Well Control Simulation With Non-Aqueous Drilling Fluids

The demand for energy has increased recently worldwide, requiring new oilfield discoveries in order to supply this need. Following this demand increase, challenges grow in all areas of the petroleum industry especially those related drilling operations. Due to hard operational conditions found when drilling complex scenarios such as high pressure/high temperature zones, deep and ultradeep waters and other challenging ones, the use non-aqueous drilling fluids became a must. The reason for that is because this kind of drilling fluid is capable to tolerate these extreme drilling conditions found in those scenarios. However, it can experience changes in its properties as results of pressure and temperature variations, requiring special attention during some drilling operations, such as the well control. The well control is a critical issue since it involves safety, social, economic and environmental aspects. To support well control operations and preserve the well integrity, well control simulators are very useful to verify operational parameters and to assist drilling engineers in the decision making process during well control operations and kick situations. Well control simulators are also important computational tools for rig personnel training. This work presents well control research and development contributions, as well as the results of a computational well control simulator that applies the Driller’s Method and allows the understanding the thermodynamic behavior of synthetic drilling fluids, such as n-paraffin and ester base fluids. The simulator employed mathematical correlations for the drilling fluids PVT properties obtained from experimental data.The simulator results were compared to a test well data set, as well to published results from other kick simulators.