Coiled Tubing Drilling for offshore wells

Abstract

Coiled Tubing Drilling (CTD) is becoming more popular in the oil and gas industry as an alternative drilling technique to rejuvenate depleting fields. Its cheaper drilling cost makes CTD viable to be applied for idle wells and brownfields. The indepth investigation is carried out to identify the process and workflow of selection criteria for suitable wells to be drilled using CTD application. CTD is one of the enabling technologies in well intervention technique which can offer industry another option especially in the re-development of brownfields. It has unique capabilities in underbalanced drilling which can prevent formation damage and reduce drilling risks. This technique can be used to replace the traditional sidetracking techniques, i.e., rotary rigs to sidetrack wells as it reduces the time taken to make-up and break-out the joint pipe and also requires a smaller footprint for coil tubing unit which provides an additional advantage to work on smaller structures. A case study has been detailed out in this research work to show the importance and applicability of CTD. Overall, this technology costs lower than the conventional drilling or hydraulic workover unit which makes it more attractive to access bypassed oil or untapped reservoirs hence prolong a field's economic life.