Qatari RasGas Trying to Boost Operational Efficiency

RasGas has earned significant savings in time and money by implementing ‘custom technologies and operational practices’ during its drilling activities in the North Field.

Since 2000, RasGas has drilled more than 120 wells in the North field. The gas produced from those wells is exported to customers in Asia, Europe and the US and sold to industrial customers in Qatar as well. “The scale of drilling project is immense; more than 500,000 perforation charges have been fired, almost 50 million liters of acid have been pumped into wells. The total distance drilled is almost 500 km,” RasGas said in its in-house magazine.

But, RasGas said, the ‘magnitude of the operation’ has not stopped its drilling and completions team from focusing consistently in improving performance and developing an ‘exemplary health and safety culture.’“This focus has yielded impressive results. By pushing the envelope in terms of technology and operating practices, significant time and cost savings have been realized each year, despite increasingly complex well challenges and objectives. The successful introduction of the 7-inch ‘monobore’ well design for trains 1 and 2 was followed by the 9-inch optimized big bore wells from Train 3 onwards.

“Until date, some 78 optimized big bore wells have been drilled and completed, representing the world’s largest offshore application of this technology. Other advances include new techniques that enable faster drilling and new ‘stimulation’ technologies to unlock the long-term production potential of the North Field wells. The drilling team introduced two key technologies – ExxonMobil’s rate of penetration (ROP) management process and high-rate acid stimulation to effectively address the scale and complexities involved in drilling new wells in the North Field. Recently, Qatar declared the successful completion and start-up of RasGas’ seventh liquefied natural gas (LNG) train, the world’s largest, which is set up under Ras Laffan 3, a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum (70%) and ExxonMobil Ras Laffan (III) (30%).

Train 7 is the fourth 7.8 million tons-per-year LNG plant brought online by Qatar Petroleum and ExxonMobil joint ventures in the past year. It matches the capacity of Train 6, one of the largest operating LNG production facilities in the world, inaugurated by Emir in October 2009. These mega facilities have sufficient scale to competitively reach markets around the globe. With Train the 7 start-up, the annual LNG production capacity of RasGas has shot up to 36.3 million tons per year. - Gulf Times