Operator sought to minimize multistage stimulation time and costs
In Colorado's Piceance Basin, an operator was drilling multiple
s-curve-shaped wells from one pad into tight gas reservoirs and completing them
with a novel efficient fracturing process. The new process involved repeatedly
subjecting each plug to high fracturing pressures and thus required an
extremely reliable frac plug. In this area, numerous operations—including
wireline, coiled tubing, and fracturing—were being conducted
simultaneously in up to 10 different wells from one pad. Not only would
premature setting or failure of a plug in the well being stimulated have
affected that well, but also the knock-on effect would have disrupted the
sequence of operations across all the wells, leading to significant NPT and
unwanted costs.
Composite plugs from several different suppliers had already been run,
but their performance in the high-pressure environment was unsatisfactory
because of presetting and sliding during operations.
