HIGH PRESSURE SNUBBING OPERATIONS WITH ANNULAR PREVENTERS

Abstract

The use of snubbing techniques for through-tubing and complete workover operations offers several advantages over conventional methods. First, the work can be done under pressure, which means that the use of heavy kill fluids and subsequent potential formation damage is eliminated. Second, the well can be placed on production quickly because no cleanup time is required.

To further increase the speed of the snubbing operation, a new technique has been successfully tested, which consists of using a special high pressure annular preventer in the snubbing package: with this arrangement, the tubing can be pulled almost continuously, avoiding the time consuming stripping through a ram preventer stack, where rams must be opened and closed in sequence every time a tubing joint is pulled.

This paper describes and documents several factual high pressure (up to 10,000 psi) snubbing operations performed through the annular preventer, including stripping and rotating when drilling through bridge plugs, and compares the time and cost savings with equivalent snubbing operations performed in the conventional manner.