Completion Design

About this Training Course

This 5 full-day course is aimed at engineers and supervisors who already have a basic understanding of well construction methods but who would benefit from a more detailed knowledge of completion design. The course will concentrate on the important aspects of completion design and what makes a safe and efficient well.

A common thread of practical examples will be used throughout the course in the form of a case study or “red-thread” exercise. The case study is based around data all taken from a single field where those attending will work through all the basic issues of a completion design. The exercises associated with the case study is performed in the student’s own time after each of the formal sessions. However, at the start of the next day, the case study is reviewed and discussed. The whole case study will continue through all sessions, with each element being reviewed at the start of the next session. There is no ‘right’ answer to the exercise – producing interesting discussions!

The purpose of the course is not to go over specific equipment in detail. Teaching methods include presentations, videos, and animations and the case study.

The course will cover:

• Types and configurations of completions
• The completion design process
• Inflow performance, skin and formation damage
• Perforating; selection, deployment and interface with rest of completion
• Stimulation and impact on completion and flow performance with coverage of modern horizontal multifrac tools
• Open hole, non-sand control completions including open hole packers and horizontal well clean up
• Sand control; when do you need it, basic types and selection guidelines. Includes standalone screens, ICDs, various gravel packing techniques, frac packs and expandable screens
• Tubing sizing, flow estimation and liquid loading
• Artificial lift; types and selection criteria, interface with drilling, reservoir and facilities. Design of gas lift and ESPs included
• Production chemistry impacts on completion, prevention and removal (scales, wax, asphaltene, hydrates, and souring)
• Metallurgy, corrosion, and erosion; metal types and selection of
• Elastomers and plastics; types and selection of
• Tubing stress analysis; picking the grade and weight of tubing, plus selection criteria for packers and expansion devices. Interface between tubing stress analysis and casing design
• Completion equipment; basic types of equipment, reliability and selection criteria for each (tree, safety valve, mandrel, packers, expansion devices etc)
• Completion installation; importance of wellbore clean-out, function and types of brines, pointers for efficient completion installation
• Non-conventional wells; types and when / where to use them (multilaterals, smart (intelligent) wells and also SAGD, CO2 sequestration, CBM, etc)