American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2020 - 52

SpecialReport: Well Completion Technology
is depressured and detached.
To eliminate manual ball dropping in
the red zone, the integrated ball launcher
can be loaded with the required number
of balls and operated remotely from the
control cabin (the automated ball launcher
is a relatively new development, and was
not available for use on Primexx's 34
Wolfcamp wells). The control center remotely operates up to four completion
systems, with only two hydraulic lines to
each system. Each completion system is
operated via a laptop in the control center
through a simple screen user interface.

FIGURE 2
Traditional versus Automated System Plug-and-Perf Wireline
Swap Operations

TRADITIONAL PLUG & PERF

AUTOMATED COMPLETION SYSTEM

75-95
MINUTES
INITIAL WIRELINE
PROCESS

<5
MINUTES
30-45
MINUTES

INITIAL WIRELINE
PROCESS

1. Stab Guns on to Well
2. Remotely Equalize Pressure & Open Valve

1. Manually Shut Valve & Bleed Pressure
2. Pick Up & Swing Perf Guns
3. Manually Install Wireline Lubricator
4. Manually Pressure Test Iron & Lubricator
5. Manually Open Valve

POST-WIRELINE
PROCESS

<3
MINUTES

POST-WIRELINE
PROCESS

45-50
MINUTES

1. Manually Close Valve, Uninstall Lubricator & Bleed
Pressure
2. Manually Drop Ball on to Valve
3. Manually Install Frac Head Cap
4. Manually Re-Pressure Test Flow Iron
5. Manually Open Valve to Let Ball Fall

<3
MINUTES

1. Remotely Close Valve
2. Remotely Depressurize Lubricator & Release
From Valve
3. Remotely Equalize Valve Pressure & Initiate
Ball Drop Sequence

Wireline can be cut during this process
causingexcess costs and NPT

No manual closing of valves or pressure testing; frac crew
can commence frac operations

FIGURE 3
Rate of Completion for 34 Wolfcamp Wells
55
Traditional Latch
New Completion Systems (NCS)
NCS with Fluid Pump

Baseline
NCS Average

Stimulated Ft / Hour

NCS + Pump Avg

30
Note: Sand delivery issues
slowed the completions of
these wells.

20
3/30/2020

2/29/2020

1/30/2020

12/31/2019

12/1/2019

11/1/2019

10/2/2019

9/2/2019

8/3/2019

7/4/2019

6/4/2019

5/5/2019

4/5/2019

3/6/2019

2/4/2019

1/5/2019

12/6/2018

11/6/2018

10/7/2018

9/7/2018

8/8/2018

7/9/2018

52 THE AMERICAN OIL & GAS REPORTER

Delaware Basin Applications
Seeking to improve the efficiency of
Wolfcamp stimulation treatments, Primexx
first employed a quick-latch system to
keep personnel from working at height
in the red zone. While an improvement,
this strategy did not eliminate having to
open/close gate valves or pressure test
frac iron for each stage. To maximize
completion performance, Primexx decided
to deploy the fully integrated automated
system to compress stage-to-stage times,
increase pumping hours per day and
reduce total completion times.
Figure 2 shows time required to perform wireline deployment, retrieval and
ball drop procedures for a conventional
latch system versus the automated system.
Figure 3 shows the plug-and-perf completion efficiency (feet of lateral stimulated
per hour) for the 34 Primexx Wolfcamp
wells. All 34 wells were completed between August 2018 and February 2020.
The first step to deploying the system
was to hold pre-job meetings for all onsite
personnel to make them aware of procedures associated with the automated workflow. Even though the system requires
fewer activities in the red zone, with the
frac iron under constant pressure, the red
zone area is larger than on a traditional
plug-and-perf wellsite.
Once the field crew was trained,
Primexx began using the automated system
on Wolfcamp horizontals. The initial nine
wells completed with zipper plug-andperf fracs had lateral lengths averaging
10,000 feet with 50 stages per well. The
average wireline transition time for these
nine wells was slashed to three minutes,
a 90% reduction. The average rate of
completion was 37.3 feet stimulated per
hour compared with 30.5 feet/hour for
the previous 11 wells completed using
zipper operations with a traditional latch.
With the automated system substan-

American Oil and Gas Reporter - December 2020

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