Alsandross Group is involved in various aspects of the oil and gas business, which encompass exploration, providing seismic and geological studies, drilling, extraction, production, refining and transportation. We implement pipe line projects, as supplier and/or contractor, and more generally we provide expertise for any oil and gas operations.

Our services offers an array of well planning services for every type of well including straight hole corrections, horizontals, S-Shape, C-Shape, build and hold, turn-a-zontals, negative vertical section pro les, and extended reach wells (ERD). From multi-well o shore platforms to land based horizontal pad wells, we can provide services customised to suit your needs:

• Horizontal Wells
• Negative Vertical Section Pro les
• Turn- a-Zontals
• S & J Shaped Pro les
• Pad Wells and Platform Work
• International Work
• Straight Hole Correction
• Daily Comparison Plots (Plan vs. Actual)

Our company has been qualified by IDC ( Iraqi Drilling Company) which enable us to drill for one and to participate in any tender involving drilling in gas and oil.

IDC

Iraqi Drilling Company (IDC) is one of the major endeavour of the Ministry of Oil. Established in 1990, the main purpose of the national company was then to concentrate all drilling and workover operations throughout the country in one and only company belonging to the government, similarly to South Oil Company (SOC) for extraction and North Oil Company (NOC).

After 2003, IDC, through experiencing many challenges, had 43 rigs for drilling and workover, and was looking at increasing this figure by purchasing  new rigs with high potential. IDC managed to complete drilling of 230 wells and workover of 600 wells during 1990 and 2003, and improved to 423 wells and workover of more than 1077 wells thanks to its active buying policy.

IDC played and important role in maintaining the production after the 2003 invasion which resulted in the destruction of most of its infrastructure and facilities. IDC managed to rehabilitate drilling and workovers rigs and resumed drilling operations to maintain a sustainable level of production. IDC deployed a lot of work to continue its process of buying new rigs and managed to acquire during that same period 24 additional new rigs. At the same time, many foreign companies had been granted licences for oil and gas and came to IDC for cooperation.

In terms of security, IDC has completed all requirements and had been granted an ISO certificate .

Drilling resumed with the Dima well within Misan oil field. IDC is now about to complete Sindibad well /B.

The direct consequence of such an improvement in drilling activities and maintenance was the the increase of its human resources, to 8’600 persons whereas it had 3’600 employees in 2003.

A new building had to be built in Al Berjisia which became one of the biggest office in Basra, with an additional storage building and large technical workshops corresponding to the high volume  the company is dealing with.

IDC, in cooperation with the Ministry of Oil, has offered a large number of intensive training courses to develop technical and administrative capacities for its personnel. The high level of training displayed resulted in having a large number of employees receiving the IWCF certificate.

All well trained employees are dedicated to making all efforts for increasing the nation’s production of oil, and thus contributing, through its revenues, to develop the country, and put Iraq on the map of modern developed oil producers countries.

Work in progress

Our company has developed, in Thi Qar province, a partnership certified by all relevant official regulators in Iraq and Turkey with GYP a Turkish prominent drilling company.

GYP

Established in Adiyaman, Turkey in 1998, Guney Yildizi Petrol Uretim, Sondaj Muteahhitlik ve Ticaret A.S. (GYP) is a wholly owned, vertically integrated independent oil and gas company. Together with the other sister companies within the group, GYP has more than 50+ years of industry experience. This history along with the dynamic and entrepreneurial talents of the organization has enabled GYP to rapidly expand both here and abroad, to become one of the country’s leading oil and gas exploration, drilling and production and oil services companies. With more than 1,000 employees, operating in five countries on three continents, GYP is committed to building a premium gas and oil company with a reputation for excellence in execution.

Together with its sister companies, GYP holds more than 384.496 acres of exploration licenses and production leases in Turkey. GYP is one of the largest concession holders and operators among the foreign and domestic petroleum companies operating within Turkey. The majority of GYP’s concessions are located by and/ or near the Iraqi borders.

GYP’s administrative office is located in Ankara, with branch offices located in Iraq. In order to facilitate the operation of production leases in southeastern Turkey, the company has also established logistic bases in Adana, Adiyaman and Diyarbakir. International drilling projects include Iraq, Bulgaria, Egypt and Morocco.

Terminology Dictionary

Technical terms

Drilling

The well is created by drilling a hole 12 cm to 1 meter (5 in to 40 in) in diameter into the earth with a drilling rig that rotates a drill string with a bit attached. After the hole is drilled, sections of steel pipe (casing), slightly smaller in diameter than the borehole, are placed in the hole. Cement may be placed between the outside of the casing and the borehole known as the annulus. The casing provides structural integrity to the newly drilled wellbore, in addition to isolating potentially dangerous high pressure zones from each other and from the surface.

With these zones safely isolated and the formation protected by the casing, the well can be drilled deeper (into potentially more-unstable and violent formations) with a smaller bit, and also cased with a smaller size casing. Modern wells often have two to five sets of subsequently smaller hole sizes drilled inside one another, each cemented with casing.

To drill the well

The drill bit, aided by the weight of thick walled pipes called « drill collars » above it, cuts into the rock. There are different types of drill bit; some cause the rock to disintegrate by compressive failure, while others shear slices off the rock as the bit turns.

Drilling fluid, a.k.a. « mud », is pumped down the inside of the drill pipe and exits at the drill bit. The principal components of drilling fluid are usually water and clay, but it also typically contains a complex mixture of fluids, solids and chemicals that must be carefully tailored to provide the correct physical and chemical characteristics required to safely drill the well. Particular functions of the drilling mud include cooling the bit, lifting rock cuttings to the surface, preventing destabilisation of the rock in the wellbore walls and overcoming the pressure of fluids inside the rock so that these fluids do not enter the wellbore. Some oil wells are drilled with air or foam as the drilling fluid.

The generated rock « cuttings » are swept up by the drilling fluid as it circulates back to surface outside the drill pipe. The fluid then goes through « shakers » which strain the cuttings from the good fluid which is returned to the pit. Watching for abnormalities in the returning cuttings and monitoring pit volume or rate of returning fluid are imperative to catch « kicks » early. A « kick » is when the formation pressure at the depth of the bit is more than the hydrostatic head of the mud above, which if not controlled temporarily by closing the blowout preventers and ultimately by increasing the density of the drilling fluid would allow formation fluids and mud to come up through the annulus uncontrollably.

The pipe or drill string to which the bit is attached is gradually lengthened as the well gets deeper by screwing in additional 9 m (30 ft) sections or « joints » of pipe under the kelly or topdrive at the surface. This process is called making a connection, or « tripping ». Joints can be combined for more efficient tripping when pulling out of the hole by creating stands of multiple joints. A conventional triple, for example, would pull pipe out of the hole three joints at a time and stack them in the derrick. Many modern rigs, called « super singles », trip pipe one at a time, laying it out on racks as they go.

This process is all facilitated by a drilling rig which contains all necessary equipment to circulate the drilling fluid, hoist and turn the pipe, control downhole, remove cuttings from the drilling fluid, and generate on-site power for these operations.

Completion

After drilling and casing the well, it must be ‘completed’. Completion is the process in which the well is enabled to produce oil or gas.

In a cased-hole completion, small holes called perforations are made in the portion of the casing which passed through the production zone, to provide a path for the oil to flow from the surrounding rock into the production tubing. In open hole completion, often ‘sand screens’ or a ‘gravel pack’ is installed in the last drilled, uncased reservoir section. These maintain structural integrity of the wellbore in the absence of casing, while still allowing flow from the reservoir into the wellbore. Screens also control the migration of formation sands into production tubulars and surface equipment, which can cause washouts and other problems, particularly from unconsolidated sand formations of offshore fields.

After a flow path is made, acids and fracturing fluids may be pumped into the well to fracture, clean, or otherwise prepare and stimulate the reservoir rock to optimally produce hydrocarbons into the wellbore. Finally, the area above the reservoir section of the well is packed off inside the casing, and connected to the surface via a smaller diameter pipe called tubing. This arrangement provides a redundant barrier to leaks of hydrocarbons as well as allowing damaged sections to be replaced. Also, the smaller cross-sectional area of the tubing produces reservoir fluids at an increased velocity in order to minimize liquid fallback that would create additional back pressure, and shields the casing from corrosive well fluids.

In many wells, the natural pressure of the subsurface reservoir is high enough for the oil or gas to flow to the surface. However, this is not always the case, especially in depleted fields where the pressures have been lowered by other producing wells, or in low permeability oil reservoirs. Installing a smaller diameter tubing may be enough to help the production, but artificial lift methods may also be needed. Common solutions include downhole pumps, gas lift, or surface pump jacks. Many new systems in the last ten years have been introduced for well completion. Multiple packer systems with frac ports or port collars in an all in one system have cut completion costs and improved production, especially in the case of horizontal wells. These new systems allow casings to run into the lateral zone with proper packer/frac port placement for optimal hydrocarbon recovery.

Production

The production stage is the most important stage of a well’s life; when the oil and gas are produced. By this time, the oil rigs and workover rigs used to drill and complete the well have moved off the wellbore, and the top is usually outfitted with a collection of valves called a Christmas tree or production tree. These valves regulate pressures, control flows, and allow access to the wellbore in case further completion work is needed. From the outlet valve of the production tree, the flow can be connected to a distribution network of pipelines and tanks to supply the product to refineries, natural gas compressor stations, or oil export terminals.

As long as the pressure in the reservoir remains high enough, the production tree is all that is required to produce the well. If the pressure depletes and it is considered economically viable, an artificial lift method mentioned in the completions section can be employed.

Workovers are often necessary in older wells, which may need smaller diameter tubing, scale or paraffin removal, acid matrix jobs, or completing new zones of interest in a shallower reservoir. Such remedial work can be performed using workover rigs – also known as pulling units, completion rigs or « service rigs » – to pull and replace tubing, or by the use of well intervention techniques utilizing coiled tubing. Depending on the type of lift system and wellhead a rod rig or flushby can be used to change a pump without pulling the tubing.

Enhanced recovery methods such as water flooding, steam flooding, or CO2 flooding may be used to increase reservoir pressure and provide a « sweep » effect to push hydrocarbons out of the reservoir. Such methods require the use of injection wells (often chosen from old production wells in a carefully determined pattern), and are used when facing problems with reservoir pressure depletion, high oil viscosity, or can even be employed early in a field’s life. In certain cases – depending on the reservoir’s geomechanics – reservoir engineers may determine that ultimate recoverable oil may be increased by applying a water flooding strategy early in the field’s development rather than later. Such enhanced recovery techniques are often called « tertiary recovery ».

Types of wells

By Produced Fluid

• Wells that produce oil
• Wells that produce oil and natural gas, or
• Wells that only produce natural gas.

Natural gas is almost always a byproduct of producing oil, since the small, light gas carbon chains come out of solution as they undergo pressure reduction from the reservoir to the surface, similar to uncapping a bottle of soda where the carbon dioxide effervesces. Unwanted natural gas can be a disposal problem at the well site. If there is not a market for natural gas near the wellhead it is virtually valueless since it must be piped to the end user. Until recently, such unwanted gas was burned off at the well site, but due to environmental concerns this practice is becoming less common.[citation needed] Often, unwanted (or ‘stranded’ gas without a market) gas is pumped back into the reservoir with an ‘injection’ well for disposal or repressurising the producing formation. Another solution is to export the natural gas as a liquid. Gas to liquid, (GTL) is a developing technology that converts stranded natural gas into synthetic gasoline, diesel or jet fuel through the Fischer-Tropsch process developed in World War II Germany. Such fuels can be transported through conventional pipelines and tankers to users. Proponents claim GTL fuels burn cleaner than comparable petroleum fuels. Most major international oil companies are in advanced development stages of GTL production, e.g. the 140,000 bbl/d (22,000 m3/d) Pearl GTL plant in Qatar, scheduled to come online in 2011. In locations such as the United States with a high natural gas demand, pipelines are constructed to take the gas from the wellsite to the end consumer.

By Location

Wells can be located:

• On land, or
• Offshore
  Offshore wells can further be subdivided into
• Wells with subsea wellheads, where the top of the well is sitting on the ocean floor under water, and often connected to a pipeline on the ocean floor.
• Wells with ‘dry’ wellheads, where the top of the well is above the water on a platform or jacket, which also often contains processing equipment for the produced fluid.
  While the location of the well will be a large factor in the type of equipment used to drill it, there is actually little difference in the well itself. An offshore well targets a reservoir that happens to be underneath an ocean. Due to logistics, drilling an offshore well is far more costly than an onshore well. By far the most common type is the onshore well. These wells dot the Southern and Central Great Plains, Southwestern United States, and are the most common wells in the Middle East.

By Purpose

Another way to classify oil wells is by their purpose in contributing to the development of a resource. They can be characterised as:

• wildcat wells are drilled where little or no known geological information is available. The site may have been selected because of wells drilled some distance from the proposed location but on a terrain that appeared similar to the proposed site.
• exploration wells are drilled purely for exploratory (information gathering) purposes in a new area, the site selection is usually based on seismic data, satellite surveys etc. Details gathered in this well includes the presence of Hydrocarbon in the drilled location, the amount of fluid present and the depth at which oil or/and gas occurs.
• appraisal wells are used to assess characteristics (such as flow rate, reserve quantity) of a proven hydrocarbon accumulation. The purpose of this well is to reduce uncertainty about the characteristics and properties of the hydrocarbon present in the field.
• production wells are drilled primarily for producing oil or gas, once the producing structure and characteristics are determined.
• development wells are wells drilled for the production of oil or gas already proven by appraisal drilling to be suitable for exploitation.
• Abandoned well are wells permanently plugged in the drilling phase for technical reasons.

At a producing well site, active wells may be further categorised as:

• oil producers producing predominantly liquid hydrocarbons, but mostly with some associated gas.
• gas producers producing almost entirely gaseous hydrocarbons.
• water injectors injecting water into the formation to maintain reservoir pressure, or simply to dispose of water produced with the hydrocarbons because even after treatment, it would be too oily and too saline to be considered clean for dumping overboard offshore, let alone into a fresh water resource in the case of onshore wells. Water injection into the producing zone frequently has an element of reservoir management; however, often produced water disposal is into shallower zones safely beneath any fresh water zones.
• aquifer producers intentionally producing water for re-injection to manage pressure. If possible this water will come from the reservoir itself. Using aquifer produced water rather than water from other sources is to preclude chemical incompatibility that might lead to reservoir-plugging precipitates. These wells will generally be needed only if produced water from the oil or gas producers is insufficient for reservoir management purposes.
• gas injectors injecting gas into the reservoir often as a means of disposal or sequestering for later production, but also to maintain reservoir pressure.

Lahee classification [1]

• New Field Wildcat (NFW) – far from other producing fields and on a structure that has not previously produced.
• New Pool Wildcat (NPW) – new pools on already producing structure.
• Deeper Pool Test (DPT) – on already producing structure and pool, but on a deeper pay zone.
• Shallower Pool Test (SPT) – on already producing structure and pool, but on a shallower pay zone.
• Outpost (OUT) – usually two or more locations from nearest productive area.
• Development Well (DEV) – can be on the extension of a pay zone, or between existing wells (Infill).

Finalised Projects

Alsandross Group between 2015 and 2016 was a consultant to PetroJam for the buying of 2 million barrels of Basra light crude oil monthly from Iraq through SOMO. The contract was  concluded on a yearly basis to be renewed  as a quota. Although the contract had been signed by both parties and finalised, PetroJam was not in a position to implement due to the turmoil in Venezuela, its main partner with 49% of the company.