Relief Well Planning

Flores, Vanessa Giavarotti Taboza; Dailey, Penny; Todd, David P.; Mathur, Rohit; Donadieu, Brian A.

doi:10.2118/168029-ms

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…A drilling rig drills the relief well (see Fig. 1) (Flores et al 2014) to intercept the blowout well as deep as necessary or to intercept at the last casing shoe before the hydrocarbon-bearing zone is encountered. For planning purposes, as per Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) worst case discharge (WCD) scenario, no pipe would be in the hole, so typical front end plan is to intercept at last casing string.…”

Section: Part 1: Relief Wellmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Guide to Relief Well Trajectory Design using Multidisciplinary Collaborative Well Planning Technology

Goobie¹,

Allen²,

Lasley³

et al. 2015

SPE/IADC Drilling Conference and Exhibition

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Existing rules for relief well planning in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM) have been revised. The US government now requires operators to submit relief well trajectories to obtain a deepwater drilling permit, and BP requires that at least two relief well locations be verified and available for use. Based on industry standard well placement procedures, this paper sets forth good practices and key parameters that should not be overlooked during the design process.While the complexity and challenge of meeting global energy demands continue to increase and more stringent regulatory requirements must be met to acquire a permit to drill, understanding how to effectively plan a relief well is becoming a required skill for drilling engineers involved in the well planning process.Historically, few operators created formal relief well plans before an actual blowout occurred. In addition, proprietary tools and older techniques made relief well planning appear unnecessarily complex to some operators.To meet the new regulatory requirements, many oil and gas companies are looking for ways to produce reliable relief well plans without generating intercept plans for every casing section.In the GoM, BP has been working to make the relief well planning process more transparent, efficient, and consistent through (1) a systematic, repeatable relief well planning methodology that establishes a standard range of boundary conditions and (2) a specialized set of engineering tools that enable teams across the organization to generate similar results.A relief well provides a means to intercept and kill a blowout well when a surface intervention or capping procedure requires an extended period of time or as a contingency in the event of unsuccessful intervention or capping operations. Drilling a relief well presents many technical challenges to assure that the blowout well is intersected in the correct position and that the fluid pumping operations are effective.This paper presents five phases of relief well design: data gathering, drilling, locating, tracking, and intercepting. It also discusses the development and pilot testing of a new software application specifically designed to integrate these five phases into a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment, reducing cycle time and providing a systematic approach to relief well designs.

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Section: Part 1: Relief Wellmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Guide to Relief Well Trajectory Design using Multidisciplinary Collaborative Well Planning Technology

Goobie¹,

Allen²,

Lasley³

et al. 2015

SPE/IADC Drilling Conference and Exhibition

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“…All relief well trajectories are planned to allow the locating and tracking of the target well, as described by others 7,8,23 . Up to this point, the casing design of the relief well would look like that of a pilot hole (as in Fig.…”

Section: Relief Well Planningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Blowout Prevention and Relief Well Planning for the Wheatstone Big-Bore Gas Well Project

Upchurch

Falkner

House

2015

Day 1 Mon, September 28, 2015

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The offshore Wheatstone LNG Project in Western Australia utilizes subsea big-bore gas wells as the preferred method of producing the field. Wheatstone wells use a 9 -5/8" production conduit from the top of the gas pay zone to the ocean floor. Well bores of this size are necessary to match the large productive capacity of the gas reservoirs they penetrate. This producing scenario provides the obvious benefit of yielding large volumes of gas through the use of relatively few wells. Each of those highly productive wells, however, also represents a source of gas that, if accidently allowed to flow unhindered, could present an uncommonly difficult well control challenge. It is for this reason that the Wheatstone Drilling and Completions Team evaluated a wide range of possible reservoir and well architecture scenarios to fully understand the possible scale of relief well responses that might be necessary in the event of a blowout. The conclusions from this evaluation were surprising. Our originally-planned well design concept called for penetrating the Wheatstone gas reservoirs with a casing shoe set 950m vertically above. Our analysis indicated that 3-4 relief wells would be simultaneously required to bring a blowout under control. Based on these results, both the well and the drilling execution plan were redesigned to minimize the number of required relief wells. In summary, the redesign amounted to setting casing immediately (i.e., Յ 3m) above the gas reservoir before actually penetrating it, with the resulting benefit of reducing the required number of relief wells to 2. Although this reduction is beneficial, it should be noted that there is only one documented subsea case where 2 or more relief wells have been drilled with the intent of simultaneously pumping into both to effect a dynamic kill. Given this fact, our well control-related preparations for executing this project were more extensive than that of preceding projects. This paper chronicles the full extent of the engineering and operational planning performed to ensure that no uncontrolled hydrocarbon releases occurred during the execution of the Wheatstone Project's subsea big-bore gas wells and, if a blowout were to occur, that the response to such an unprecedented event would be sufficient and robust. Covered in the paper are (1) reservoir deliverability modeling, (2) dynamic kill modeling, (3) gas plume modeling, (4) relief well trajectory and mooring planning, (5) pilot hole execution planning, (6) a newly applied LWD technology for sensing resistivity vertically below the drill bit and (7) a discussion of future research that has been identified as necessary to better define the fluid injectivity capabilities of subsea relief wells.

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“…In the field of oil-drilling engineering, magnetic ranging technology is used in special drilling operations, such as connecting relief wells [1][2][3], preventing wellbore collisions [4][5][6], guiding parallel horizontal wells or U-shape well [7,8], etc. Existing magnetic ranging methods can be classified into active method and passive method.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the self-induced magnetic field intensity of the adjacent casing string itself is relatively small and exhibits more uncertainties. Hence, this method is still restricted by relatively low detection accuracy and small detection distance [1,2,9,10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Theoretical Model of Residual Magnetic Field around a Pre-Magnetized Casing String

et al. 2020

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In the field of petroleum drilling engineering, passive magnetic ranging technology is generally used for specialized drilling operations such as connecting relief wells, preventing wellbore collisions, guiding parallel horizontal wells, etc. Although pre-magnetized casing strings have been used to improve the detection distance and accuracy, the theoretical mechanism is not well understood. Based on the equivalent current model of a permanent magnet, a theoretical magnetic field model around the pre-magnetized casing string was established by using the vector potential method and vector superposition principle and validated by the COMSOL Multiphysics software. Our results show that connecting pre-magnetized individual casings with homogeneous magnetic poles can enlarge the magnetic induction intensity around the total casing string. Furthermore, the magnitude close to the casing coupling is significantly larger than that close to the middle of the individual casing. Connecting pre-magnetized individual casings with heterogeneous magnetic poles results in a low magnetic induction intensity around the total casing string. In order to improve the detection distance and accuracy of the magnetic ranging, the pre-magnetized individual casings should be connected with homogeneous magnetic poles. The results of this study can provide guidelines for the development of passive magnetic ranging technology.

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Relief Well Planning

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

A Guide to Relief Well Trajectory Design using Multidisciplinary Collaborative Well Planning Technology

A Guide to Relief Well Trajectory Design using Multidisciplinary Collaborative Well Planning Technology

Blowout Prevention and Relief Well Planning for the Wheatstone Big-Bore Gas Well Project

A Theoretical Model of Residual Magnetic Field around a Pre-Magnetized Casing String

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