CUDD - Engineering

Cudd Energy Services’ Engineering department is certified to ISO 9001:2000 and uses strategically located Field Engineers that are based in various geographic locations throughout the U.S.

These Field Engineers support the district locations in their region and are backed up by another team of Corporate Engineers located in Houston, Texas. Each Cudd Engineer is equipped with the experience, training and the computer/software necessary to provide pre-job modeling and engineered solutions for your well.

Software

In addition to their years of experience, Cudd Engineers also use software to aid in their engineered solutions, some of which is described below:

Stimulation software
Hydraulic Workover / Snubbing software
Coiled Tubing software
Structural Design / Analysis software
Computer-Aided Design software

Stimulation software
When providing stimulation services, Cudd uses any of the following models;

GUYDON’s SMARTS,
Meyer & Associates’ MFRAC
Marathon’s GOPHER
Resource Engineering Systems’ FRACPRO.

Hydraulic Workover & Snubbing Software
We use our own, industry-leading proprietary software to design and analyze snubbing job scenarios:

CuddSnub
Snub Buckle
Snub Collapse
Snub Triax
Snub2000

We also use CTES' Cerberus for Jointed Pipe for predicting forces, including torque and drag, acting on jointed pipe strings.

Coiled Tubing Software
Cudd uses the entire Cerberus suite of software from CTES for pre job predictive modeling. The Cerberus software also works seamlessly with Cudd’s Orion coiled tubing data acquisition system. This allows us to compare predicted results with actual real-time data. This suite consists of the following three modules:

Achilles – Fatigue Life model
Achilles is the fatigue model used in Cerberus. It was developed in conjunction with Professor Steve Tipton of Tulsa University, an expert in low cycle fatigue and plasticity, who has been developing such models for coiled tubing applications for six years. Achilles is the most advanced model of its kind. It uses the following job inputs for fatigue calculations:

String design (“as-manufactured” or “as-modified”) data.
Reel dimensional data.
Well site geometry of the surface equipment.
Job log describing the depth and pressures for the job.
Job type (and associated wall reduction due to acid or sand abrasion).

Fatigue life files are kept on every Cudd coiled tubing string. The inputs described above are recorded on daily Job Detail Reports (JDRs) which are sent to our Corporate Technology Assistant in Oklahoma City everyday. The Assistant inputs the information into the string’s fatigue life file and posts the output (fatigue-life-used) to the company Intranet on a daily basis.

Please reference the attached work instruction TSV-WI-408 “Coiled Tubing Management”. We have also attached two samples of the Achilles program output:

String A732 fatigue life graph.
String A732 Job History Report.

The fatigue life of every string is monitored until it is either sold or scrapped. The assistant is trained in the entry of input data (and printing of output data) in Cerberus by a Technical Services Consultant. The Technical Services Consultants receive training in the use of the entire Cerberus software suite of programs from the maker of the software, CTES LP.

The remaining modules of the Cerberus software suite are:

Orpheus – Tubing Forces and Limits model
Orpheus is the forces model in Cerberus. It calculates the forces which act on the tubing as it is run into and out of a well. By examining the forces, we can determine if a proposed job can be performed as configured before we go to the well site. It can accept the following inputs for calculations:

Tapered strings (including continuous taper).
Multiple segment tool strings (particularly important when modeling drilling BHAs in deviated well bores).
Horizontal and deviated wells (including a three-dimensional view of the
survey path).
Different fluids in the coiled tubing and the well.
Cable inside the coiled tubing.

Calculated data is presented in table and graphical format for quick comprehension.

Lockup depth.
Surface weights during tripping in and out.
Minimum and maximum surface weight limits.
Maximum weight which can be applied at the end of the tool string.
Maximum pick-up force which can be applied at the tool.
Helical buckling load.
Axial force and stress on the tubingmum pick-up force which can be applied at the tool.

At the well site, we can calculate the expected surface weights, along with minimum and maximum limits, and compare them with well site data in real-time.

Hydra – Hydraulics model
Hydra is the hydraulics modeling program in the Cerberus suite. It is used to perform hydraulics calculations which allow the user to predict flow rates and pressures during a coiled tubing job. The Hydra module combines hydraulics calculations with a powerful graphical interface to allow us to predict flow rates and pressures during a coiled tubing job.

Some of this module’s features are:

Power Law, Bingham Plastic, Newtonian, Gas, Foam, and Multi-phase fluids.
Uses strings, reels, wells, tools, and fluids previously configured in the Managers.
Dynamic tubing forces calculations, based on the same calculations performed in Orpheus.
Nozzle and choke calculations.
Circulation volumes and times.
Reservoir calculations, using the Darcy Equation or Linear PI.
Point-and-click navigation.
Target depth selection to speed input entry.

Hydra makes use of the following calculations:

“Snap-shot” calculations to see the well profile at a single point in time.
Applications including foam, fill removal, well unloading, and velocity string design.
Stage table calculations to simulate the flow of fluids during a sequence of events. We can rapidly enter the job schedule to use.
Control the coiled tubing depth and pumps with the control panel.

We can present a variety of graphs describing the downhole conditions, such as pressure, velocity, temperature, force, and stress. Different fluids throughout the system can be observed and we can zoom in on areas of particular interest.

Cudd also uses other developer’s software to perform pre-job modeling:

Drilling Engineering Association Software
Cudd was an original member of the Drilling Engineering Association’s DEA-44, “Project to Develop and Evaluate Horizontal Well Technology” and DEA-67 “Project to Develop and Evaluate Coiled-Tubing and Slim-Hole Technology”. Several deliverables came from this project including the following software:

BUCKLE – A tubular buckling and lock-up model
CASING – A casing design model
CEMENT – A well bore cementing model
CSTRESS – A coiled tubing stress/drag/hydraulics and buckling model
CDRAG – A coiled tubing drag and buckling model
CTGROWTH – A coiled tubing diametric growth model
CTLIFE – A coiled tubing fatigue life model
GTEMP – A well bore temperature model
HYDMOD – A well bore hydraulics model
PROMOD – A multiphase production model
TRIAX – A tubular triaxial stress model
WELCON – A well control model

IHS Energy Software
Cudd uses IHS Energy’s PERFORM software. This is graphical software used to analyze the performance of a well. It can be used to improve completion design, increase well performance, optimize production and perform NODAL analysis. It includes flow assurance, compositional, coiled tubing, multilateral well and injection well capabilities.

Production Associates Software
Cudd also uses Production Associates’ ProdEng Oil & Gas Gradient suite of software including: WelGrad, PipeNet and WelDel.

CES Software
In addition to Cudd’s proprietary string design software, we also have developed our own Nitrogen Flow and Foam Analysis software.

Structural Designs software
Sometimes our jobs call for special structures or tools. Cudd uses COSMOS’ COSMOSWorks design analysis/optimization software and COSMOSM finite element analysis (FEA) software. We also have our own in-house lifting equipment design software, LiftCalc and BOP stack accumulator sizing program, Hydraulic Accumulator.

Technical Drawing Software
For location layouts, rig-up configurations, assemblies and detailed designs, Cudd uses a number of computer-aided drawing software:

Autodesk’s AutoCAD 3-D CAD software
SoildWorks Corporation’s SoildWorks Office suite of 3D mechanical design and solid modeling software
SmartDraw.com’s SmartDraw technical drawing software
Microsoft’s VISIO technical drawing software