QuickWells – software to manage your completions
Feature Articles, Nov  27  2009 (Digital Energy Journal)

- Aberdeen software company QuickWells wants to make it easier for you to manage your completions

QuickWells was established by 5 senior oilfield engineers, with 100 years of Drilling and Completions engineering experience between them. The nature of the software allows engineers to consolidate their project efforts, knowledge and experiences into a single application - so, potentially, a new engineering graduate could get up to speed very quickly in the art of completions.

The company is currently working on a number of different contracts to install the software, including in the Middle East, North Sea, Europe and the US.

The software provides a collaborative environment within which the well completion is designed by all key parties in the D&C team. Design options are created and appraised, equipment is selected against the collaborated design criteria. Onboard work flows manage the tasks of preparing & installing the equipment. All physical component data is captured for the lifetime of the well, based on the information entered in the design phase, including any amends made during and after installation.

The software is designed to be a single point of access to all information about the completion throughout the life of the well.

It is not unusual for companies to record what they installed in a wellbore on “flat files” such as PDF documents and spreadsheets which can be very difficult to manage , says Andrea Oddone, managing director of QuickWells. This means that a few years later, when they are trying to resolve a problem with the well, it is almost impossible, because no one knows what is in it.

Often, small changes to the original completions design are made when the equipment is being installed at the wellsite – but the only way the original files & drawings are updated is if one of the key offshore personnel goes into the main office to use a specific shore based workflow, which very often doesn’t happen, says QuickWells operations director Jake Harkness.

With QuickWells, the main database can be immediately accessed and updated with any changes, from both the office and the wellsite.

The well archive can also include digital photographs and videos, which could be very useful later when trying to work out exactly what you put down the well. It could also be used to design a well abandonment program at the end of the well’s life.

The company founders believe that there is no other software tool on the market which can better handle the entire process of completions – just tools for specific engineering applications, such as analysing fluid flow or checking stresses; and none of the other tools on the market create a comparable 3D visualisation of the entire completion not just components, as the QuickWells software.

One of the main benefits of the software is helping people take a systems approach to well engineering and understand how complex completion projects should be managed says Mr Harkness.

Mr Harkness also believes that many younger staff starting in petroleum engineering will be expecting a software tool like this one to be available. “We’re intending it to be a software application that the new breed of engineers will be ‘advising’ their superiors to purchase,” he says.

Design

The main design module has ‘drag and drop’ functionality so you can put your well design together very quickly and view it in 3D.

You can design a functional system using generic completion components, and then at a later stage replace these with vendor specific equipment to create an ‘as to be installed’ system.

It can also work out rough costs for the components, and the approximate ‘rig time’ required to install your design, which helps you evaluate different options taking everything into consideration.

Software architecture

The company is offering to make the software interoperable with any other software packages on the market as requested by customers, for example fluid flow analysis software or well planning tools.

It is also making the software compatible with the WITSML standard.

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