Unlocking value from Surat Basin wells through innovative well completions, solids management, and intervention practices

Since the commencement of production in 2014, Shell’s Queensland Gas Company (QGC) Surat Basin coal seam gas asset has been constrained by high well intervention demands, materially impacting production availability and operating cost as the well population matured. Intervention demand has been driven primarily by solids-related artificial lift system failures, well cleanouts, and increasing integrity monitoring and remediation requirements. In response, QGC initiated a multi-year improvement program focused on unlocking additional value from the existing well stock. The program addressed solids-driven reliability limitations, emerging well integrity risks, and intervention efficiency through integrated changes to well completion design, solids control, operating practices, and intervention strategies across the production fleet. Key initiatives included the deployment of retrofit in-situ solids control technologies to stabilise open hole completions, basin-specific limited-fluid and live-well workover practices to minimise reservoir disturbance, and a revised well integrity management approach combining fitness-for-service assessments with expandable casing remediation technologies. In parallel, a suite of rigless and lean intervention techniques were introduced to address well-understood failure modes without pulling pumped completions, materially reducing execution time, cost and operational risk. Collectively, these initiatives reduced pumped well failure frequency, improved post-intervention production recovery, and lowered overall intervention intensity. By the end of 2025, average pumped well mean time to failure increased to 1852 days, compared with 1050 days in January 2023. Rig-based workovers decreased by more than 150 activities per year despite overall well stock growth, and gas production recovery following workovers was accelerated by a factor of three.