The Same Drift Monodiameter Completion System in Solving Drilling and Well Infrastructure Challenges

The public domain contains many work efforts that document the advantages of expandable drilling and completions systems within the industry (Filippov 1999, Lohoefer 2000). The ability to place a solid steel liner or patch into a well and transform it by cold working to a larger diameter provides an opportunity to drill deeper while maintaining sufficient wellbore diameter. The use of expandable technology has led to the development of a formable and retractable-segmented cone. The cone supports an expandable system capable of passing through the drift of a base casing that can then result in an expansion providing the equivalent drift diameter. The technology allows the placement of additional liner points in a well that can extend liner lengths as well as isolate sections of open hole that were previously impossible to isolate due to wellbore geometry restriction. There are no limitations on the number of open hole patches installed in a given well which are helpful when wells experience multiple drilling hazards. Each patch can pass through a previously installed patch. The idea of monodiameter expandable liners began in the early 2000s (Dupal 2002, Dean 2003). This paper presents the technical challenges, solutions, and testing of a novel monodiameter system that expands 11-3/4 in. 47 lb/ft pipe which can result in a post-expansion drift diameter of 12-1/4 in. Finite element analysis helped transform the concept from the theoretical system to field execution. The work efforts show the successful testing of the monobore system at surface, and the resulting field trials demonstrate the ability of the technology to fulfil the installation objectives. In addition, the success of the methodology has led to the development of additional monobore system sizes.