Influence of Polymer Reagents in the Drilling Fluids on the Efficiency of Deviated and Horizontal Wells Drilling

Abstract

Improving the efficiency of well drilling process in a reservoir is directly related to subsequent well flow rates. Drilling of deviated and horizontal wells is often accompanied by an increase in pressure losses due to flow resistance caused by small size of the annular space. An important role in such conditions is played by the quality of borehole cleaning and transport capacity of drilling fluid, which is directly related to the rheological parameters of the drilling fluid. The main viscosifiers in modern drilling fluids are polymer reagents. They can be of various origin and structure, which determines their features. This work presents investigations that assess the effect of various polymers on the rheological parameters of drilling fluids. Obtained data are evaluated taking into account the main rheological models of fluid flow. However, process of fluid motion during drilling cannot be described by only one flow model. Paper shows experimentally obtained data of such indicators as plastic viscosity, dynamic shear stress, non-linearity index and consistency coefficient. Study has shown that high molecular weight polymer reagents (e.g., xanthan gum) can give drilling fluid more pronounced pseudoplastic properties, and combining them with a linear high molecular weight polymer (e.g., polyacrylamide) can reduce the value of the dynamic shear stress. Results of the work show the necessity of using combinations of different types of polymer reagents, which can lead to a synergetic effect. In addition to assessing the effect of various polymer reagents, the paper presents study on the development of a drilling fluid composition for specific conditions of an oil field.

Investigation of Non-Linear Rheological Characteristics of Barite-Free Drilling Fluids

“…Models of Bingham plastic, Casson, Ostwald-de Waele and Newton consider the application of a linear regression method to determine the rheological parameters, and models of Herschel-Bulkley, Vom Berg and Hahn-Eyring propose to apply the non-linear regression method [38]. The hyperbolic model by C. Vipulanandan and A.S. Mohammed predicted the maximum shear stress of the drilling fluid, whereas two other models (Herschel-Bulkley and Casson) studied assumed infinite shear stress tolerance for the drilling fluid in this work [25].…”

“…Rheology is the study of deformation and flow of fluids, which evaluates the behavior of the drilling fluid in solving various theoretical and practical problems [24][25][26]. Rheological properties of drilling fluids influence almost all processes and indicators related to well drilling, so they are among the most important [27,28].…”

“…There is a large number of rheological models (more than 30) used to predict the rheological behavior of modern drilling fluids over a wide range of shear rates. The following models are most commonly used by drilling fluid engineers: Newtonian, Bingham-Shvedov (Bingham Plastic), Ostwald-de Waele (power law), Herschel-Bulkley (modified power law), Schulman-Casson [25,33,39].…”

Use of the water-swellable polymers (WSP) for wellbore stabilization in intensely fractured rock intervals

“…They investigate properties of solid elastic additives to increase stability and stop loss of drilling mud. Musaab I. Magzouba, Saeed Salehi, Ibnelwaleed A. Hussein, Mustafa S.Nasser, and others [10][11] did not investigate the properties of water-swellable polymers to change the stability of the wellbore after filtration into a fractured interval.…”

Risk Factors Evaluation for Monitoring of Well Drilling

“…An important task of the development of the oil and gas industry in the coming years is to increase the efficiency of producing oil and gas and drilling of a well and the main impetus to the introduction of methods of ML was the fall in oil prices. Oil and gas companies have concentrated on resource efficiency, optimizing their production processes [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30].…”