1997-98 ENVIRONMENTAL DRILLING & COMPLETION FLUIDS DIRECTORY

How fluid products, additives deliver premium boreholes

Table 1

The development of drilling and completion fluids beyond the basic liquid pumped downhole reflects much of the petroleum industry's growth. At one time, drilling fluids were expected to do little more than cool and lubricate the bit, transport cuttings, and control pressure. Completion fluids were of little consequence beyond protecting the tubing string from corrosion.

By 1988, a handbook of drilling fluids, published by a still viable if differently named mud supply company, listed ten drilling mud functions. And today the role of completion fluids has grown with the complexity and creativity of completion scenarios, led by such innovations as high-angle wells, overbalanced perforating, and gravel pack operations.

Drilling fluids research through the years has revealed the negative effects of using drilling or completion fluids incompatible with producing formation chemistry. Proper fluid selection protects the formation during the drilling, completion, and cleanup stages of the well, while the wrong fluid chemistry can inhibit production via excessive skin damage or fluid invasion that can drastically reduce formation permeability at the near wellbore.

Wellbore stability

Beyond pressure and formation damage control and remediation, fluid selections now must consider wellbore stability, shale and clay sensitivities, penetration rates, and countless other subtle and not-so-subtle effects of downhole chemical reactions.

Drilling and completion fluids suppliers have become adept at targeting individual well problems. Special additives are made available for wells whose geometry or lithology suggest the risk of stuck pipe problems. Additives exist to help release pipe differentially plastered to the side of the wellbore. Fluids recipes are dictated by everything from wellbore angle to degree of formation depletion.

Hydraulic fracture fluids have become a science of their own as fracturing has grown to include huge volumes of proppant deposited far from the wellbore to increase production from low-permeability formations to relatively small fractures in high-permeability formations for sand control and near wellbore, post-perforation cleaning.

A factor of our times has been added to the world of fluids as preservation of the environment becomes a more pronounced issue worldwide. The choice of base mud and additives best suited to the surrounding environment is critical. Drilling through an underpressured zone in the American west, for example, requires a fundamentally different chemistry than might the same set of circumstances in the Norwegian Continental Shelf.

Water, oil, synthetics

One result of the environmental movement on fluids chemistry has been fundamental. At one time all muds were water-based, oil-based, or a combination inverted emulsion. In response to environmental restrictions on overboard cuttings discharge when drilling with oil-based muds, the substitutes, called synthetic, or pseudo-oil muds, were born.

These fluids responded to a need to use oil base muds in the high risk world of high-angle drilling and to maintain the high penetration rates associated with oil-based muds while complying with increasingly strict environmental regulation. Where OBMs must be used in a closed, zero-discharge system, cuttings from synthetic muds may be discharged overboard in many areas (though in some areas where the practice is allowed, it is under scrutiny - most notably the UK North Sea). And while synthetics are, by-volume, more expensive than water- or oil-based systems, they are less costly than other muds when their use results in fewer drilling days by virtue of improved penetration rates.

New drilling and completion technologies demand fluids responses. The proliferation during the 1990s of high-angle and horizontal wells have spawned a unique set of responses to the need for non-stick, non-invasive fluids as prospective producing formations must often remain exposed to drilling mud for extended periods of time.

In high-angle wells, the effective circulating density of the mud must naturally rise with measured depth while the fracture gradient of the rock remains essentially the same, the chemistry of invasion, and even lost circulation, becomes more challenging as reach sections grow ever longer.

As the oil and gas industry expands its drilling and completion theaters, fluids must evolve. The immediate challenges to the fluid chemists are in deepwater and in drilling through subsea salt. In deepwater, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico, shallow, flowing aquifers are causing considerable problems for drillers attempting to set conductor pipe. One approach to the problem has been to seek a polymer to act as a water shut off.

Drilling and casing through extended salt sections is fraught with danger. Salt is capable of near-fluid movement, impinging on the wellbore, and at the same time, it can be washed out easily.

As the following fluids survey bears witness, proper fluid selection is as critical and complex a pre-drilling consideration as casing size, bits, or any of the myriad decisions involved in planning a new well.

Fluids Directory

The 1997-1998 Environmental Drilling & Completion Fluids Directory is a complete and comprehensive listing of 54 of the industry's top fluid manufacturers and their individual products. The directory is differentiated into 14 sections based on the type of fluid.

Five new companies have been included in this year's directory: Newpark Drilling Fluids, Turbo-Chem International, SeTac Chemical, Chemstar, and PT. Indobent Wijaya Mineral. Each listing includes new and updated products provided by each company with a description of the product and the product's general characteristics.