Reducing economic losses and protecting producing strata are important links in the process of oil and gas exploration and exploitation. The key to avoid these problems lies in reducing well leakage accidents in the process of exploitation, in which the correct selection of plugging materials plays a decisive role. In view of the low sealing strength, complex construction, difficulty in unblocking, and high cost of the bridge lost-circulation material (LCM) currently used in plugging, this paper demonstrates the development of a highly elastic honeycomb porous LCM in a targeted manner. Indoor evaluation of the material shows it has good compression resilience and tensile strength: its 50% compression permanent deformation is less than 10% and tensile strength is more than 100 kPa; its retention rate under acidic conditions is more than 97%; it is basically not acid soluble; and at 100 °C aging conditions, the abovementioned performance and properties are maintained in a good manner. Due to the rebound characteristics of the highly elastic honeycomb porous LCM, the material can smoothly enter into different fractures to achieve a good plugging effect under the condition of choosing a suitable size.
Offshore oil- and gas-field development is shifting from shallow water to deepwater on a large scale. Deepwater shallow bentonite slurry drilling fluid has a single composition and a simple structure. Therefore, the bentonite slurry drilling fluid has been neglected for the shallow wellbore strengthening ability. Based on the shallow geological characteristics and bentonite hydration mechanism, considering the economy and application effect, the optimization of bentonite slurry drilling fluid from four aspects of viscosity enhancement, adsorption, trapping, and physical plugging to carry out deepwater shallow wellbore strengthening research has been undertaken. For an indoor simulation of bentonite slurry and its drilling slurry-making process using a 2–10% mass concentration of bentonite slurry drilling fluid, laser particle size analysis found an interesting phenomenon different from the traditional understanding: for every 5% increase in particle size accumulation in the range of 0.1–100 μm, the bentonite slurry particle size increases linearly. Based on this interesting phenomenon, the basic performance of drilling fluids with different concentrations of bentonite slurry was evaluated. Experiments were conducted to introduce cationic emulsified asphalt as a deformation filler and to explore a new inexpensive drilling and wellbore strengthening material, AEH-P. The effectiveness of deepwater shallow strengthening was evaluated for AEH-P and cationic emulsified asphalt from both mechanistic and experimental aspects. It is obvious that the wellbore strengthening effect is the result of both particle settling and particle size matching. By exploring the relationship among bentonite slurry hydration dispersion, the charged nature, particle concentration, and the wellbore strengthening effect, a set of low-cost deepwater shallow bentonite slurry drilling fluids with a good wellbore strengthening effect are constructed. The research results provide a method to strengthen the wellbore for the subsequent fast and efficient drilling of deepwater shallow wells, further improving the drilling efficiency.
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