SPE Drilling & Completion
Volume 26,
Number 2,
June 2011,
pp. 287-294
Summary
As hydrocarbon exploration and development moves into deeper water and
onshore Arctic environments, it becomes increasingly important to quantify the
drilling hazards posed by gas hydrates. To address these concerns, a 1D
semianalytical model for heat and fluid transport in the reservoir was coupled
with a numerical model for temperature distribution along the wellbore. This
combination allowed the estimation of the dimensions of the hydrate-bearing
layer where the initial pressure and temperature can dynamically change while
drilling. These dimensions were then used to build a numerical reservoir model
for the simulation of the dissociation of gas hydrate in the layer. The
bottomhole pressure (BHP) and formation properties used in this workflow were
based on a real-field case. The results provide an understanding of the effects
of drilling through hydrate-bearing sediments (HBS) and of the impact of
drilling-fluid temperature and BHP on changes in temperature and pore pressure
within the surrounding sediments. It was found that the amount of gas hydrate
that can dissociate will depend significantly on both initial formation
characteristics and bottomhole conditions) namely, mud temperature and
pressure). The procedure outlined in the paper can provide quantitative results
of the impact of hydrate dissociation on wellbore stability, which can help in
better design of drilling muds for ultradeepwater operations.
© 2011. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
5 March 2010
- Meeting paper published:
15 June 2010
- Revised manuscript received:
20 December 2010
- Manuscript approved:
22 December 2010
- Published online:
26 May 2011
- Version of record:
13 June 2011
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