Publications

A number of wells reached their economic production limit and were consequently abandoned or mothballed until viable solutions became available.Existing wells in the same area are standard 9-5/8 vertical cased wells with perforations at the producing interval with electrical submersible pumps (ESPs) ESP set in the same casing. A workover program was initiated by Saudi Aramco in the late 90s to re-complete these wells as horizontal producers using various sand control techniques. While converting from vertical, cased and perforated wells to single horizontal producers has helped to improve production, multilateral wells are needed in this area to achieve and maintain economical production rates. In addition sand control solutions are required to safely deploy several branches off one main vertical well. This paper will describe the history of the well X-1 and workovers performed during its life span. It will also discuss the latest achievement deploying Saudi Aramcos first Technology Advancement Multi-Laterals (TAML) Level 3 multilateral completion of a tri-lateral well.