Coiled Tubing

Coiled tubing has been an important recent innovation in well completion and servicing. Coiled tubing is a continuous, jointless, high-pressure-rated hollow steel tube or pipe which is brought to the well site on reels of up to 5,000 metres. It can be used in place of production tubing, which is made of joined sections of pipe and is similar to a drill string. Special equipment is used to insert the tubing through the wellhead into the wellbore. This method is considerably quicker and more efficient than joining sections of pipe.

Coiled tubing has proved useful in applications, such as well stimulation and underbalanced drilling. It can also be used with downhole motors, driven by mud circulations, for certain kinds of drilling, such as drilling horizontal wells from existing vertical wells. On the Hibernia platform off Newfoundland, coiled tubing is used for a variety of completion and servicing tasks.

Petroleum Communication Foundation. Our Petroleum Challenge: Exploring Canada's Oil and Gas Industry, Sixth Edition. Calgary: Petroleum Communication Foundation, 1999. With permission from the Centre for Energy.