Ali Ghalambor: How Nigerian wells benefit from single-trip perforate and frac-pack completion

The Bonga development, a deepwater oil field in Nigeria, comprises a single-trip perforate and five frac-pack treatments operating in a porous medium. Petroleum engineers like Ali Ghalambor see the operation as a high-efficiency process that, when coupled with salt-tolerant fracture fluid, can substantially reduce pump rates and horsepower requirements. This in turn, will save more time and money, and produce better quality crude oil.

Ali Ghalambor Photo credit: Theinnovationdiaries.com

Frac-packing is the accelerated process of extracting oil or natural gas from a fractured rock layer. Perforating, on the other hand, involves the drilling of small holes in a petroleum-carrying rock to advance the flow of fluids.

Ali Ghalambor Photo credit: Kulim-kht.blogspot.com

The Frac-Packing Handbook, published by the Society of Petroleum Engineers, is a comprehensive collection of system guidelines that covers the fundamental to the highly advanced techniques in frac-packing operations. Co-written by Dr. Ali Ghalambor, the book discusses frac-pack treatments that compare different techniques with cost savings and well performance standpoints based on field applications. The authors detail the design, execution, and evaluation of the treatments and discuss the fluid system that will best suit the needs of a certain operation.

All treatments in the Bonga development were performed from a stimulation vessel, with some of the treatments using the conventional two-trip technique and others working on a single-trip perforating and frac-packing technique. The single-trip system reduced completion time by 1 to 2 days as compared with the extended time using a conventional system.

From Ali Ghalambor

Dr. Ali Ghalambor’s Frac-Packing Handbook contains specific discussions such as Candidate Recognition for High-Permeability Fracturing, Frac-Pack Mechanisms, Frac-Pack Fluids, Calibration-Test Design and Analysis, Post-Frac-Pack Treatment Analysis, and the Value of Frac-Packing. For more details, visit Dr. Ghalambor’s Facebook page.