Well treatment, processes and application in well intervention and stimulation

Well intervention
A well intervention, or well work, is any operation carried out on an oil or gas well during or at
the end of its productive life, which alters the state of the well and/or well geometry, provides
well diagnostics, or manages the production of the well.
Types of well work
Pumping
Pumping is the simplest form of intervention as it does not involve putting hardware into the well
itself. Frequently it simply involves rigging up to the kill wing valve on theChristmas tree and
pumping the chemicals into the well.
Wellhead and Christmas tree maintenance
The complexity of Wellhead and Christmas tree maintenance can vary depending on the
condition of the wellheads. Scheduled annual maintenance may simply involve greasing and
pressure testing the valve on the hardware. Sometimes the downhole safety valve is pressure
tested as well.
Slickline
Slickline operations may be used for fishing, gauge cutting, setting or removing plugs, deploying
or removing wireline retrievable valves, and memory logging.
Braided line
Braided line is more complex than slickline due to the need for a grease injection system in the
rigup to ensure the BOP can seal around the braided contours of the wire. It also requires an
additional shear-seal BOP as a tertiary barrier as the upper master valve on the Christmas
tree can only cut slickline. Braided line includes both the core-less variety used for heaving
fishing and electric-line used for logging and perforating.
Coiled tubing
Coiled tubing is used when it is desired to pump chemicals directly to the bottom of the well,
such as in a circulating operation or a chemical wash. It can also be used for tasks normally done
by wireline if the deviation in the well is too severe for gravity to lower the toolstring and
circumstances prevent the use of a wireline tractor.
Snubbing
Snubbing, also known as hydraulic workover, involves forcing a string of pipe into the well
against wellbore pressure to perform the required tasks. The rigup is larger than forcoiled
tubing and the pipe more rigid.

Workover
In some older wells, changing reservoir conditions or deteriorating condition of the completion
may necessitate pulling it out to replace it with a fresh completion.
Subsea well Intervention
Subsea well intervention offers many challenges and requires much advance planning. The cost
of subsea intervention has in the past inhibited the intervention but in the current climate is much
more viable. These interventions are commonly executed from light/medium intervention vessels
or mobile offshore drilling units (MODU) for the heavier interventions such as snubbing and
workover drilling rigs.
Well stimulation
Well stimulation is a well intervention performed on an oil or gas well to increase production by
improving the flow of hydrocarbons from the drainage area into the well bore.
Cleaning the formation
The assortment of drilling fluid pumped down the well during drilling and completion can often
cause damage to the surrounding formation by entering the reservoir rock and blocking the pore
throats (the channels in the rock throughout which the reservoir fluids flow). Similarly, the act
of perforating can have a similar effect by jetting debris into the perforation channels. Both these
situations reduce the permeability in the near well bore area and so reduce the flow of fluids into
the well bore.
A simple and safe solution is to pump diluted acid mixtures from surface into the well to dissolve
the offending material. Once dissolved, permeability should be restored and the reservoir fluids
will flow into the well bore, cleaning up what is left of the damaging material. After initial
completion, it is common to use minimal amounts of formic acid to clean up any mud and skin
damage. In this situation, the process is loosely referred to as "well stimulation." Oftentimes,
special interest groups that oppose oil and gas production refer to the process as "acidization,"
which is actually the use of acids in high volume and high pressure to stimulate oil production.
In more serious cases, pumping from surface is insufficient as it does not target any particular
location downhole and reduces the chances of the chemical retaining its effectiveness when it
gets there. In these cases, it is necessary to spot the chemical directly at its target through the use
of coiled tubing. Coiled tubing is run in hole with a jetting tool on the end. When the tool is at its
target, the chemical is pumping through the pipe and is jetted directly onto the damaged area.
This can be more effective than pumping from surface, though it is much more expensive, and
accuracy is dependent on knowing the location of the damage.

Extending the perforation tunnels and fractures

In cased hole completions, perforations are intended to create a hole through the steel casing so
that the reservoir can be produced. The holes are typically formed by shaped explosives that
perforate the casing and create a fractured hole into the reservoir rock for a short distance. In
many cases, the tunnels created by the perforation guns do not provide enough surface area and it
becomes desirable to create more area in contact with the wellbore.
In some cases, more area is needed if the reservoir is of low permeability. In other cases, damage
caused by drilling and completion operations can be severe enough that the perforation tunnel
does not effectively penetrate through the damaged volume near the bore. This means that the
ability of fluids to flow into the existing perforation tunnels is too limited. One method to
achieve more stimulation is by carrying out a hydraulic fracture treatment through the
perforations.
If permeability is naturally low, then as fluid is drained from the immediate area, replacement
fluid may not flow into the void sufficiently quickly to make up for the voidage and so the
pressure drops. The well cannot then flow at a rate sufficient to make production economic. In
this case, extending a hydraulic fracture deeper into the reservoir will allow higher production
rates to be achieved.
Hydraulic fracturing is performed by injecting high pressure fluids into the wellbore and into the
perforation tunnels to cause the rock formation to fracture. This can either be done by
injecting hydraulic fluid from surface, a process called hydraulic fracturing or using an explosive
to generate a high speed gas flow, a process called propellant stimulation.
Propellant stimulations can be a very economical way to clean up nearbore damage. Propellants
are a low-explosive material that generates large amounts of gas downhole very rapidly. The gas
pressure builds in the wellbore, increasing tension in the rock until it becomes greater than the
breakdown pressure of the formation. Fracture length and fracture pattern are highly dependent
on the type of propellant stimulation tool that is used.
Lifting the well
Some stimulation techniques do not necessarily mean altering the permeability outside the well
bore. Sometimes they involve making it easier for fluids to flow up the well bore having already
entered. Gas lift is sometimes considered a form of stimulation, particularly when it is only used
for starting up the well and shut off during steady state operation. More commonly though,
lifting as a stimulation refers to trying to lift out heavy liquids that have accumulated at the
bottom, either through water entry from the formation or through chemicals injected from

surface such as scale inhibitors and methanol (hydrate inhibitor). These liquids sit at the bottom
of the well as can act as a weight holding back the flow of reservoir fluids, essentially acting
to kill the well. They can be removed by circulating nitrogen using coiled tubing.