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Kogalymnefteprogress Turns into a Service Holding

Elena Zhuk

Kogalymnefteprogress Production Enterprise was set up in the early 1990s within RITEK, a company of innovation. The idea was to make an alternative to the costly overseas service. At that point the founders of the pilot service enterprise could hardly imagine that their daring project was going to be such a success in 15 years, which is as daring even nowadays.

 

“Our enterprise started in Drilling Department of the town of Kogalym where we rented our office for 16 engineers,” says General Director of Kogalymnefteprogress Mingali Galiullin. In the course of the past few years the subsidiary of RITEK has turned into an independent diversified service company specializing in workovers, sidetracking, hydrofracturing and well preparation for all types of repair work. And quite recently, last year, Kogalymnegteprogress began to establish various specialized divisions, and today the company can boast being a service holding.

 
“Last year in Tatarstan we established Kamanefteprogress, our 100-percent subsidiary,” says Chief Engineer of Kogalymnefteprogress Viktor Lapaskin. Currently, there are 11 workover crews operating in this division in Tatarstan. Regionalnaya Servisnaya Compania (Regional Service Company), created in the same year and employing 360 people, is providing transport services for the workover crews. The company is affiliated to Kogalymnefteprogress as well; there are 360 employees. “Apart from that, an affiliate was opened in Perm in May of 2007. Its core business is hydrofracturing services at LUKOIL-Perm wells on ‘turn-key’ terms,” added Lapaskin.
Hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new practice while well workover operations have always been the primary business of the company since it was founded back in 1992. Three crews were created in the Perm affiliate to perform well preparation, fracturing and completion. Kogalymnefteprogress was very scrupulous about hiring specialist personnel for fracturing, so now the company can pride itself on highly qualified employees, Russians who worked for a number of years in joint ventures.
A prerequisite for success is a modern and powerful fleet of equipment for fracturing, which, in our case, is made up of nine Stewart&Stevenson pump units, made in the U.S., mounted on Mercedez-Benz 4150 trucks that have an extra cross-country, off-road quality. “It is the best frac equipment in Kogalym area,” notes Lapaskin with a touch of pride. “The first part of the fleet arrived some time in late September, early October – and we were out on our jobs for LUKOIL-Perm near the city of Perm in November. Prior to treatment, the average well production rate was at 6.3 MT/day, after fracturing it rose to 18.8 MT/day. The maximum effect was at Well No. 10 of cluster 1 in Kudryavtsevkoye Field: the average rate of the well was 11.5 cu. m of fluid with a water cut = 9.3 percent, Qo = 5 MT/day before treatment. After treatment, the well produced 36.6 cu. m of fluid with a water cut = 1.1 percent, Qo = 32.1 MT/day. Acid fracturing is planned for the fields of LUKOIL-Perm starting July of 2008. For this purpose the necessary Russian-made equipment was purchased. In mid-May 2008, the second fleet joined operation – and helped fracture well 639, cluster 6 of Vyintoyskoye Field that belongs to RITEKneft. Though, according to the chief engineer, it is too early to say anything regarding the outcome, the company management intends to utilize that fleet in RITEK’s fields around Nadym, Beloyarsk, and Khanty-Mansiysk. Outside of that, as Lapaskin informed, “a new scope of work is being searched, possibly, in the adjacent regions.”
Kogalymnefteprogress has been practicing horizontal well drilling (HWD) since 2004. “Presently, if you take into account low formation pressure, characteristic for Western Siberia, growing water cut of numerous beds left out of the drained areas, we can consider HWD to be the most efficient for this region in terms of cost and value ratio,” comments Lapaskin. “When drilling horizontal wells, one does not have to take additional expenses on drilling and preparation of the pad, e.g. for things like sand filling on a new pad. What we practice now is we cut in a second bore hole on the main one, drill it, and abandon the main well bore. But worldwide and in Russia, e.g. in Surgutneftegaz, they sometimes sidetrack three or four horizontal wells from one vertical bore. So one well can be as good as three or four. That is the future of drilling.”
Sidetrack drilling is not that widespread in Russia yet. One of the reasons for that, in the opinion of Lapaskin, is that it requires a highly sophisticated technical equipment and support. “The technology is getting popular, and you can tell that by the growing price of workover rigs that are used for this purpose. Russian manufacturers can hardly handle orders for fabrication – it takes up to a year to fulfill them”. It is worth to note that Kogalymnefteprogress uses Russian-made workover rigs, as well as the rest of the gear – except for frac equipment, – ARB-100, made by Kungur Machine Works
As result of sidetracking, at 1 horizontal well last year the production grew by 30.2 MT/day on average. Five sidetrack well bores were drilled in the first quarter of this year for LUKOIL-Western Siberia, the average length of the cut-in well bore being 700m, and 200 m horizontal length.
Another strong point of Kogalymnefteprogress is fabrication of scratching centralizers that are used in LUKOIL-Western Siberia, on sucker rods. For this purpose, the company has opened four workshops in Kogalym, Pokachi, Langepas and Urai in order to sort out this technical problem using a patented technology – they weld centralizers, grooved plastic collars, on the rods. Over the first three months of this year 80,000 centralizers have been welded on.  Presently, the company makes the most of its profits from well overhauling operations – out of 33 workover crews, 29 work in LUKOIL divisions, three in RITEK and one in PetroAlliance. Next, there is a line of oil recovery enhancement (five ORE teams) and well completion jobs (five brine plant facilities), then, sidetrack drilling (three crews). Such a distribution is determined by the actual scopes of work and by the number of personnel available in each division.
Today, there are a total of 2,262 people working in Kogalymnefteprogress and in its affiliate. “We started with Kogalymneftegaz fields,” says Lapaskin, “we used to work, and still do, for RITEK departments. Currently, our operation area has spread out as we deliver our services in the vicinity of Beloyarsk and Nadym where we mostly work at problem wells. In May we’ll start workover operations in the vicinity of Khanty-Mansiysk. Our primary customer is LUKOIL-Western Siberia.”
Apart from expanding geographical limits of our service, increasing the number of employees and restructuring, the management of Kogalymnefteprogress is planning to enter the stock market issuing the company shares.

Gennady Yazepov, Deputy General Director, Fracturing

 

Specialists of Kogalymnefteprogress perform so-called turn-key operations on hydraulic fracturing of the formation. In other words, the Company attracts their own well workover crews for well preparation and completion after fracturing operations. We are especially proud of (our boast is) our own set of the latest specialized machines having no analogs in Western Siberia.
Nine modern powerful units manufactured by Stewart&Stevenson (USA)  and German C.A.T. GmbH are assembled on the chassis of Mercedes-Benz 4150 of cross-country capacity. MC-60 blender, the most important component of the fracturing fleet, is a unit installed on a chassis and intended for mixing of fracturing fluid with chemicals and proppant, and supplying of the mixture to the pumping units. Mobile unit МС-60 is equipped with the software of Stewart&Stevenson, which enables completely automated operations. Thanks to thoroughly developed system of the process program control, high level of liquid, proppant and chemical mixing is ensured. The blender ensures the maximum proppant throughput rate in the amount of 6 tons per minute. The maximum liquid flow rate is 8,000 liters per minute.
Four machines FS-2251 are truck-mounted pumping units. These units are intended to pump the gelled liquid and proppant into the well, and also to perform hydraulic, sand-blasting or chemical treatment of the bottomhole zone at oil and gas fields. SMP-triplex pump is driven by the water-cooled engine Detroit Diesel of 2,250 horsepower via automatic transmission Ellison. The maximum operating pressure is 1,050 Atm; SMP pump has plungers of 5-inch diameter; pump delivery is up to 2 cu. m per minute. All operations of the pumping unit are remotely controlled from the control station.
A special field truck is used for transportation of the manifold unit. The tail part of its platform is equipped with rollers for fastening of heavy cargo up to 25 tons. Manifold IS-200 of high and low pressure is intended to deliver mixed fracturing fluids from the blender to the pumping units. Two separate pressure systems ensure possibility of operation without mutual interference: Fracturing fluids coming from the blender enter the low-pressure system and are supplied to the pumps. Via the high-pressure system of the manifold, the pumps supply fluid into the wellbore.
Sand truck manufactured by a German company C.A.T. GmbH is intended for proppant transportation and its loading in the blender in the controlled amount. Hydraulically controlled dumping truck has a completely closed design with a controllable latch. Sand truck bin is divided into 2 compartments, which makes it possible to transport two proppant fractions up to 60 tons.
Chemical batching plant and mini-laboratory are intended for transportation and supplying of chemicals both in the process of the working fluid preparation and during hydraulic fracturing operation. The plant is equipped with the unit including five pumps, two of which are gear pumps and three are screw ones, and also – with a computer control unit which ensures automated operation of pumps for liquid chemicals.
Hydraulic fracturing control station is a computer center for control of the pumping units and gathering information on the fracturing operation. The station is equipped with the latest software of Accua Frac and Meyer Associates Incorporated. The computers are used for hydraulic fracturing designing, data recording and processing. Three-dimensional simulator of hydraulic fracturing Mfrac-III enables simulation of the process at the office or directly at the wellsite in real time. The maximum capabilities of information recording are 32 channels.

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