Well Cementing

Fundamentals
By
Engr. Jam Muhammad Kashif
Introduction

Well Cementing is consist of

two principal operations

Primary Cementing

Remedial Cementing
Primary Cementing
• Process of placing a cement
sheath in the around the casing
or liner string

• It is critical procedure in the

well construction process
Objectives
The main objectives of primary cementing
operations include
 The cement sheath provides a hydraulic
seal that establishes zonal isolation
Preventing fluid communication between
producing zones in the boreholes
Support for the liner or casing string
Protection of the casing from corrosive
formation fluid
Primary Cementing
• This operation employ a two-plug cement
placement method
• After getting the target depth, crew remove
the drill pipe
• Leaving the borehole filled with drilling fluid
• The crew lowers a casing string to the
bottom of the borehole
• The bottom end of the casing string is
protected by a guide shoe or float shoe
Primary Cementing
• Both shoes are tapered, commonly bullet-nosed
devices that guide the casing towards the center
of the hole to minimize the contact with rough
edges or washouts during the former lacks a
check valve.
• Check vale can prevent reverse flow or U-tubing,
of fluids from the annulus into the casing
• Centralizers are placed along critical casing
critical casing sections to help prevent the
casing from sticking while it is lowered into the
well
Primary Cementing
• Centralizers keep the casing in the center of
the borehole to help ensure placement of a
uniform cement sheath in the annulus
between the casing and borehole wall
Primary Cementing
• After Casing Lowered into the well bore
• Casing interior may fill with drilling fluid
• The objective of the primary cementing
operations are to remove drilling fluid from
the casing interior and borehole
• Place the cement slurry in the annulus and
fill the casing interior with displacement
fluid such as drilling fluid, brine or water
Primary Cementing
• Cement slurries and drilling fluids are
usually chemically incompatible
• Comingling them may result in a thickened
or gelled mass at the interface that would
be difficult to remove from the wellbore
• Possibly preventing placement of a uniform
cement sheath throughout the annulus
Primary Cementing
• Therefore, engineers employ chemical and
physical means to maintain fluid separation
• Chemical washes and spacers may be
pumped after the drilling fluid and before
the cement slurry
• These fluid have the added benefit of
cleaning the casing and formation surfaces,
which help achieve good cement bonding
Primary Cementing
• Wiper plug are elastomeric devices that
provide a physical barrier between fluids
pumped inside the casing
• A bottom plug separate the cement slurry
from the drilling fluid
• A top plug separates the cement slurry from
the displacement fluid
• The bottom plug has a membrane that
raptures when it lands at the bottom of the
casing string
Primary Cementing
• The top plug does not have a membrane;
therefore, when it lands on the top of the
bottom plug, hydraulic communication is
severed between the casing interior and the
annulus
• After the cement operation, engineers wait
for the cement to cure, set and develop-
strength –known as waiting on cement
(WOC)
Primary Cementing
• After the WOC period, usually less than 24
hours, additional drilling, perforating or
other operation may commence
Primary Cementing
• Nearly all cementing operations use
Portland cement, which consist mainly of
anhydrous calcium silicate and calcium
aluminate compounds that hydrate when
added to water
• The hydration products, principally calcium
silicate hydrates, provide the strength and
low permeability required to achieve zone
isolation
Primary Cementing
• Well cement must perform over a vide
temperatures range-from below freezing in
permafrost zones to temperature exceeding 400c in
geothermal wells
• Cement manufacturer produce special variation of
Portland cement for use in well
• More than 100 cement additives are available to
adjust cement performance, allowing engineers to
customize a cement formulation for a particular
well environment
Primary Cementing
• Additives may be classified according
to the function they perform
Accelerators

Retarders

Extenders

Weighting Agent

Fluid loss Control Agent

Lost circulation Control Agent

Primary Cementing
• Accelerators reduce the cement setting time
and increase the rate of compressive strength
development
• Retarders delay the setting time and extend the
time during which a cement slurry is pumpable
• Extender lower the cement slurry density,
reduce the amount of cement per unit volume
of set product, or both.
• Weighting agent increase the density of the
cement
Primary Cementing
• Fluid loss control agents control leakage of
water from the cement slurry into the
porous formation, thereby preserving the
designed cement slurry properties
• Loss circulation control agents limit the
flow of entire cement slurry out of the
wellbore into weak, cracked or vugular
formation and help ensure that cement
slurry is able to fill the entire annular space.
Primary Cementing
• Dispersants reduce the viscosity of the
cement slurry, which allow a lower pumping
pressure during placement
• Specialty additives include antifoam agents,
fibers and flexible particles. Cement
additives are an active domain of research
and development and the industry regularly
introduces new and improved products
Remedial Cementing

After a cementing operation has been

performed and cement has set,
engineers performs tests to confirm
that the cement sheath integrity and
performance meet the intended
designed criteria.
Remedial Cementing
• Pressure testing is the most common
hydraulic testing method; engineers
typically conduct such tests after every
surface-or intermediate –casing cement job
• Engineers first perform a casing pressure
test to verify the mechanical integrity of the
tubular string and then drill out the casing
shoe.
Remedial Cementing
• Next, they need pressure integrity test by
increasing the internal casing pressure until
it exceeds the pressure that will be applied
during next drilling phase
• If no leakage is detected, the cement seal is
deemed successful
Remedial Cementing
• Engineers may choose from several well
logging techniques to evaluate the quality
of cement behind casing
• The logging crew lowers measuring devices
into the well and plot the data versus depth
• Temperature log help locate the top of the
cement column in the annulus
• Cement hydration is exothermic process
that raises the temperature of the
surrounding environment
Remedial Cementing
• Data from acoustic and ultrasonic logging
tools help engineers analyze the
cement/casing and cement/formation
interfaces
• These tools provide the quality of the cement
sheath and how well the cement adhere, or
bonds, to the casing and to the formation
• The cement bond log presents the reflected
amplitude of an acoustic signal transmitted
by a logging tool inside the casing
Remedial Cementing
• The cement-casing bond integrity is directly
proportional to the attenuation of the reflected
signal
• Another acoustic log represents the
waveforms of the reflected signals detected
by logging tool receiver and provides
qualitative insights concerning the casing, the
cement sheath and the formation
• Ultrasonic logging tools transmit a short
ultrasonic pulse, causing the casing to
resonate
Remedial Cementing
• The tool measures the resonant echoes,
when solid cement is behind the casing, the
echo amplitudes are attenuated
• When there is fluid behind the casing the
echoes have high amplitudes
Remedial Cementing
When logging operation indicate that the
cement job is defective, either in the form of
poor cement bonding or communication
between zones, a remedial cementing
techniques known as squeezing cementing
may be performed to establish zone isolation
Remedial Cementing
• Engineers perforate the casing at the
defective interval and force, or squeeze,
cement slurry through the perforation and
into the annulus to fill voids
• In addition, squeeze cementing may be an
effective technique for repairing casing
leaks caused by a corroded or split casing