The Enfield development was the first oil field to be put into production in the Greater Enfield Area. The field lies in deep water off the North West Cape area of Western Australia. Operated by Woodside on behalf of the Enfield Joint Venture, this field was their first to require horizontal openhole completions with sand control.

The challenge for this project was to deliver early oil production from a low well count with wells producing from an unconsolidated and faulted formation containing shale. The remote location posed an additional challenge. Both low-angle deviated and horizontal wells have been completed. Different sandface completion types have been used as well as both water- and oil-based reservoir drilling fluids.

This paper reviews the completions performance and the drivers for evolution of the production-well design: initial horizontal gravel packs placed with a circulating gravel placement technique using brine as the carrier fluid and a single-barrier sand control technique using expandable screens alone. Because of difficulties encountered with these approaches, completion designs reverted to gravel packing. At this second attempt at gravel packing, a gel slurry packing technique using screen fitted with alternative flow paths for gravel placement was successful.