Production

Drilling in the Berezkagaz Irtysh is mainly carried out using Burintekh drill bits. For the first time this product was tested in June 2005, and the result was amazing: the average rate of penetration using bits was 2 times higher than that of an imported tool. However, the engineers of Berezkagaz Irtysh considered that the results obtained were far from optimal, and continued to work on further improvement of these products.

Specialists of Berezkagaz Irtysh were constantly at the drilling rigs, which made it possible to effectively and promptly resolve all issues, quickly test innovations, and ultimately contributed to an increase in penetration rate by another 20%.

Following its well construction strategy, Berezkagaz Irtysh uses not only advanced in Russia, but also the best foreign developments: centrifuges, vibrating screens, special solutions and chemicals to improve the efficiency and environmental friendliness of drilling operations. The company uses BOREMAX drilling fluids developed by one of Russia’s contractors, Halliburton. Their use prevents swelling of clay particles, which prevents contamination of the bottomhole zone of the productive formation, and eliminates rock erosion, i.e., reduces the risk of problems associated with the stability of the wellbore. In addition, the volumes of dilution of solutions are reduced and, as a result, the amount of solution and sludge discharged into the barn is reduced.

Along with technical improvements, Berezkagaz Irtysh introduced new organizational and management approaches. We are talking about the Drilling the Limit drilling optimization concept, which has been developed and is widely used in the drilling divisions of the Shell concern.

The main elements of this concept are:

  • Striving for maximum efficiency and best performance in well construction.
  • Constant analysis of the production process and “work on the mistakes”, the study and application of advanced methods.
  • Work in close contact with geologists, well construction contractors, colleagues from well pad construction and well connection departments.

The Berezkagaz Irtysh Drilling Department is staffed by foreign specialists with experience working on Shell projects and Russian engineers who have been trained to maximum standards. There are two production groups for drilling in the field, which, in close cooperation with contractors, exercise direct operational control over the progress of drilling operations.

All of these innovations have enabled Berezkagaz Irtysh and its drilling contractors to significantly improve well construction performance. If the drilling of the first well took the company about 33 days, today the average drilling time is 9 days.

Thanks to a clear organization of work, the time for moving a drilling rig from one well cluster to another was also reduced. In Berezkagaz Irtysh, the operation to move a drilling rig to a new well pad takes an average of 28 days.

Every year, Berezkagaz Irtysh drills about 100 wells with a total length of more than 300 km. The record for drilling one well at the Berezkagaz Irtysh oil field is 4.54 days — Berezkagaz Irtysh Company successfully drilled an S-shaped well with a depth of 2367 m in the northern section of the our field. This phenomenal achievement became possible thanks to the coordinated, high-quality and, most importantly, safe work of Berezkagaz Irtysh specialists and contractors, their dedication to their work, as well as due to the introduction of advanced drilling methods and technologies.