Hole Cleaning Performance of Light-Weight Drilling Fluids During Horizontal Underbalanced Drilling

Date

2010-04-01

Author

Ozbayoglu, M. E.
Sorgun, M.
Saasen, A.
Svanes, K.

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

149
views

0
downloads

Hole cleaning is a major consideration at both the design and application stages of a drilling operation. If the fluid velocity is lower than a critical value at horizontal or high inclinations, a stationary bed develops which may cause various problems, such as high drag, higher probability of stuck pipe and higher hydraulic requirements, etc., if not removed properly. Therefore, this becomes important and essential to identifying critical velocity. This study aims to estimate the critical fluid-flow velocity for preventing the development of a stationary bed using empirical correlations that can be used easily at the field. Also, a rough estimation of bed thickness is introduced if the flow velocity is lower than the critical velocity. For this purpose, extensive cuttings transport experiments with water, called the Cuttings Transport Flow Loop, were conducted by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering Department at Middle East Technical University (METU) in order to determine various inclinations, flow rates and rate of penetrations. The inner pipe is subject to a sagging, therefore more realistic annulus representation is achieved. Observations showed that a stationary bed can be developed even when the inclination of the wellbore is down to 50 degrees. Results showed that the critical velocity could be estimated using the proposed correlations with reasonable accuracy when compared with the experimental results. Also, for flow velocities less than the critical values, the thickness of the stationary bed can be detected mostly within an error range of +/- 15%.

Subject Keywords

Fuel Technology, Energy Engineering and Power Technology, General Chemical Engineering

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/67355

Journal

JOURNAL OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY

DOI

https://doi.org/10.2118/136689-pa

Collections

Department of Petroleum and Natural Gas Engineering, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Pressure Loss at the Bit While Drilling with Foam Ozbayoglu, E. M. (Informa UK Limited, 2009-01-01) Foam is one of the most frequently used drilling fluids at underbalanced drilling operations. As foam flows, due to the pressure drop, a volumetric expansion is observed, which causes the foam quality to increase in the same direction with flow. Flow of foams through circular pipes and annular geometries are well studied. Interestingly, although one of the major sources of pressure drop is at the bit, there have been few studies of this subject for foams. Many drilling parameters including hole cleaning cap...
Recovery calculations of oil fields using predictive models Kök, Mustafa Verşan (Informa UK Limited, 2006-12-01) Oil reservoirs are often candidates for secondary and tertiary recovery processes. These recovery processes are needed to be screened for priority ranking due to budget, manpower, development, capabilities and permitting limitations. Sensitivity studies also need to be made in order to determine the effects of various operating strategies on project performance and economic feasibility. In this research, the application of different enhanced oil recovery methods on five heavy oil fields with different reser...
Rheological evaluation of polymers as drilling fluids Kök, Mustafa Verşan (Informa UK Limited, 2003-01-01) Polymers are recently found and still developing materials to overcome some drilling problems where conventional drilling fluids are not satisfactory enough. Simply, they are the best materials to use since they are non-toxic and do not cause serious environmental problems. In addition, polymeric drilling fluids may have properties such as better carrying capacity, less fluid loss, and thinner filtration cake depending on their composition and concentration. In this research, rheological parameters of two d...
Sensitivity Analysis of Major Drilling Parameters on Cuttings Transport during Drilling Highly-inclined Wells Ozbayoglu, E. M.; Miska, S. Z.; Takach, N.; Reed, T. (Informa UK Limited, 2009-01-01) In this study, a layered cuttings transport model is developed for high-angle and horizontal wells, which can be used for incompressible non-Newtonian fluids as well as compressible non-Newtonian fluids (i.e., foams). The effects of major drilling parameters, such as flow rate, rate of penetration, fluid density, viscosity, gas ratio, cuttings size, cuttings density, wellbore inclination and eccentricity of the drillsting on cuttings transport efficiency are analyzed. The major findings from this study are,...
Modeling of underground gas storage in a depleted gas field Gumrah, F; Izgec, O; Gokcesu, U; Bağcı, Ali Suat (Informa UK Limited, 2005-07-15) It is possible to predict the behavior of fluids in permeable and porous medium under different operating conditions by using reservoir models. Since geological data and reservoir properties can be defined most accurately by reservoir models, it has been accepted as a reliable prediction tool among reservoir engineers. In this study, a gas reservoir has been modeled with IMEX Module of CMG Reservoir Simulator. Rock properties, gas composition and certain production data were entered to the model as input da...

Citation Formats

M. E. Ozbayoglu, M. Sorgun, A. Saasen, and K. Svanes, “Hole Cleaning Performance of Light-Weight Drilling Fluids During Horizontal Underbalanced Drilling,” JOURNAL OF CANADIAN PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY, pp. 21–26, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/67355.