American Oil and Gas Reporter - February 2017 - 61

SpecialReport: Shale Resource Science
appropriate operating parameters," Ambrosi
says. "We also are employing the data to
re-enter multilateral wells efficiently."
In the past, Ambrosi says, operators
endured trial and error as they sought the
right lateral, a process that involved going
into the well, entering a lateral, and traveling to the end to determine whether it
was the one they wanted.
"With Spectrum, re-entry is extremely
efficient. The casing collar locator or
gamma ray sensor provides depth correlation capability, and the tool face sensor
shows where the coil is pointed. The inclination sensor then tells the operator
where he is without going to bottom," he
says. "That eliminates the need to reciprocate the coil up and down, reducing
coil fatigue, and saving fluid and time."
Production Profiles
The real-time BHA data can be paired
with Spectrum Diagnostic Services, which
uses the fiber optic cable that generally
provides telemetry for the sensors to perform distributed temperature (DT) and
distributed acoustic (DA) surveys. "During

stimulation jobs, these surveys can show
which intervals are taking fluid and which
are not. With that information, we can
adjust treatment volumes to optimize the
completion," Ambrosi reports.
The surveys also provide production
profiles after frac plug removal, he relates.
"In effect, the operator can log the well
right after milling, eliminating the need
to do a wireline run with production logging tools," he says.
"Operators often ask whether DT and
DA surveys provide the same information
as wireline logs," Ambrosi notes. "They
are not the same, but they often can
achieve similar goals. To give an example,
a traditional wireline log can quantify
exactly how much water, oil or gas is in
multiphase flow. DT surveys offer more
qualitative, visual indicators of temperature
signatures and flow profiles over time,
which can be extremely useful in the
short term. In some cases, the more thorough, post-job analysis of the surveys
matches traditional wireline logs."
Whether to use one or both technologies depends on the application, but Am-

brosi says CT-deployed fiber optics have
many advantages. "The beauty of fiber
optic surveys is that they gather 'distributed' information all along the coiled
tubing, providing snapshots of the full
length of the well or the interval of
interest, rather than one point at a time,"
he illustrates. "In addition, the data cover
a period of time, which means they can
highlight short-term trends."
He points out that the surveys can be
performed during periodic interventions
on aging wells to create production or injection profiles, detect leaks, and identify
well interference. If a problem is discovered,
it may be possible to fix it immediately
by pumping through the coil, he adds.
"In designing Spectrum, we have tried
to make a system without any drawbacks,"
Ambrosi says. "The fiber optic cable is
small, so it does not impact the string's
weight, limit pump rates, or prohibit balls
from circulating. Furthermore, the cable
can tolerate any sort of fluid. So operators
can do everything they normally would,
but with the benefit of knowing what is
going on down hole."
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