Formation Damage History in the Mature Fields of Campos Basin Offshore Brazil

摘要

The Campos Basin mature fields, offshore Brazil, including the Marlim Field, are usually referred to as the World’s deepwater field laboratory. The development of these fields was driven by the Brazilian state energy needs throughout the seventies and eighties, which induced a strategy of accelerating the projects implementation and anticipating their first oil. This sense of urgency is still dominant in Brazilian oil politics and has recently enabled the country to reach its oil self-sufficiency. That scenario throughout the last two decades encouraged risk assumption as well as the implementation of a considerable number of new technologies. Fifteen years after the first oil production from Marlim it seems that more engineered solutions are replacing the daring initiatives and the concise studies carried out in the beginning. Those years also testified an outstanding evolution of the drilling and completion technologies. The development advance to deeper and deeper waters brought up unpredicted problems such as wax deposition and hydrate formation. Thus, the history of the mature deepwater fields of Campos Basin offers great opportunities for learning, in a wide perspective. This paper summarizes the history of the damage and main completion troubles associated to Campos Basin deepwater mature fields. The aspects of prediction, prevention and remediation of the formation damage associated to drilling, sand control, stimulation, fines migration, organic deposition, scale, souring and other minor issues are addressed. The paper also presents some statistical data, predicted and unpredicted problems, and the ways they have and are currently handled. The technologies evolution and the most recent challenges are also shown. It is our belief that other deepwater mature fields to be developed and the new systems to be designed will certainly benefit from the experiences and lessons learned in the deepwater mature fields of Campos Basin.