沙特阿美+技术学报（2023年夏季刊）.pdf

page 2/New Navigation Techniques for Untethered Downhole RobotsDr.Huseyin R.Seren,Dr.Max Deffenbaugh,Mohamed Larbi Zeghlache and Dr.Ahmed Y.Bukhamseenpage 54/Automatic Placement of Sidetrack Wells during Simulation Run TimeBabatope O.Kayode,Dr.Karl D.Stephen and Dr.Babatunde O.Moriwawon2023SUMMERThe Aramco Journal of Technology is published quarterly by the Saudi Arabian Oil Company,Dhahran,Saudi Arabia,to provide the companys scientific and engineering communities a forum for the exchange of ideas through the presentation of technical information aimed at advancing knowledge in the hydrocarbon industry.ManagementAmin NasserPresident&CEO,Saudi AramcoNabeel A.Al-JamaExecutive Vice President,HR&Corporate ServicesKhalid A.ZamilVice President,Public AffairsEditorial AdvisorsAbdul Hameed A.Al-RushaidSenior Vice President,Drilling&WorkoverKhalid M.Al-AbdulqaderSenior Vice President,Unconventional ResourcesWaleed A.Al MulhimSenior Vice President,Petroleum Engineering&DevelopmentJumaan G.ZahraniSenior Vice President,Northern Area Gas OperationsAli A.MeshariSenior Vice President,Technology Oversight and CoordinationKhaled A.Al AbdulgaderVice President,Southern Area Drilling&Workover OperationsOmar S.Al-HusainiVice President,Northern Area Drilling&Workover OperationsFaisal N.Al NughaimishVice President and Chief Petroleum EngineerKhalid Y.Al-QahtaniVice President and Chief EngineerGerald M.De NazelleDirector,Research&Development CenterGhaithan A.MuntasheriDirector,EXPEC Advanced Research CenterEditor William E.B.satel:[phone]Production CoordinationRichard E.DoughtyCorporate Publications,Aramco AmericasDesignGraphic Engine Design StudioAustin,Texas,U.S.A.No articles,including art and illustrations,in the Aramco Journal of Technology except those from copyrighted sources,may be reproduced or printed without the written permission of Saudi Aramco.Please submit requests for permission to reproduce items to the editor.The Aramco Journal of Technology gratefully acknowledges the assistance,contribution and cooperation of numerous operating organizations throughout the company.ISSN 1319-2388 Copyright 2023 Aramco Services Company,all rights reserved.Contents p.2 New Navigation Techniques for Untethered Downhole RobotsDr.Huseyin R.Seren,Dr.Max Deffenbaugh,Mohamed Larbi Zeghlache and Dr.Ahmed Y.Bukhamseen p.10 Innovative Solid Lubricant Solution to Reduce Friction in Challenging ERD WellsTulio D.Olivares,Zach Turi and Brandon Hayes p.17 Reduced Polymer Loaded Fracturing Fluid for Extreme Temperature Proppant FracturingPrasad B.Karadkar,Ataur R.Malik,Mohammed I.Al-Abdrabalnabi and Dr.Feng Liang p.30 Global First 18.625”and 13.375”Level-2 Casing-while-Drilling Successful Deployment through Open Hole and Cased Hole Sidetracked Wellbores to Isolate Severe Unstable ZonesSalahaldeen S.Almasmoom,Ahmed S.Refai,Faris A.Al-Qahtani and David B.Stonestreet p.46 New Horizon for Downhole Scale Management toward Sustained Well ProductionHussain A.Almajid,Ibrahim K.Al-Thwaiqib and Carlos E.Amancio Ribeiro p.54 Automatic Placement of Sidetrack Wells during Simulation Run TimeBabatope O.Kayode,Dr.Karl D.Stephen and Dr.Babatunde O.Moriwawon p.62 Real-time Bit Wear Prediction and Deployment Validation in Challenging Hard and Heterogeneous Sandstones Using 3D Detailed and Simplified Physics-Based Progressive Wear ModelsDr.Guodong(David)Zhan,William B.Contreras,Dr.Xu Huang,Reed Spencer and Dr.John Bomidi p.71 Using Isotope Technology to Identify Oil and Gas Reservoir Sweet SpotsDr.Feng H.Lu p.76 Thermal Impact on Sandstones Physical and Mechanical PropertiesQasim A.Sahu,Ayman R.Al-Nakhli and Dr.Rajendra A.Kalgaonkar p.86 Another Record Year for PatentsMichael Ives2 The Aramco Journal of TechnologySummer 2023Following the Fourth Industrial Revolution,automation of oil and gas operations became a prime target.Various efforts have been put forward to create autonomous downhole tools,which can increase the time and cost efficiency while reducing health and safety hazards.Navigation of the autonomous tools remains as one of the high barriers preventing these technologies from becoming available.This article presents two new solutions we developed for our untethered autonomous logging tool to over-come this barrier.To increase the environmental self-awareness of downhole robots,we developed two technologies that will work together.The first technology is a low power miniaturized casing collar locator(CCL)where a millimeter-size magnetometer chip and two 1”rod magnets are employed.The second tech-nology is based on a 1D feature matching of residual magnetic fields generated by the steel casings.Here,two magnetometers are placed on the tool with a known separation along the direction of the motion.A correlation algorithm calculates the position and speed using the magnetic field logs.The low power miniaturized CCL is placed on a wireline tool for the proof of concept demonstra-tion.The tool was run in a water filled test well with a depth of 1,450 ft.Decentralizers were used to keep the tool close to the casing wall.Clear peaks were observed at regular intervals.The detection depths were compared to a CCL run by a logging service company and a one to one match was observed.The 1D magnetic feature matching technology is demonstrated first by collecting residual magnetic field data from the same test well with a wireline tool.The collected signal was shifted in space,and noise is added to mimic the difference with a second magnetometer.The matching algorithm was used to successfully find the shift between the two signals in time along the full log.This helped to estimate the speed of the tool,which is used to calculate the position.Using information from the presented technologies,along with the data from other environmental sensors,such as pressure and temperature,will provide the precise location that were not available before.The certainty will be improved by employing a Kalman filter that will integrate the sensor inputs.As in all autonomous vehicles,increasing the environmental self-awareness of autonomous down-hole tools carries a high importance for intelligent decision making,and a successful and safe oper-ation.Technologies of surface applications,such as the global positioning system and radar,are not suitable for the downhole environment.Therefore,the new sensing technologies that we present here will accomplish these jobs for the robots operating below the surface.New Navigation Techniques for Untethered Downhole RobotsDr.Huseyin R.Seren,Dr.Max Deffenbaugh,Mohamed Larbi Zeghlache and Dr.Ahmed Y.BukhamseenAbstract /IntroductionLogging and intervention in oil and gas wells have evolved from the aspects of both sensors and operations.For operations,the most important component is conveyance,which is the interface between sensors and sur-face systems.In most common logging and intervention configurations,conveyance ensures the safe journey of sensors and tools from the surface to the required bottom interval while maintaining an electrical and/or mechanical connection with the bottom-hole assembly(BHA).The conveyance technique selection depends mainly on the well profile and downhole conditions.The me-chanical connection is required to deploy memory and battery powered tools in the well;while surface powered and real-time logging tools require electrical connectivity through the conveyance system.Figure 1 shows the conveyance techniques,which are classified based on the case of real-time.This is referred as a tethered conveyance.For the sensors and tools that do not have a hard mechanical and/or electrical connection,the logging and intervention is referred to as untethered.Untethered autonomous robots have reached unprecedented capabilities in the last couple of decades.They are currently used in a wide variety of environments,such as land,above and under water,air,and space,including other planets1,2 and astreoids3.Moreover,the use of autonomous robots is highly limited in underground use,3 The Aramco Journal of TechnologySummer 2023more specifically,in the downhole environment of oil and gas wells.Some of the challenges include:geometric constraints,harsh and inhomogeneous media,limited surface communication,locomotion,and navigation.Many times,the uniqueness of the environment pre-vent adoption of the existing robotic technologies and requires upgrades or completely new solutions.For example,navigation tools,such as echolocation used by submarines,or global positioning systems used by water,land,and aerial vehicles,cannot be used for downhole robots.Navigation problems for tethered downhole tools,such as drilling tools or wireline tools,are solved to a great extent to determine the distance from the surface reference point ground floor,Kelly bushing,or ro-tary table,etc.For wireline tools,they mainly rely on the wire length as measured by depth wheels that are mounted on the wireline drum.For drilling tools,they mainly rely on the tally of the BHA.When necessary,secondary depth measurements are deployed,such as cable marks,casing collar locators(CCL),natural gamma ray detection,and inertial measurements.Magnetic field measurements are commonly used in downhole tools.For example,high accuracy magnetom-eters are used during directional drilling to determine the azimuth.CCLs also make use of magnetic field distortions to detect collars.These tools can either have one or more of the disadvantages of heavy weight,high energy consumption,or excessive cost.On the other hand,downhole robots need to be lightweight,low energy,and low-cost as they rely on batteries,and are expected to be more practical than their conventional counterparts.The authors have previously introduced an auton-omous untethered miniaturized logging robot called sensor ball4-6.The palm-size robot is dropped in fluid filled wells.It falls to a desired depth where it releases a small dissolvable weight to become buoyant.Then,it returns to the surface with the logged data in its internal memory.This robot significantly reduces operation time at the well site as it doesnt need any heavy equipment such as a crane,winch,or pressure control equipment,and large crews for the supervision besides deployment and retrieval.What makes this robot a reliable alternative to con-ventional wireline and slick line surveillance is the low power electronics,miniaturized sensors,and actuators.One of the challenges of the sensor ball,and therefore,any similar untethered autonomous robots,is the depth determination.Feasibility study and implementation were conducted for two techniques that work in tan-dem.The first is a low power miniaturized CCL.The second is a 1D feature matching of residual magnetic fields generated by the ferromagnetic casings,such as carbon steel.Miniature CCLA typical CCL relies on two cylindrical magnets with the repelling poles(north-to-north or south-to-south)facing each other.This geometry creates a symmetry plane where the normal magnetic field component on the plane becomes near zero.Therefore,relatively small disturbances to the symmetric magnetic field distribution can be detected.Across casing collars,the increased metal thickness will cause deflection to magnetic flux.Conventionally,strong and heavy magnets are used together with a coil in the symmetry plane measuring the induced voltages by the varying magnetic field.For the sensor ball,the CCL design is miniaturized where a millimeter-size magnetometer chip and two 1”long,5/16”diameter Nd-Fe-B rod magnets are em-ployed.The magnets are separated by 2”and the magnetometer is centered in between them with one principal axis aligned with the polarization direction of the rod magnets.The effects of several design param-eters were studied,including magnet length,distance between the magnets,and the magnetic permeability of the casing material7.The performance of the miniaturized CCL is evalu-ated by integrating it into a wireline tool,Figs.2 and 3,and comparing the results with a commercial CCL log from a test well.The CCL logs are collected from a test well completed with a 6”internal diameter steel casing.The results are summarized in Fig.4.The logs were collected first without the magnets,which reveals a rich residual magnetic field variation due to the steel Saudi Aramco:Public Fig.1 The classification of conveyance methods.Fig.2 The magnetometer circuit integration on the wireline tool.Conveyance MethodsTetheredWirelineMono/Hepta CableRigid(carbon)WL+DPWL+TractorPump DownDrillpipeLWD/MWDWired PipeThru-BitCoiled TubingCoilE-CoilSlick LineStandardDigitalFiber Slick LineFiber LineUntetheredMotorizedDrop-offFig.1 The classification of conveyance methods.4 The Aramco Journal of TechnologySummer 2023casings,Fig.4a.Then,the magnets were placed,and the logs were collected in three offset distances of the tool from the wall of the casing,i.e.,2”,1”,and”.The miniature CCL log results are presented in Figs.4b,4c,and 4d.The results show that the performance strongly depends on the sensor offsets from the casing wall.As the distance to the inner casing wall increases,the collected field data closely correlates to the residual magnetic field data collected without the magnets.This indicates that the contribution from the permanent magnets in this case is insignificant.Subsequently,large peaks are observed as the tool is closer to the casing inner wall.Applying a thresholding filter to the collected log at the closest distance provided accurate collar location,Fig.4e,compared to the commercial tools log,Fig.4f.Therefore,designing the untethered tool so that it travels as close as possible to the casing inner wall can provide clear CCL outputs even with a miniaturized design as presented.Although,additional strategies are needed if the tool location cannot be properly controlled along the well profile.As an alternative to the miniature CCL,the residual magnetic field data has been investigated.Often,the residual magnetic field exhibits a fast change around the collars;however,they are not always clearly dis-tinguishable.Applying various filters,e.g.,a differ-ential filter,the detection accuracy can be improved.Moreover,as the joint length and separation distance between collars are known,stronger predictions can be made by looking at the time separation of the detected residual peaks.Magnetic OdometerAs previously discussed,the miniature CCL data quality depends on the offset distance of the robot from the casing inner wall,which may produce false negatives or false positives.This brings the need for additional sensing techniques for improved collar de-tection and depth control.For this purpose,using a CCL together with an odometer was suggested by Santos and Meggiolaro(2015)8,however,this can be useful only for wheeled robots that have a good grip on the casing wall.Here,the proposed solution is a magnetic odom-eter,which can be used in steel cased wells by any downhole tool9.The magnetic odometer relies on the measurement of the r