New formation tester pushes beyond temperature, pressure limits

Halliburton has recently made upgrades to its formation technologies for more extreme downhole conditions of temperature and pressure. The company’s new Hostile Sequential Formation Tester II (HSFT-II) tool allows operators to evaluate formations at pressures and temperatures up to 30,000 psi and 450°F, respectively, and in boreholes as small as 4 in., an industry first for formation-testing tools.

The new HSFT-II retains many of the same features of the first-generation HSFT, including the ability to acquire formation-pressure data and fluid samples in unconsolidated formations and H2S environments. Like the original tester, the new tool permits slimhole formation testing and sampling and navigates difficult hole conditions such as restrictions and high dogleg severity.

However, the new tool extends the operating environment to even hotter and higher-pressure formations, and operators are taking notice. In June 2009, Halliburton evaluated Shell’s Rashda A1 well in Libya with its high-pressure/high-temperature wireline logging suite and the HSFT-II tool to acquire downhole formation pressures, at temperatures reaching 420°F—a first for Shell—and pressures of approximately 20,000 psi.

Normally, drilling would be essentially blind under these hostile conditions, calling for the low-risk option of setting an intermediate liner to prevent formation damage, at considerable cost with associated nonproductive time, Halliburton says. The new formation tester allowed five pressure points to be successfully acquired, which revealed that the drilling operation could continue with minimal risk of a blowout, saving time and money.

“The Rashda A1 pressure data was successfully collected at the highest temperatures ever attempted by Halliburton and provided the customer with very valuable information in the most difficult of downhole conditions,” said Jonathan Lewis, vice president of Wireline and Perforating, a Halliburton product service line.

Read about Halliburton’s other hostile-environment slimhole tools at their website.