Cuttings Transport With Oil- and Water-Based Drilling Fluids

Abstract

Deviated well sections are common in modern well construction. In mature areas like the North Sea region, practically all producers or injector wells will have highly deviated sections. These wells must be drilled and completed in an optimal manner with respect to drill time, cost, risk and functionality. Most cuttings transport and hydraulic models are developed based on tests with model fluids and often in small diameter test sections. Hole cleaning properties and hydraulic behaviour of field fluids differ from those of most model fluids. Furthermore, results from small diameter tests may not always be relevant for, nor scalable to, field applications due to time, length and other scale differences. Hence, there is a need for studies in controlled laboratory environments with various field application designed drilling fluids to improve engineering models and practices. This paper presents results from laboratory tests using field applied fluids. The drilling fluids have similar density and viscosity within the relevant shear rate range applied during drilling operations and in the tests. One of the fluids is oil-based and the other one is an inhibitive water-based drilling fluid.

Analysis of Cuttings Concentration Experimental Data Using Exploratory Data Analysis

“…Iyoho (1980) has gathered the second dataset using four different water based test fluids of different densities and different Power Law rheological constants. He has published the dataset collected both in concentric and eccentric annuli using a 12.2 m long test section for inclinations ranging from 0 • to 90 Ytrehus et al, 2020Ytrehus et al, , 2021aYtrehus et al, , 2021b have published the fifth and sixth datasets using field used water and oil-based muds (described using the Herschel-Bulkley rheological model) under ambient conditions. They have used a 10 m long test section and three field representative inclinations namely 48…”