A New Loose Sand Coring Technology Resulted in Longer Core per Run with Excellent Core Quality

By

 Tarek Wahdan¹, Yasser Khalifa²

(1) Rashpetco, Cairo, Egypt (2) Halliburton, Egypt, Cairo, Egypt

 A new technique is used to core and recover unconsolidated sand from shallow and Deep water offshore Mediterranean wells using the positive full closure Posiclose Ver2 core barrel. This technology when combined with unique designed CMP107FD core head tremendously improved the length of the core runs and increased the recovery rates. The new design also resulted in reducing the number of trips which positively impacted the drilling cost reduction.

Before the new developments, Posiclose were limited in the number of core cut and the recovery was almost +/- 30-40ft per run. With specially designed core head, revised coring parameters and enhanced mud properties multiple and successful 90 ft runs in several wells were achieved. This paper contains three different case histories, compares between the new and previous technologies and highlights the cost savings.