2018041 MINIMIZE RISK AND INCREASE RELIABILITY OF BALANCED CEMENT PLUGS WITH TAILPIPE DISCONNECT TOOL

The development of horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing has allowed operators to develop unconventional plays once considered uneconomical. As operators move toward drilling more complex sections in these plays, proper placement of a competent cement plug on the first attempt becomes increasingly challenging. The use of a bottom hole kickoff assembly (BHKA) minimizes risk and increases reliability for all cement plug operations; plugback, kickoff and/or abandonment. This tool disconnects from sacrificial tubing run at the end of the workstring, eliminating the need of pulling the workstring through the cement plug.

An operator in the Delaware Basin planned to drill vertical pilot holes in two wells to perform evaluation of potential target zones. The operator sought to plugback the pilot hole and kickoff to drill the horizontal section into the target zone. This paper describes the use of the BHKA tool to set 1200 ft plugbacks in these wells.