Technical status and development direction of workover operation of PetroChina

Through a comprehensive review of the development status of workover technology of PetroChina Company Limited (PetroChina), this paper presents the connotation of workover operation under the background of the new era, the latest progress of workover operation in the respects of equipment, tools, technology and the construction of information and standardization. The gaps between PetroChina and foreign counterpart in workover technology are as follows: the level of automation and intellectualization of tools and equipment is relatively low, the snubbing operation in gas wells characterized by HT/HP and high H2S is lagged behind; water plugging in the long horizontal wellbore needs to be further developed, coiled tubing and its relevant equipment for ultra-deep well operation has to be optimized; informationization, standardization and big data application of workover operation need to be started. Based on this as well as the development status of workover technology in China and the technical difficulties faced in the future, eight suggestions for future development are put forward: (1) strengthen the dynamic understanding of reservoir and improve the pertinence of workover schemes; (2) develop the general overhaul technology in a systematical way to tackle issues of seriously problematic wells; (3) put more efforts into the research of horizontal well workover operation and develop relevant technology for long horizontal section operation; (4) improve the snubbing technology and extend its applications; (5) expand the capacity of coiled tubing operation and improve the level of special operations; (6) develop automatic workover technology into the field of artificial intelligence; (7) promote clean operation in an all-round way and build green oil and gas fields; (8) perfect the informationization construction to realize the sharing of workover resources.