Paradigm Shift in Completion Limits: Open Hole Gravel Pack in Highly Depleted Reservoirs Drilled with Well Bore Strengthening Technology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Whaley ◽  
Phillip J Jackson ◽  
Michael Wolanski ◽  
Tural Aliyev ◽  
Gumru Muradova ◽  
...  

Abstract Open Hole Gravel Pack (OHGP) completions have been the primary completion type for production wells in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli (ACG) field in Azerbaijan for 20 years. In recent years, it has been required to use well bore strengthening mud systems to allow drilling the more depleted parts of the field. This paper describes the major engineering effort that was undertaken to develop systems and techniques that would allow the successful installation of OHGP completions in this environment. OHGP completions have evolved over the last 3 decades, significantly increasing the window of suitable installation environments such that if a well could be drilled it could, in most cases, be completed as an OHGP if desired. Drilling fluids technology has also advanced to allow the drilling of highly depleted reservoirs with the development of well bore strengthening mud systems which use oversized solids in the mud system to prevent fracture propagation. This paper describes laboratory testing and development of well construction procedures to allow OHGPs to be successfully installed in wells drilled with well bore strengthening mud systems. Laboratory testing results showed that low levels of formation damage could be achieved in OHGPs using well bore strengthening mud systems that are comparable to those drilled with conventional mud systems. These drilling fluid formulations along with the rigorous mud conditioning and well clean-up practices that were developed were first implemented in mid-2019 and have now been used in 6 OHGP wells. All 6 wells showed that suitable levels of drilling mud cleanliness could be achieved with limited additional time added to the well construction process and operations and all of them have robust sand control reliability and technical limit skins. Historically it was thought that productive, reliable OHGP completions could not be delivered when using well bore strengthening mud systems due to the inability to effectively produce back filter cakes with large solids through the gravel pack and the ability to condition the mud system to allow sand screen deployment without plugging occurring. The engineering work and field results presented demonstrate that these hurdles can be overcome through appropriate fluid designs and well construction practices.

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ozcan Baris ◽  
Luis Ayala ◽  
W. Watson Robert

The use of foam as a drilling fluid was developed to meet a special set of conditions under which other common drilling fluids had failed. Foam drilling is defined as the process of making boreholes by utilizing foam as the circulating fluid. When compared with conventional drilling, underbalanced or foam drilling has several advantages. These advantages include: avoidance of lost circulation problems, minimizing damage to pay zones, higher penetration rates and bit life. Foams are usually characterized by the quality, the ratio of the volume of gas, and the total foam volume. Obtaining dependable pressure profiles for aerated (gasified) fluids and foam is more difficult than for single phase fluids, since in the former ones the drilling mud contains a gas phase that is entrained within the fluid system. The primary goal of this study is to expand the knowledge-base of the hydrodynamic phenomena that occur in a foam drilling operation. In order to gain a better understanding of foam drilling operations, a hydrodynamic model is developed and run at different operating conditions. For this purpose, the flow of foam through the drilling system is modeled by invoking the basic principles of continuum mechanics and thermodynamics. The model was designed to allow gas and liquid flow at desired volumetric flow rates through the drillstring and annulus. Parametric studies are conducted in order to identify the most influential variables in the hydrodynamic modeling of foam flow. 


Author(s):  
Bunyami Shafie ◽  
Lee Huei Hong ◽  
Phene Neoh Pei Nee ◽  
Fatin Hana Naning ◽  
Tze Jin Wong ◽  
...  

Drilling mud is a dense, viscous fluid mixture used in oil and gas drilling operations to bring rock cuttings to the earth's surface from the boreholes as well as to lubricate and cool the drill bit. Water-based mud is commonly used due to its relatively inexpensive and easy to dispose of. However, several components and additives in the muds become increasingly cautious and restricted. Starch was introduced as a safe and biodegradable additive into the water-based drilling fluid, in line with an environmental health concern. In this study, the suitability of four local rice flours and their heat moistures derivatives to be incorporated in the formulation of water-based drilling fluid was investigated. They were selected due to their natural amylose contents (waxy, low, intermediate, and high). They were also heat moisture treated to increase their amylose contents. Results showed that the addition of the rice flours into water-based mud significantly reduced the density, viscosity, and filtrate volume. However, the gel strength of the mud was increased. The rice flours, either native or heat moisture treated, could serve as additives to provide a variety of low cost and environmentally friendly drilling fluids to be incorporated and fitted into different drilling activity.


Drilling operations from platforms in the North Sea result in the production of large quantities of drill cuttings. These are a variable mixture of rock chippings, clays and original drilling fluids. Drilling mud is cleaned on the platform to remove rock chips before re-use of the mud. The rejected fraction from the clean-up plant (the cuttings) contains some of the base drilling fluid, and this can lead to an organically rich input to the sea-bed. Cuttings are discarded immediately underneath the platform jacket and thus build-up over the natural seabed sediment. In many cases this cuttings pile may cover considerable areas of seabed, leading to seabed biological effects and potential corrosion problems. Different types of cuttings have different environmental impacts, this being partly dependent upon their hydrocarbon component. Diesel-oil based cuttings contain significant amounts of toxic aromatic hydrocarbons, whereas low-toxicity, kerosenebased cuttings contain less. Both types of cuttings support an active microbiological flora, initiated by hydrocarbon oxidation. This paper presents a study of microbiological degradation of hydrocarbons in cuttings piles around two North Sea platforms. Results indicate that there is a close correlation between microbiological activity and hydrocarbon breakdown in the surface of cuttings piles and that both of these parameters reach their maximum values closer to the platform when low-toxicity muds are in use.


2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoliandri Susilo ◽  
Kevin Whaley ◽  
Santiago Loboguerrero ◽  
Phillip Jackson ◽  
Natig Kerimov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 211-230
Author(s):  
Adnan Ibrahim Barodi

Drilling fluid properties and formulation play a fundamental role in drilling operations. The Classical water-based muds prepared from only the Syrian clay and water without any additives((Organic and industrial polymers) are generally poor in performance. Moreover, The high quantity of Syrian clay (120 gr / l) used in preparing drilling fluids. It leads to a decrease in the drilling speed and thus an increase in the time required to complete the drilling of the well. As a result, the total cost of drilling the well increased, as a result of an increase in the concentration of the solid part in the drilling fluid. In this context, our study focuses on the investigation of the improvement in drilling mud   Prepared from the Syrian clay by reducing the clay concentration to (50 gr / L). And compensate for the remaining amount (70 gr / l) of clay by adding (natural and industrial polymers) The rheological properties and filtration are measured at different concentrations of polymers .. In light of the experiments, we determine the polymers' concentrations that gave good results in improving the flow properties and controlling the Filter. It is polymers that have given good results:، HEC، HEC and Xanthan Gum  PAC and HEC، CMCHV، PolyAcryl Amid ، Xanthan Gum .


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anawe A. L. Paul ◽  
Folayan J. Adewale

Over the years, the oil industries have avoided aromatic, naphthenic, and paraffinic oils as drilling mud base fluids principally because of their detrimental environmental issues on pelagic and benthic marine ecosystems as a result of their toxicity and nonbiodegradability coupled with the possible deterioration of the oil itself and the rubber parts of the drilling equipment because the aromatic hydrocarbons present in the oil have a tendency to dissolve/damage elastomers present in rubber. Hence, possible insights into how to chemically and/or physically produce synthetic base drilling fluids whose cuttings are nontoxic, readily biodegradable, environmentally friendly, and of nonpetroleum source become imperative. In this study, enzymatic interesterification of canola oil was done with ethanol by using enzyme lipase as catalyst under optimum conditions of temperature and pressure and the physicochemical properties of the produced ester were evaluated and compared with that of diesel and a synthetic hydrocarbon base fluid (SHBF). Results show that the specific gravity, kinematic viscosity, dynamic viscosity, and surface tension of canola oil were reduced by 5.50%, 94.74%, 95.03%, and 9.38%, respectively, upon enzymatic interesterification to conform to standard requirements. Similarly, increased |mud ability to pump fluids and possibility of cold temperature environment can be achieved with the reduction in pour point and cloud point, respectively, of the produced canola oil ester. Finally, the produced ester showed no aromatic content as confirmed from its FTIR analysis which indicates its nontoxicity, biodegradability, and environmental friendliness.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kayode Adegbulugbe ◽  
Akunna Ambakederemo ◽  
Chidi Elendu

Abstract An oil producing swamp field, BX, is located in the coastal region of the western Niger Delta with an average water depth of 15 – 20 ft. The wells in the most recent development drilling campaign were designed as horizontal wells with critical well objective of meeting the target oil production rates with sand control. In order to achieve these goals, the sand control methodology deployed is the Open Hole Gravel Pack (OHGP) pumped through Concentric Annular Pack Screen (CAPS) system. This completion methodology has similar comparisons to the AX field completions where 19 completions were successfully installed between 2016 and 2018. The lessons learnt from the AX campaign were implemented on the BX campaign and this contributed to the campaign's near-flawless completion execution evidenced by the world class operational excellence, very low Non-Productive Times (NPTs) best-in-class production performances with no sand production However, the following opportunities were identified and implemented during the BX campaign focused on either increasing operational efficiency or preventing post-completion productivity impairment:Elimination of slickline required for tubing test operations by incorporating a "RH" catcher sub into the completion designPerforming required analysis and implementing procedural change to ensure that the change from WBM to NAF does not compromise completion performance due to the presence of reactive shales intervals encountered in the lateralDeveloping and implementing an enhanced fluid loss protocol to address the fluid loss event in one of the BX well that prevented the execution of OHGP pumping operation in the well. The implementation of these opportunities contributed significantly to the continued consistent delivery of superior completions performance in the BX field. This paper aims to provide a background to these opportunities and highlights the steps and processes that were applied to ensure their flawless implementation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (6-7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Imros Kinif ◽  
Sonny Irawan ◽  
Abhilash M. Bharadwaj

The nature of solid content mechanism in drilling fluids directly affects its properties and causes adverse impact on drilling performance. It has rapidly evolved and become a paramount issue over the years because of challenging drilling operations. To control the impact of the drilled solids on drilling fluid properties, solid control system unit must be capable of removing the drilled solids before the re-circulation. Failure to establish good solid control management may end the operation strategy with dilution method. A rigorous analysis of drilled solid effects and its correlation with poor performance of solid control system significantly reflects on the overall rig performance in optimizing drilling operation. This paper presents a study of two different solid control system configuration used in two drilling wells. The study shows that installation of distributor tank reduces mud overflow and brings in flow control stability. Mud rheologies – Plastic viscosity, Yield Point and Low Gravity Solid are considered for the two solid control systems. The results of the new solid control system design are better than the old one. Plastic viscosity, yield point and low gravity solid values improve by 14 %, 17 % and 25 % respectively. These results can be used to check the drilling performance and also in characterization of the solid control system to enhance the drilling mud capabilities. This research shows the need of engineering evaluation in the solid control system to reduce the chances of frequent drilling problems, rig components wear issue and other drilling fluid related hazards.


2013 ◽  
Vol 651 ◽  
pp. 717-721 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Feng Wang ◽  
Jin Gen Deng

Fuzzy ball drilling fluids have been developed in order to effectively control lost circulation during CBM drilling. Depending upon fuzzy balls and colloids in fuzzy balls, the fuzzy ball drilling fluids changed their shapes and properties to completely plug underground heterogeneous seepage channels so as to strengthen the pressure bearing capacity of formations. This paper describes the available features of the fuzzy ball drilling fluid including efficient plugging, good carrying and suspension, formation damage control, compatible weighted by any weighted materials without auxiliary equipment. The fuzzy ball drilling fluids can finish drilling in low pressure natural gas zone, control CBM leakage; control the natural fractures, drilling in different pressures in the same open hole, combination with the air drilling mode, etc. during Ordos CBM drilling. The fuzzy ball drilling fluid will not affect down-hole motors and MWD. The fuzzy ball drilling fluid will be blend simply as conventional water based drilling fluids. The existing CBM drilling equipment can completely meet the fuzzy ball drilling mixing and it is maintained conveniently. The fuzzy ball drilling fluid is the efficient drilling fluid.


2013 ◽  
Vol 829 ◽  
pp. 818-824
Author(s):  
Sahar Kafashi ◽  
Ramin Taghdimi ◽  
Gholamreza Karimi

This study was aimed to investigate the rheological properties and the possibility of nano(Na, Ca )- bentonites nanoproducts to meet the required drilling mud properties. Sepiolite (Sp) and the mixture of 2% nanoNaB with 1% Sp were collected and prepared from Irans oil Company (NIOC). The nanoclay performance evaluation involved the experimental tests of the rheological properties, filtration and gel strength. According to the results obtained from flow properties tests for the mixture, it was indicated that the mixture was not adequate to be a suitable drilling fluid. The main objective was to make stable dispersions with nanobentonite and sepiolite by using a water soluble polymer as stabilizer. The changes in the rheological properties of bentonite were investigated at various concentrations of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to discover the stability of the dispersions. The standard API tests were applied for drilling fluid to determine the properties of dispersions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document