Viking Shale Gas Well Material Assessment Tool
An onshore operator requested GATE Energy to develop a shale well tubing/tree material assessment tool to quickly access the fit-for-purpose material in the wake of several tubing failures reported which led to production disruption. The tool was designed to require minimum input data, but ultimately provide a comprehensive screening of the potential material integrity risks.
CHALLENGES
High CO2 content.
Ineffective corrosion inhibition program.
High gas flowrate.
High pressure and temperature.
High chloride concentration in produced water.
Aggressive corrosion (corrosion-related tubing leaks in the first few weeks of production).
SOLUTION
GATE Energy developed a comprehensive shale well tubing/tree material screening tool utilizing GATE’s proprietary simulator GATE Prho™ building blocks that, with one simulation run, allows the operator to determine:
Tubing uninhibited CO2 corrosion rate, Tubing wall shear stress
Gas in-situ velocity
Produced fluid pH
Carbon steel tubing’s required number of workovers
H2S partial pressure, CO2 partial pressure
Erosion risk, Liquid loading risk, Corrosion inhibitor failure risk
Required corrosion inhibitor efficiency and availability
The most cost-efficient tubing material
Sulfide-stress corrosion cracking risk, Chloride-stress corrosion cracking risk
Completion – packer fluid incompatibility risk
It is important to note, prior to delivering the tool, GATE Energy conducted an extensive benchmarking study between the tool and the available field data to ensure it is representative of the actual field conditions.
TECHNICAL BENEFITS
Turnkey, expandable, physics-based material screening tool which allows the operator to determine the most cost-effective material as well as the material integrity risks.
Simple to operate and takes less than approximately one man-hour to input minimal requirements and a current ‘snap-shot’ of any potential material integrity risks at different locations in the well.
In future, easy to share with GATE Energy engineers to further support with more thorough analysis, mitigation and remediation efforts.
