Well Completions & Stimulation

What you'll learn

• Explain what a completion does, compare open-hole, cased and perforated, liner and multistage horizontal completions, and choose between plug-and-perf and sliding sleeves for a given well.
• Select tubing, packers and downhole equipment, and calculate tubing movement and forces from temperature, ballooning and piston effects.
• Design a perforating job, estimate perforation skin with the Karakas-Tariq method, and describe underbalance, orientation and the safety rules for oilfield explosives.
• Identify mechanisms of formation damage, split a measured skin into its parts, and apply Hawkins' formula and flow efficiency to judge whether a treatment will pay.
• Design a sandstone matrix acid treatment with preflush, mud acid and overflush stages, and limit the injection rate to stay below fracturing pressure.
• Explain wormholing in carbonates, use the Buijse-Glasbergen model to choose an injection rate, and decide between matrix acidizing and acid fracturing.
• Estimate in-situ stresses, explain fracture orientation, breakdown and net pressure, and interpret a diagnostic fracture injection test for closure stress.
• Apply the PKN, KGD and radial fracture models with leak-off, and explain height growth, stress shadows and the limits of simple models.
• Select fracturing fluids and proppants, estimate settling and conductivity under stress, and use dimensionless fracture conductivity to balance a design.
• Design a multistage treatment, including stage and cluster spacing, limited-entry perforating, pumping schedules, surface pressure limits and logistics.
• Evaluate a fractured well with flowback, diagnostics and production analysis, and manage water, disclosure, emissions, groundwater protection and induced seismicity under Canadian and US rules.
• Write, defend and review a complete completion and stimulation program with objectives, designs, operations, safety, economics and an evaluation plan.