Dangers of snubbing being mitigated

by changing well control technology &

applications

The most critical factors in snubbing is knowing how much pipe can be
pushed in a hole at a time without buckling and how much collapse and
burst pressure the pipe can handle.
By John Murphy, Houston

To most longtime oil and gas field professionals, the word "snubbing" means trouble.
It means a well somewhere is dangerously close to being out of control. "Everyone
connected it with that forever," said Cudd Pressure Control vice-president, Ron
Jackson. "Twelve to fourteen years ago a snubbing unit was the last thing you wanted
to see come on your location."

Snubbing units employ powerful hydraulic jacks, a power unit, and

a crew work basket placed like a crow's nest high above the wellhead
to force tubing or casing into a pressurized wellbore. It was a
practice traditionally performed when a well could not be killed as
would on occasion happen during drilling operations when an
unexpected influx of gas invaded the wellbore.

"[Snubbing units] are used in situations such as when you are off
bottom with drill pipe and you take a kick in the hole, particularly in
an oil mud where the kick is not going to migrate so you have to get the pipe back to
bottom," explained Larry Flak, Engineering Manager of well control specialists and
well firefighters, Boots & Coots.

Once the kick is under control, that is being flowed harmlessly to a pipeline or flare
in what is often referred to as a diverted blowout, the drill pipe must be sent back to
bottom before the crew can regain complete control. It is the classic snubbing unit
task because often the upward pressure of the flowing well is greater than the
downward force created by the available drill pipe weight.
"If you are pipe light, meaning you don't have enough weight for the drill pipe to
combat the pressure, you may have to get a snubbing unit rigged up on the well to
push it back in the hole because it won't fall."

But times and job descriptions have changed for snubbers. Very
much the way underbalanced drilling has gone from a situation
to be avoided at all costs, snubbing operations designed to
move pipe in and out of the hole while under pressure are now
more often planned events than reactions to a dangerous
situation threatening lives and property.

"With snubbing you have the ability to work on the well without
killing it with heavy fluid that can be damaging to the
formation," Jackson said. "So we can do workovers and
completions without killing the well."

So popular has the practice become that Jackson estimates

more than 80% of all snubbing jobs performed today are
planned workovers, completions, or other type well
interventions performed to protect the formation from fluid damage.

"Well control [snubbing] activities are very unusual," said Flak. "If [snubbing
companies] had to depend on diverted blowouts to earn a living today, they would go
bankrupt."

Offshore, doing a workover operations with a snubbing unit rather than a traditional
rig is referred to as a "hydraulic workover", likely because of the old connotations
industry veterans associate with the term snubbing. In the US Gulf of Mexico, it has
become a common practice for the same reason underbalanced drilling has become
popular in many onshore applications—re-entering depleted or partially depleted
reservoirs.

"A lot of customer focus in the past few months has been on
production areas and going back in and enhancing production
without hurting the producing formation," said Cudd's Mike
Audrisch. He says the equipment and 70 employees gained in a
recent snubbing company acquisition are all in the field. "We
are looking for more employees. We and our competition are all
working full tilt."
While avoiding damage to older formations is a prime driver of the proliferation of
hydraulic workovers, Jackson says the growing popularity of underbalanced drilling
just naturally raises demand for underbalanced completions. "Brand new wells are
good candidates [for snubbing completions] because they don't have any damage
yet," he said. "A lot of wells are drilled underbalanced with a little positive flow. But
just because you drilled underbalanced, if you can't complete it underbalanced you
really haven't accomplished as much as you might. We can run casing, cement, and
perforate underbalanced and never hurt the formation. We can run up to 13-in.
casing and handle a hook load of 600,000 pounds."

Snubbing's reputation as a dangerous way to make a living, say today's proponents of

the process, has also been mitigated by changing technologies and applications when
indeed the call does come for a well control situation. Much as operators now
routinely drill in a situation once considered highly dangerous, so have they come to
view completions and workovers done under pressure as not only safe, but as
optimum and even routine under the proper circumstances and when properly
planned.

"We have gotten better at everything we do," Jackson said. "We have better
programs, for example, to calculate the collapse and buckling of the tubing being
snubbed in and better [personnel] escape parameters. And today the bulk of the work
is not done in ultra-high pressure. Like underbalanced drilling we are planning for
the it and controlling the pressure."

As with so many older technologies, computer software is being brought to bear on

the planning and executing of snubbing operations. The most critical factors in
snubbing is knowing how much pipe can be "grabbed" and pushed in the hole at a
time without buckling and how much collapse and burst pressure that pipe can
handle. Cudd is in the midst of refining their proprietary program to better define
those numbers and will possibly make them commercially available in the future.

"If you are on a well with 5,000 psi, and you are injecting tubing into it, you have to
know the maximum unsupported length [of tubing] you can stuff in at a time and the
forces exerted on the tube," said Jackson, explaining the theory behind the computer
program. "You put in all the known parameters such as type of unit and power pack
size, and it tells you the hydraulic settings and the maximum [length of tubing] you
can take."

Besides the ability to protect the formation during workover or

completion operations, hydraulic workover units can offer such
significant economic advantages that they are often used even
when the well is not pressured. "Onshore, because you are
competing with standard workover, snubbing units are used for
workovers on wells that you don't want to kill and damage the
formation or for some reason are difficult to kill," Flak said.
"But offshore, hydraulic workovers are done with and without
pressure on the well because they are cheaper and faster to rig
up than a platform rig or a jackup that is cantilevered over the
platform. And today it is sometimes hard to find a workover
unit offshore when you need one. So the economics work
offshore whether you want to kill the well or not."

In addition to the immediate savings on high-cost jackups, when working over a well
under pressure, there are costs savings in heavy muds and their handling. (Heavy kill
muds with exotic additives designed to protect producing formations are often
expensive to recycle and transport in the environmentally sensitive offshore.) Also,
rig up and down is faster than with traditional workover rigs and production can be
brought back on line more reliably and quicker when muds need not be cleaned from
the well bore first—an operation that can take several days.

While some of the traditional snubbing market such as wellbore fluids clean-out or
spotting acid or cement in live wells, have in recent years become the province of
coiled tubing, demand for the staid old units is likely to remain high. For one thing,
CT units have size limits, snubbing units do not. Above about a 3 ½-in diameter,
particularly offshore, their weight and space requirements are a liability. And CT is
not available in production casing sizes, which are often the section operators are
most intent on protecting from fluid invasion.

And finally, one of the most prolific areas of development in the world today, is in the
older fields of the US Gulf of Mexico, where independent operators are re-entering
partially depleted zones to recover hydrocarbons left behind by majors seeking bigger
targets. The depleted nature of these zones means they are highly susceptible to fluid
invasion damage during recompletion and workover operations, in many cases the
least expensive, most efficient method for handling them: hydraulic workovers.
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