Conventional Openhole Gravel Pack Completions Deliver Higher Gas Production in Tapti Daman Area, India

Abstract Tapti–Daman Block, India's second-largest unconsolidated gas reservoir, hosts several ONGC wells with cased-hole completions dating back to 2009. These wells have underperformed due to suboptimal productivity and persistently high skin factors. To address these challenges, ONGC (operator) initiated a pilot program implementing open-hole completions in select wells, partnering with Schlumberger (service Provider) for execution. This collaborative approach aims to significantly improve gas recovery by enhancing near-wellbore inflow conditions. With India targeting to elevate the share of natural gas in its energy portfolio from ~7% to 15% by 2030, deploying higher performing well completions is a step forward to achieving this national goal. Open-hole Gravel Pack completions were considered as a better option to help reach the goal. This paper focuses on completion design methodology, job execution, post job downhole gauge analysis, and well performance analysis of 2 trial wells. The discussion is structured as follows: Pre-job design and planning: completion architecture, displacement modelling, and gravel pack simulations.Detailed sequence of operations post drilling: wellbore displacements, running in hole the lower completion assembly, gravel pack pumping and filtercake breaker placement.Comprehensive post job downhole gauge (DHG) analysis.Well productivity comparison with cased hole completions. The collaboration between the operator and service provider was critical to wells delivery success. This involved implementing appropriate technical solutions and global openhole gravel pack best practices. For both wells, the deployment of lower completion assembly went as per plan. The gravel pack pumping operations were executed successfully with no losses throughout the job. Full gravel pack was achieved on both wells which was confirmed with both mass balance and DHG analysis. In addition, based on DHG analysis, there was negligible screen plugging in both wells despite the screen length being short. Despite the reservoir being depleted, both wells cleaned up very fast within 2-3 hours thus saving 2-3 days of rig time compared to cased hole completions. The productivity of both wells is upto 50% higher than the cased hole well in the same block. This is a unique case where there is a comparison of very short open hole gravel pack vs similar length cased hole completions in the same field.