Production Casing

The production casing must be adequately sized for the planned completion. It
will obviously affect the size of the other required casing strings, the bit selection,
the capacity of the rig, and the overall well costs. The production casing must be
designed for the loads that may be imposed during the producing life of the field.
It is similar to tubing design in several ways.

Burst

Production casing must be designed to withstand the maximum closed-in tubing

pressure that can be expected. If a packer has been used, this pressure is
assumed to be applied at the top of a full column of packer fluid (i.e., for the case
of a tubing failure at the surface). We usually assume that the external pressure
resisting burst is a water gradient. If the packer fluid is heavier than water the
burst load will increase with depth.

In the event that a snubbing operation could not be conveniently attempted if a

tubing break occurs at the surface, the casing must be strong enough to
withstand a bullhead squeeze on the live tubing string, in which case this would
be the design criteria for the casing and wellhead.

In many cases it may be necessary to design the casing for loads imposed during
stimulation and pressure testing. Conversely, the casing capacity must be
checked when designing a fracturing treatment. This is particularly important in
wells where no packer is used.

Collapse

Production casing may be subject to complete evacuation during production

operations if the well is operated on gas lift or pumped-off, or if the packer or
workover fluid is lost into a depleted zone. As the pipe may have deteriorated
before this occurs, a higher design factor (1.125+) is often used for production
casing.

Severe collapse loads may occur in situations in which thermal expansion of the
annular fluid between the production and intermediate strings cannot be bled off
(e.g., in some subsea wells).

Increased loading should be assumed if live annuli are a feature of the area.
Reduced loadings may be assumed if the wells will not be pumped off, gas lifted,
or severely depleted.

Severe collapse loads may exist in the pay section during high drawdown,
underbalanced perforating and testing, and squeeze either or both cementation
and fracturing ( Figure 1 , Collapse loads in the pay). It is highly advisable to
maintain some set casing/tubing annulus pressure during such service operations.
 Figure 1

Tension/Compression

In high rate production areas and thermal wells, expansion of the production
tubing may impose additional tension on the casing strings, via the packer.

Couplings

In high pressure (>5000 psi; 34 MPa), high temperature (>300° F; 422 K) and/or
severely sour conditions, premium casing couplings are recommended.

Material Selection

In sour environments, material specification must consider the chances of H 2S

contamination of the casing/tubing annulus and the added possibility of
temperature changes during stimulation affecting the stress corrosion tolerance of
the pipe.