An Improved Dynamic Well Control Response to a Gas Influx in Managed Pressure Drilling Operations

Bacon, William; Tong, Albert Y.; Gabaldon, Oscar; Sugden, Cathy; Suryanarayana, Phanish

doi:10.2118/151392-ms

Cited by 22 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…This involves terminating influx flow through proactively using the MPD system to increase BHP. On influx flow cessation, as evident from mass balance and potentially pressure signatures (Bacon, et al, 2012), circulation can be staged down while adjusting the choke to compensate for lost annular friction. On pumps off, the well can be shut in conventionally and handed over to the secondary barrier system for influx removal.…”

Section: Mpd and Well Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

MPD Dynamic Influx Control Mitigates Conventional Well Control Pitfalls

Bacon¹,

Sugden²,

Brand³

et al. 2016

All Days

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Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) dynamic influx control techniques offer substantial advantages over conventional well control, including reduced influx size, and the ability to control and circulate an allowable influx without requiring conventional methods. With careful planning and execution, MPD dynamic influx control can yield considerable increases in safety and efficiency.Many issues with conventional well control, particularly in deepwater operations, can be mitigated or even eliminated using dynamic influx control. Notably, conventional methods passively rely on the influx to increase wellbore pressure sufficiently to balance reservoir pressure, resulting in needlessly large influx volumes. In contrast, MPD methods quickly detect and actively apply pressure to control an influx in a fraction of the volume.Furthermore, conventional influx removal methods are typically slow, leading to drawn out well control events with high likelihood of further complication, such as stuck pipe and secondary influxes. Conversely, using dynamic influx control, an allowable influx may be controlled and removed from the wellbore in a few hours, not days.In this work, methods that address concerns with current well control practices through application of dynamic influx control are outlined. In addition, transient, multiphase simulation is used to demonstrate comparison between dynamic influx control and conventional well control, clearly quantifying potential benefits of adopting these new methods.

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Section: Mpd and Well Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

MPD Dynamic Influx Control Mitigates Conventional Well Control Pitfalls

Bacon¹,

Sugden²,

Brand³

et al. 2016

All Days

Self Cite

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“…Unfortunately, despite the importance of kick tolerance to the well-design and -construction processes, there is neither a universally accepted definition nor a method for calculating the adequacy of the design to withstand well-control incidents. Approaches include the maximum equivalent-mud-weight increase allowed by the formationintegrity test performed at the shoe (Redmann 1991), the maximum kick volume that can be safely circulated out (Dedenuola et al 2003), and finally a combination of the two, which defines the maximum kick volume at a given increase in pressure. For the purposes of this paper, kick tolerance has been calculated by use of the definition given by Wessel and Tarr (1991): "The intensity formation pressure increment above the mud weight in use [lbm/ gal] that can be shut in without exceeding the fracture pressure at the weakest exposed formation after a given kick volume of a given density has entered the wellbore.…”

Section: Kick Tolerance In Well Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Real-Time Casing-Design Optimization: A Case Study in the Use of Managed-Pressure Drilling To Develop an Adaptive Well Design and Eliminate Casing Strings on a Deepwater Exploration Well

Sugden¹,

Bacon²,

Gabaldon³

et al. 2014

SPE Drilling &Amp; Completion

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A Petrobras deepwater exploration well is planned to be drilled in water depth greater than 2438 m (8,000 ft) offshore Brazil. As is typical of deepwater wells, it has a narrow drilling window between pore pressure and fracture gradient, requiring many casing strings to reach total depth (TD). Because pressure-related problems are often extremely costly when drilling conventionally in deep water, initial design assumptions were conservative, assuming the maximum pore pressure and minimum fracture gradient for casing-point and pipe selection. As with all conventional casing designs, the resulting pipe has limited capacity to withstand increased burst and collapse loads associated with extending hole sections if the opportunity arises.Managed-pressure drilling (MPD) enables the development of an adaptive well design by providing three key advantages over conventional drilling: the ability to detect kicks and losses extremely accurately (in gallons, rather than barrels); the ability to rapidly respond to and dynamically control detected kicks and losses by adjusting backpressure on the annulus, keeping kick volumes small; and the ability to perform dynamic pore-pressure and formation-integrity tests. Detecting and responding rapidly to kicks allows for the well to be designed with smaller kick tolerances. Furthermore, by keeping the kicks small, they can be circulated out quickly without requiring conventional, time-consuming well-control operations, which often lead to further hole problems. When this advantage is coupled with dynamic pore-pressure tests and dynamic formation-integrity tests, real-time optimization of casing points can be achieved safely with reduced risk of costly well-control incidents.The method presented here, applicable to any deepwater well, uses low, expected, and high pore-pressure and fracture-gradient estimates to develop an adaptive casing design for the well. In this paper, kick-tolerance calculations for selecting casing points by use of MPD are defined. The effect of reduced kick-tolerance requirements because of the application of MPD is demonstrated, and an adaptive procedure for real-time design optimization of the well is presented. The method results in decision criteria that identify key depths where casing strings can be eliminated without compromising the ability to reach objective TD. The resulting adaptive casing design will most likely eliminate at least one, and has the potential to eliminate two, casing strings, representing significant cost savings.

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“…Santos et al (2003) and Santos et al (2007) presented a Micro-flux control method, which is the monitoring and adjustment of return flow to control influx during drilling operations. The alternative initial responses to kicks during MPD were explored in Bacon et al (2012); Davoudi et al (2011);Smith and Patel (2012), by increasing casing pressure until flow out equals flow in. There is a significant potential to improve existing methods, and in what follows we propose a controller that automatically attenuates a kick without shutting down the pumps.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Automated Kick Control Procedure for an Influx in Managed Pressure Drilling Operations

Zhou¹,

Gravdal²,

Strand³

et al. 2016

MIC

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Within drilling of oil and gas wells, the Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) method with active control of wellbore pressure during drilling has partly evolved from conventional well control procedures. However, for MPD operations the instrumentation is typically more extensive compared to conventional drilling. Despite this, any influx of formation fluids (commonly known as a kick) during MPD operations is typically handled by conventional well control methods, at least if the kick is estimated to be larger than a threshold value. Conventional well control procedures rely on manual control of the blow out preventer, pumps, and choke valves and do not capitalize on the benefits from the instrumentation level associated with MPD. This paper investigates two alternative well control procedures specially adapted to backpressure MPD: the dynamic shut-in (DSI) procedure and the automatic kick control (AKC) procedure. Both methods capitalize on improvements in Pressure While Drilling (PWD) technology. A commercially available PWD tool buffers high-resolution pressure measurements, which can be used in an automated well control procedure. By using backpressure MPD, the choke valve opening is tuned automatically using a feedback-feedforward control method.The two procedures are evaluated using a high fidelity well flow model and cases from a North Sea drilling operation are simulated. The results show that using AKC procedure reduces the time needed to establish control of the well compared to DSI procedure. It also indicates that the AKC procedure reduces the total kick size compared to the DSI procedure, and thereby reduces the risk of lost circulation.

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An Improved Dynamic Well Control Response to a Gas Influx in Managed Pressure Drilling Operations

Cited by 22 publications

References 8 publications

MPD Dynamic Influx Control Mitigates Conventional Well Control Pitfalls

MPD Dynamic Influx Control Mitigates Conventional Well Control Pitfalls

Real-Time Casing-Design Optimization: A Case Study in the Use of Managed-Pressure Drilling To Develop an Adaptive Well Design and Eliminate Casing Strings on a Deepwater Exploration Well

Automated Kick Control Procedure for an Influx in Managed Pressure Drilling Operations

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