CASE STUDY: Tubular Design

High Pressure High Temperature Well Casing Design, Annular

Pressure Buildup Study, and Wellhead Movement and
Loading Analysis for Drill-Stem Test, Offshore Israel

CHALLENGE
The client needed to verify the high pressure high temperature well architecture according to their latest design guidelines. Further analysis was required
to assess the wellhead movement during the hottest drill-stem test (DST)
event to enable drill-stem space-out inside the blowout preventer (BOP) and,
for the same event, to assess the way the annular pressure buildup effect
would impact the adjacent casing strings and liners.
SOLUTION
The well architecture was comprised of multiple casing strings and overlapping liners hanging off at both the surface and the mudline. To perform
a thorough single-string stress analysis on all casing strings and liners,
all significant drilling operations needed to be modeled to obtain the most
realistic casing and annuli initial thermal profiles. Next, according to the
well test program, all relevant DST operations were simulated to obtain the
final thermal profile needed for the loading conditions and annular pressure
buildup calculations. A single-string stress analysis was performed according
to the companys specific casing design guidelines and based on the drilling
and production test thermal analysis. The modeled load cases covered the
entire casings operating envelope to account for all anticipated loads which,
occurred during the life of the well. Then, the annular pressure buildup was
calculated for all annuli, and the adjacent casing strings and liners were
checked for integrity. During the high case, DST production operation
(highest temperatures), the well system (comprising of all casing strings
hung off at wellhead and at mudline) started to move in response to the
strings thermal expansion, causing the space-out of the drill-stem inside the
BOP to change. To quantify this movement, a wellhead movement analysis
was carried out, so that it was compensated by moving the test string along
with the BOP and wellhead.
RESULTS
Performing these calculations enabled the operator to assess whether the
casings and liners keep their structural integrity during drilling and DST
operations, provided the safe operating envelope of all casing and liners,
and helped to minimize and timely mitigate the risk of a failure, which could
have led to a negative environmental and economic impact. The wellhead
movement analysis enabled an accurate string space-out inside the BOP
so that in the event of a well control situation, the BOP rams would close
around the test string.

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