THE WOODLANDS, Texas—As U.S. shale operators live with tightened purse strings and work to improve earnings, oilfield players are tackling another challenge in the field: casing deformation.

Representatives from Royal Dutch Shell, ConocoPhillips Canada, XTO Energy, BP and Ovintiv—formerly Encana Corp.—shared their experiences and how they’ve addressed the issue during a panel discussion at the recently held SPE Hydraulic Fracturing Technology Conference and Exhibition.

In many instances casing deformations are caused by shear rock and formation movements in bedding planes, according to operators’ shared case studies. In addition to damaged casing, the operators reported experiencing the inability to access the full wellbore with coiled tubing to mill out plugs, coupling failures and an inability to hydraulically fracture the toe sleeve.

“We’ve seen over-torqued, over-stressed connections as a result of combined loading while working casing in on more challenging runs,” Matt Abell, drilling engineering advisor for Ovintiv, said during the conference. “We’ve seen fluid bypass and erosion around frac plugs. We’ve had formation movement events. We’ve had collapses caused by aggressive flowback after screenout conditions.”

The company, he said, has encountered more than 30 instances of casing deformation at its South Simonette project, which is located in Canada’s Duvernay shale basin.

To combat casing deformation issues, Ovintiv has used a variety of techniques. According to Abell, these have included changing well designs, lateral targets and the order of operations.

ConocoPhillips has deployed a real-time ultrasound monitoring technology on its multiwell pads to detect potential casing deformations, said Peter Meier, wells manager for the company’s Montney operations in Canada. The monitoring led to the company changing its frac stage sequence for subsequent wells, resulting in 97% of planned system laterals being successfully stimulated.

The topic was among those that attracted more than 3,600 attendees to the conference, which featured over 70 technical presentations and discussion panels as well as 140 exhibitors. Digital technology also took center stage.

Mariano Gurfinkel, advanced analytics manager for Marathon Oil Corp., was among the panelists who discussed artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and the application and use of data. The panel also included representatives from National Oilwell Varco (NOV), SparkCognition and Cognite.

Gurfinkel explained how geologist King Hubbard’s prediction in the middle part of the 20th century that the U.S. would achieve peak oil production in 1970 seemingly came true when domestic production reached an all-time high of 9.6 million barrels per day. But Gurfinkel noted that Hubbard did not anticipate the element of human ingenuity and that technology advances in the industry would unlock vast hydrocarbon resources, pushing production far beyond peak oil estimations of the time.

“Every time we have faced a challenge, new technologies have allowed us to bring a new resource to market,” Gurfinkel said.

He noted that the rate of disruptive technologies being accepted and applied to industry is accelerating rapidly and new disruptive systems will determine how vast amounts of data are being used.

“Companies who adopt these technologies will be advantaged going forward,” Gurfinkel said.

Roger Brown, R&D lab manager at NOV, stressed the need for companies to fully adopt AI, machine learning and other data-heavy technologies to succeed in a rapidly changing industry. He said every new product entering the market should have condition-based maintenance technologies installed as a standard.

“Everyone must know and believe that the system will know the right things to do,” he said. “And that will be very difficult.”

Brown explained that for the industry to fully place their trust in the decision-making capabilities of technologies like AI and machine learning, those technologies must first earn the industry’s trust.

“If we know better how to complete the well better than the system, we will never get there,” he added.

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