production
rates from these wells. Failure of the
primary cement job can result in addi-
tional drilling rig time, reduced pro-
duction rates, and increased water pro-
duction and disposal costs.
Cement Placement
Proper cement placement is critical in
HP/HT wells. Many wells have a very
close tolerance between pore and frac-
ture pressure. Spacers must be properly
designed and pumped in such a way to
remove the mud from the well bore. To
design a spacer, a mud sample from
location is supplied to the cement labo-
ratory for testing. Rheology measure-
ments are made at ambient and elevat-
ed temperatures and compared with
rheology properties from the planned
cement design. The spacer is designed
with a density halfway between the
mud and planned cement. The plastic
viscosity of the spacer is adjusted to a
value between the plastic viscosities of
the mud and the cement so the spacer
can remove the mud and the cement
can remove the spacer. Spacer volume
also is critical. Early designs used 500 ft
of spacer fill in the annulus, but this is
not always a true volume. The more
spacer pumped ahead of the cement,
58
the greater the probability of a success-
ful cementing job. In some instances
such as “tack and planned squeeze”
operations, spacer volume is limited.
Spacer/mud compatibility must be
tested to ensure that massive interface
gelation does not occur. This testing is
especially critical if oil-based mud is
used. The spacer should be tested in the
laboratory for hard settling tendencies
under wellbore-pressure and -tempera-
ture conditions. Polymers used in spac-
ers as gelling agents have a time/tem-
perature viscosity dependency.
Completions
The 23,000-ft wells start with 30-in.
outside diameter 1-in. wall welded
casing to 250 to 300 ft. The 16-in. sur-
face casing, cemented by conventional
circulation with 12 lbm/gal filler with
a neat tail, is run to 5,100 ft, well
below the freshwater zone at approxi-
mately 3,000 ft.
The intermediate casing is 117/8 in. run
to 16,000 ft and also cemented with filler
cement and a neat tail. Two bottom plugs
are used to reduce the potential for chan-
neling inside the casing. The first plug is
ahead of a water spacer, and the second
plug is ahead of the lead cement. The
800-bbl volume results in a top of 10,000
ft. This depth was chosen because it pro-
vides annular space and access to sands
below the surface casing where drill cut-
tings and mud are injected.
Drilling Liners
The 95/8-in. drilling liner is cemented
by a tack and squeeze method. Open-
hole length is 4,500 to 5,000 ft. This
string usually penetrates one or two
production horizons. The mud is a
16.5- to 17.0-lbm/gal diesel-based
mud. The tack portion is designed to
cover approximately half of the open
hole. From 14,000 ft, the well is
drilled with an oil-based mud.
Production Liners
Production liners are usually 7 in. in an
81/2-in. hole or 43/4 in. in a 57/8-in. hole.
Liner hangers are mechanically set and
released and are cemented convention-
This article, written by Assistant
Technology Editor Karen Bybee, con-
tains highlights of paper SPE 72481,
“Optimizing HTHP Cementing Op-
erations,” by John Shaughnessy,
SPE, BP plc, and John Helweg,
Schlumberger, originally presented at
the 2002 IADC/SPE Drilling
Conference, Dallas, 26–28 February.
For a limited time, the full-length
paper is available free to SPE mem-
bers at www.spe.org/jpt. The paper
has not been peer reviewed.
ally with 300 to 400 ft of cement on the
liner top. No packer is run in the pro-
duction-liner string. Lost circulation
and well-control problems are rare dur-
ing this cement job. Sufficient cement is
circulated on top of the liner to ensure
a better job in the open hole.
Most HP/HT environments are in gas
production horizons. Gas migration is a
major concern because if gas is allowed
to invade the cement slurry during the
transition period, the slurry will be
honeycombed or a microannulus chan-
nel will occur as the gas migrates
upward. A “gastight” slurry that forms
an impermeable film when exposed to
gas is used to prevent gas from invading
the cement or migrating at the cement/
formation interface. Gastight cements
have excellent fluid-loss properties,
excellent free-water control, and lower
rheologies than conventional low-
water-loss slurries. Gastight cements
also have a very short transition time
from fluid state to set cement.
For a successful primary cement job,
the cement slurry should be 10% heavier
than the mud used to drill the hole.
Because most hole conditions will not
allow this density difference, best prac-
tice has been to design a cement with a
density at least 1 lbm/gal greater than the
mud density. This allows a spacer to fit
between the mud and cement densities
and still have an acceptable viscosity dif-
ference to achieve good mud removal.
(To Page 61)
AUGUST 2002
 be defined. The solution procedure
then studies effects of different opera-
tions on cement sheath integrity, rock,
and casing.
Cement Characterization
Tensile strength experiments, uncon-
fined and confined triaxial experimen-
tal tests, hydrostatic, and oedometer
tests are performed to characterize
material behavior of different cement
types. These data sets are used to
define cement sheath properties. From
complete data sets of experimental
measurements, Young’s modulus,
Poisson’s Ratio, and Mohr-Coulomb
failure parameters are determined.
These data are used in the finite ele-
ment analysis to assess cement sheath
integrity during the life of the well.
The full-length paper presents three
example problems in which cement
sheath integrity is analyzed for three
cement types.
Cement Shrinkage. Cements shrink
during a hydration reaction. The
shrinkage is attributed to the fact that
the volume occupied by the cement
hydration products and remaining
water is less than the volume occupied
by the reactive cement powder and
water. This reduction in volume is typ-
ically approximately 4%. If a fluid such
as water can migrate from the forma-
tion toward the reacting cement, this
fluid can partially or fully compensate
for the volume reduction. An internal
source, such as well-dispersed gas
bubbles inside the cement, can com-
pensate for the volume reduction of
the setting slurry. The volume change
during cement hydration is an input to
the finite element analysis.
Conclusions
1. Cement sheath integrity is impor-
tant for safe and economical operation
of gas-storage, geothermal, and pro-
ducing wells.
2. Cement sheath integrity is con-
trolled by cement mechanical proper-
ties, formation properties, and well
operating parameters.
3. Required cement properties can
be determined by use of the design
procedure discussed in the full-length
paper.
4. A cement sheath designed to
maintain integrity for the life of the
well can reduce the risk of cement fail-
ure and provide safe and economical
oil and gas production. JPT
AUGUST 2002
Characterize Submarine . . .
(From Page 46)
loss of information. The choice of shapes
and the number of features is highly ad
hoc. The selected features are almost
always defined as a transition from a
channel body to a sand body (very simi-
lar to the definition of an edge in the
human vision system). There are only
two exceptions: a full sand feature and a
full body feature. This representation of
features is consistent with the informa-
tion content of seismic amplitude data. It
is known that seismic amplitude is sen-
sitive to the changes in rock properties,
be it mineral or fluid related. The actual
information content of seismic ampli-
tude data is not channel/no-channel
information, but rather the change
occurring between channel and sand.
Neural Network
The network consists of four layers
instead of the traditional three-layered
structure. The first two layers represent
the processes taking place in the human
retina. The third layer is the main pro-
cessing and feature-extraction layer, and
the fourth layer corresponds to a struc-
ture in the human brain called a “hyper-
column,” which is responsible for
reporting the different features found.
Incorporating Probabilities
Probability information is incorporated
into neural network output. For the
feature-based approach, this task is less
straightforward than for the pixel-based
approach. The new network deter-
mines probabilities of features, not of
single pixels. However, for subsequent
use and representation, pixel-based
probabilities instead of feature-based
probabilities are required. The resulting
probability images should not be inter-
preted as stand-alone images. A certain
amount of pattern information is sacri-
ficed in the conversion from features to
pixel probabilities.
Conclusion
The proposed neural net method is a
supervised tool for seismic-attribute
analysis and interpretation of geobod-
ies. Probability model use of features to
estimate channel facies morphologies
from seismic data decreases the proba-
bility of misinterpreting a facies over
pixel-based methods. Feature-based
estimation makes it possible to pre-
serve the general facies shapes found in
the expert interpretation. JPT
High-Pressure . . .
(From Page 58)
As deeper wells are drilled into high-
er pressured formations, the high mud
weights create a different problem in
cement design. Weighting agents such
as hematite are extremely viscous and
difficult to mix. The mixing problem
has been overcome by use of cement
slurries with varying particle size distri-
butions. These slurries have the same
gastight properties as HP/HT cement.
The cementing procedure is to cir-
culate with the liner on bottom, set
and release from the liner, cement, pull
10 to 15 stands of drillpipe, circulate
bottoms up, and wait on cement.
Production Tiebacks
The typical tieback is 75/8-in.,
55.3-lbm C-110 run to 20,000 ft.
Annular volume is 900 bbl and inter-
nal tieback volume is 700 bbl. Tieback
C e m e n t i n g Te c h n o l o g y
annulus is completely filled with
cement by reverse circulation.
During the past 2 years, eight wells
have been completed packerless. After a
tubing failure on a low-pressure margin-
al well, the well was allowed to flow for
18 months with static gas between the
tubing and C-110 tieback casing. When
the tieback casing was pulled during
abandonment operations, inspection
found no corrosion. The packerless
completions eliminated repairs caused
by packer failures. Previous packer
completions had a short packer life in
the high-pressure, 400°F environment.
Because the tieback casing was ex-
posed to gas continuously, the tiebacks
were cemented to the surface.
Conventional circulating presented
problems that reverse circulation could
avoid. Conventional circulation
requires the lead cement to be retarded
significantly. If displacement rate was
4 bbl/min, total time for the lead
cement would be 6.7 hours and the
cement would have to be retarded for a
maximum temperature of 380°F, but
the temperature of its final environment
would be 100°F. The tieback casing sys-
tem is designed to land in a 20-in.
tieback sleeve on the production liner.
Conclusions
Thorough planning that builds on
HP/HT environment experience is a
key to successful cementing.
Comprehensive cement testing with
mud from the well is necessary for
cementing system design. JPT
61