Progress and prospect of CNOOC's oil and gas well drilling and completion technologies

Abstract

Offshore oil and gas production has become an important growth pole to ensure national energy security. However, China's offshore oil and gas production is lack of key core technologies and weak in tool and equipment foundation and can hardly support the optimized fast development of important fields. To solve these technological difficulties, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) insisted on independent technological innovation and overcame a series of key core technologies through theoretical research and key technology research and test during the 13th Five-Year Plan. And the following research results are obtained. First, several key technologies are broken through, including efficient drilling and completion in the middle and deep layers of the Bohai Sea, offshore large-scale heavy oil thermal recovery, deep-water oil and gas field development, and high temperature and high pressure well drilling and completion in the South China Sea, unconventional oil and gas stimulation, and offshore emergency rescue. Domestic first independently operated ultra deep water giant gas field, namely “Deepsea 1” is successfully put into production, so that the leap from 300 m to 1500 m of water depth and from exploration to development is realized. Second, key tools and equipment are developed, such as logging while drilling and rotary steering drilling system, deep-water drilling surface conductor, underwater emergency killing device, and underwater wellhead Christmas tree, which promote the high-quality development of China's offshore oil industry. Finally, some suggestions are proposed as follows. In the future, CNOOC shall strengthen independent technological innovation, quicken the pace to deepsea oil and gas, and continue to research key core technologies for oil and gas reserves and production increase (e.g. continuous localization of drilling and completion technologies, equipment and materials in complex fields), commingled gas production and test and green energy transformation (e.g. geothermal energy), so as to make greater contributions to ensure national energy security and build a maritime power.