The Petroleum Production System - Flow Control Accessories

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According to PetroWiki 1, flow control accessories are devices used to add to the flexibility of the cased hole completion design and perform various tasks.

Contributions

The flow control accesories contributions in the petroleum production system as defined by PetroWiki 1 are:

• Wireline re-entry guides:
  • Facilitate re-entry into the tubing string of passed electric lines or slick line assemblies
• Profile seating nipples:
  • Allow the accurate placement of slick line plugs, check valves, bottomhole chokes, downhole flow regulators, and bottomhole pressure recorders
• Sliding sleeves:
  • Provides a means of establishing communication between the tubing and annulus for fluid circulation, selective zone production, or injection purposes
• Blast Joints:
  • Deter the erosional velocity of the produced fluids and formation sand from cutting through the tubing string when tubing extends past a producing zone as in multiple-zone wells
• Flow couplings:
  • Protect the tubing string from damage when the turbulence created by flow through the nipple restriction can reach erosional velocity
• Blanking plugs:
  • Used to temporarily plug the tubing string, allowing pressure to be applied to the tubing string to test tubing or set a hydraulic packer
  • Used to isolate (multiple-zone wells) and shut off the flow from the formation
• Bottomhole choke:
  • Used to restrict flow in the tubing string
  • Allows control of production from different zones
  • Can be used to prevent freezing of surface controls

Problem Areas and Solutions

• Wireline re-entry guides 2:
  • Can easily get damaged. To mitigate this
    • Use rugged type
  • Material can be affected by liquid and working conditions. To mitigate this
    • Use appropriate material or steel grade type
• Profile seating nipples:
  • Limitations in equipments, tools that can pass through it due to it’s inner diameter which is smaller that that of the tubing string. Common approaches to produce despite this challenge are
    • Careful completion design and selection of profile seating nipple
• Sliding sleeves/Sliding side door:
  • Leaking 3
    • Use of a sliding sleeve packoff to isolate production from an unintended zone 4
  • Corrosion 5
    • Use of special sliding sleeves
  • Seal damage due to CO2, H2S, orx temperature greater than 225 deg. Fahrenheit 6
    • Only use sliding sleeve after careful analysis
• Blast Joints:
  • Pending
    • Pending
• Flow couplings:
  • Pending
    • Pending
• Blanking plugs:
  • Pending
    • Pending
• Bottomhole choke:
  • Pending
    • Pending

Up next, we will examine the Subsurface Safety Valve.

PS: As you may have noticed, problem areas and their solutions are yet to be posted for blast joints, flow couplings, blanking plugs, bottomhole choke. If you would like to contribute to this, kindly send a pull request with the relevant information (problem area & url link, solution & url link) on aunnaemeka’s Github repository . Thank you and stay blessed!

Standing on Giant’s shoulders (References):

• PetroWiki Completion flow control accessories
• Schlumberger Wireline reentry guide
• Gregory King Introduction to Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering
• Schlumberger Sliding Sleeve Packoff
• Novomet Group Sliding Sleeve
• Drillingforgas.com Packer accessories and tailpipe assembly