The Development and Application of a Software to Assist the Drilling Engineer During Well Control Operations in Deep and Ultra Deep Waters

摘要

This paper presents the development and application ofrnan integrated computational tool to assist the drillingrnengineer regarding prevention and detection of a kickrnand its circulation out of the well when operating inrndeepwater and ultra deepwater drilling scenarios. Thisrntool, called UNIKICK, provides the drilling personnel withrninformation and several computational resourcesrncovering many aspects related to well control in thoserndrilling scenarios.rnThe most important features provided by the system arernas follows: (a) link to databases containing regulations,rnstandards and operational procedures to be accessedrnfrom the rig site; (b) a module to display well controlrninformation and calculations such as kick tolerance,rnswabbing pressure, tripping and riser safety margin; (c)rna killsheet which is calculated and displayed,rnautomatically; and (d) an interface to show graphicallyrnthe expected pressure behavior at selected points insidernthe well and fluids production during the kick removalrnprocess.rnThrough the interface, the user enters the datarnnecessary to the calculation of the killsheet and to thernsimulation of the pressure behavior inside the wellborernand the flow rates of the fluids from the well, using arnbuilt-in kick simulator. This simulator was developedrnspecifically for the system and accounts for the twophasernnature of the mixture of gas and drilling fluid andrnfor the peculiarities of an ultra deepwater well/rigrnequipment configuration. The interface also displays thernoutput data generated by the simulator in a graphicalrnformat together with animation capability for the gas thatrnis circulated out the well.rnTo illustrate the usage of the system, the paper presentsrnthe results for three horizontal well control cases rangingrnfrom 1000 to 3000 meters of water depth.rnThe paper also suggests that the system can also bernused as a very powerful instructional tool for trainingrnpurposes.