Workover

A workover rig.

Workover Rig doing a Snub Job

The term workover is used to refer to any kind of oil

well intervention involving invasive techniques, such as
choked the ow). Some years on, declining productivwireline, coiled tubing or snubbing. More specically
ity means the reservoir can no longer support stable ow
though, it will refer to the expensive process of pulling
through this wide bore. This may lead to a workover to
and replacing a completion.
replace the 5" tubing with 4" tubing. The narrower
bore makes for a more stable ow.

Reason to perform a workover

2 Operation

Workovers rank among the most complex, dicult and

expensive types of wellwork. They are only performed
if the completion of a well is terminally unsuitable for
the job at hand. The production tubing may have become damaged due to operational factors like corrosion
to the point where well integrity is threatened. Downhole
components such as tubing, retrievable downhole safety
valves, or electrical submersible pumps may have malfunctioned, needing replacement.

Before any workover, the well must rst be killed. Since

workovers are long planned in advance, there would be
much time to plan the well kill and so the reverse circulation would be common. The intense nature of this
operation often requires no less than the capabilities of a
drilling rig.
The workover begins by removing the wellhead and possibly the ow line, then lifting the tubing hanger from the
casing head, thus beginning to pull the completion out of
the well. The string will almost always be xed in place by
at least one production packer. If the packer is retrievable
it can be released easily enough and pulled out with the
completion string. If it is permanent, then it is common

In other circumstances, the reason for a workover may

not be that the completion itself is in a bad condition, but
that changing reservoir conditions make the former completion unsuitable. For example, a high productivity well
may have been completed with 5" tubing to allow high
ow rates (a narrower tubing would have unnecessarily
1

to cut the tubing just above it and pull out the upper portion of the string. If necessary, the packer and the tubing
left in hole can be milled out, though more commonly,
the new completion will make use of it by setting a new
packer just above it and running new tubing down to the
top of the old.

Workovers on casing

Although less exposed to wellbore uids, casing strings

too have been known to lose integrity. On occasion, it
may be deemed economical to pull and replace it. Because casing strings are cemented in place, this is signicantly more dicult and expensive than replacing the
completion string. If in some instances the casing cannot
be removed from the well, it may be necessary to sidetrack the oending area and recomplete, also an expensive process. For all but the most productive well, replacing casing would never be economical.

See also
Oil well
Well intervention
Well kill
Completion (oil well)

External links
Schlumberger oileld glossary

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

6.1

Text

Workover Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workover?oldid=608429843 Contributors: BD2412, SmackBot, Father Goose, Glom,

Calliopejen1, Iohannes Animosus, Fluernutter, Epicadam, Kingpin13, Anon423, Joshua Doubek, Names are hard to think of and Anonymous: 16

6.2

Images

File:Question_book-new.svg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/99/Question_book-new.svg License: Cc-by-sa-3.0

Contributors:
Created from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Based on Image:Question book.png created by User:Equazcion Original artist:
Tkgd2007
File:Workover_Rig_doing_a_Snub_Job.JPG Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Workover_Rig_doing_
a_Snub_Job.JPG License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Contributors: Own work Original artist: Joshua Doubek
File:Workoverrig.jpg Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Workoverrig.jpg License: Public domain Contributors: ? Original artist: ?

6.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0