Filtrate Control A Key In Successful Cementing Practices

In 1961, Beach, O"Brien and Goins, published the results of a study of squeeze-cementing perforations." The study was made over a four-year time span and involved actual wells located primarily in South Texas. The publication gives a comparison of the squeeze practice of that time of attaining pressures equal to overburden pressure and "putting away" relatively large volumes of cement, to the new concept of low-pressure "hesitation" or the "walking" squeeze. The former method made use of normal slurries and the latter of filtrate-loss-controlled slurries. The squeeze success ratio climbed from about 60% for the normal slurries to 85% for the filtrate-loss-controlled slurries. Perhaps the most spectacular success was a well in Yoakum County, Texas, where 230 feet of perforations were successfully squeezed with 100 sacks of cement in a single stage. This is believed to be the first publication showing filtrate-loss control as a key to successful cementing. This work reversed the industry's thinking on squeeze-cementing technique.