Professional Certificate in SUBSEA TECHNOLOGY

LECTURE 2 - DRILLING AND COMPLETIONS SUMMARY NOTE

What is Reservoir Engineering?
It is a branch of petroleum engineering that applies scientific principles to the fluid flow
through a porous medium during the development and production of oil and gas reservoirs to
obtain a high economic recovery. The essence of good reservoir engineering is:

The objective of Reservoir Engineering is to provide facts, information and knowledge

necessary to control operations to obtain the maximum possible recovery from a reservoir at
the least possible cost.
Why Reservoir Engineering?
• Generating accurate reserves estimates for use in financial reporting to the Securities
and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other regulatory bodies.
• Make forecasts of petroleum reservoir potentials
• Optimize the recovery of the hydrocarbon content of the reservoirs.

The Role of Reservoir Engineering

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Drive Mechanisms – Different Types

Three primary drive mechanism

1. Water Drive - A reservoir-drive mechanism whereby the oil is driven through the
reservoir by an active aquifer. As the reservoir depletes, the water moving in from the
aquifer below displaces the oil until the aquifer energy is expended or the well
eventually produces too much water to be viable.
2. Gas Cap Drive – A gas-drive system utilizes the energy of the reservoir gas,
identifiable as either as free or solution gas, to producereservoir liquids. Depletion
drive reservoirs do not have an initial gas cap, or water drive. Oil recovery is driven
by gas evolving from solution. Oil recovery is small (~10%).

3. Solution Gas Drive - Fast Pressure and Production Decline, Least Efficient Drive
mechanism and Highly Undesirable

Types Of Reservoir Fluid:

• Oil
• Oil with gas cap
• Gas
• Gas condensate
Where The Fluid Resides
• Within the rock pores
• Within fractures in the rock

Ways Of Recovering Oil and Gas from The Reservoir

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Field Layout
Factors Affecting Field Layout
Consider all the operations carried out on the field throughout its life.
• During the project phase
o Development of drilling and well completions
o Subsea equipment installation, hook-up and commissioning
• During the field operation phase
o Normal operation
o Well-workover operations
o Underwater I.M.R. activities (mostly with ROV)
o Additional drilling and subsea equipment installation
• During field decommissioning
o Well abandonment and plugging.
o Subsea equipment retrieval or abandonment
o Final seabed survey
The key factors driving the field seabed layout are as follows.
Consider all the operations carried out on the field throughout its life:
• Reservoir configuration, bottom hole locations and subsea good seabed
positions.
• Drilling rig semi-submersible position, weather heading, mooring
• pattern and vessel characteristics (including drilling riser/vessel maximum
excursions).
• Seabed condition and bathymetry.
• Dominating weather conditions during drilling and workover
• operations but also underwater operations with various surface vessels.
• Supply boat movements and vessel loading/offloading.
• Optimum location of all subsea facilities during pipelay/umbilical lay
operations and eventual retrieval.
• Shipping lanes, fishing activities (if any) and other existing facilities on the
seabed e.g. abandoned exploration well
Where to start?
Subsea field architectures are designed around these three main questions:
• How many wells are there?
• Where should the wells be?
• How do I bring them back to the facility?
Seismic Reflection Survey
This is the most common type of geophysical survey
Most large companies today will not drill a target before extensive seismic reflection
surveying has been carried out.
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There are three types of seismic reflection survey:2D, 3D and 4D (or time-lapse)
1. The 2D survey is ‘traditional’, often now considered ‘old fashioned’ by large
companies.
2. The 3D survey is now commonplace in well-prospected areas like the area around
Barrow Island (Australia) and most of the Gulf coast in the USA
3. The 4D survey is a series of repeated 3D surveys over a producing oil/gas field. It is
not yet considered common practice.
Seismic reflection surveys usually comprise three parts:
• Seismic Acquisition: Collection of the Survey data
• Seismic Processing: Conversion of the digital data set obtained in the field into a
usable or interpretable format.
• Seismic Interpretation: Extraction of geological information from the processed
dataset.
Seismic reflection surveys are carried out on land and at sea.
It is considerably cheaper to carry out these surveys at sea because specially designed survey
boats can be quickly deployed with little time lost in rearranging geophone cables.
Responsibility of Drilling Engineering Team
The drilling Engineering groups are responsible for
• Making the detailed well design,
• Cost estimation and preparation of detailed bid specifications of this proposed well
• Making drilling jobs economically successful through the interactive involvement of
multi-disciplinary skilled talents
• Anticipated drilling problems likely to be encountered and working out contingencies,
• Selecting the drilling rig and its specifications
• Preparing drilling costs and drilling time curves
• Coordinating bid requests and evaluating contractors to ensure optimum rig selection
and rig personnel efficiency and safety records,
• Coordinating the activities of purchasing, environmental, regulatory and other
engineering groups to ensure that all phases of the good program are completed
economically, safely and on schedule.

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Conventional Drilling Program

Drilling Rig
A drilling rig may be referred to as a complex system of machinery and infrastructure that
facilitates the necessary means to carry out successful drilling operations and drill a well.
Drilling rigs are classified as:
• Land rigs
o Mobile
o Conventional
• Offshore rigs
o Floating rigs:
▪ Semisubmersible
▪ Drillships
o Bottom-supported rigs:
▪ Jack-ups
▪ Platform
▪ Barge

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Drill Bits
• Drilling bit is the business end of a rotary drilling rig, which cut the formation and
makes the bore (hole).
• Large variety of bits are manufactured depending on formation types and the
situations encountered during the operation.
• Engineer needs clear concepts to find the right one.
• Apparently, a bit should
o provide a good rate of penetration, have longevity, and drill a full gauge hole;
o should be compatible with the characteristics of the formation.
o represent a compromise – one that performs reasonably well under all
conditions it might meet.
Drilling Mud
Drilling mud is drilling fluids that operators add to oil wellbores to facilitate the drilling
processes. The drilling mud helps.
• to suspend rock cuttings,
• control well pressure,
• stabilise exposed rocks, and
• provide buoyancy.
• It also cools and lubricates the wellbore, allowing rock cuttings to move smoothly to
the surface.
Three types of drilling mud are commonly used:
1. water-based mud.
2. oil-based mud; and
3. emulsion mud
Well Completions and Subsea Completions
• A well completion involves a set of actions to convert an individual borehole into an
operational system for controlled recovery of underground hydrocarbon resources.
Those actions include installing the final well casings that isolate fluid migrations
along the borehole length while establishing perforated sections were needed to
capture the hydrocarbons from the geologic reservoir into the production casing.
• A subsea completion refers to a system of pipes, connections and valves that reside
on the ocean bottom and serve to gather hydrocarbons produced from individually
completed wells and direct hose hydrocarbons to a storage and offloading facility that
might be either offshore or onshore.
• After drilling, the offshore well must be completed with tubing and various other
equipment to allow the oil or gas to be produced.
• Completion work may involve installing a slotted liner or perforated casing adjacent
to the productive formations and then installing packers and tubing to conduct the oil
or gas flow to the surface.
• The choice of completion type should be closely coordinated with the development of
the reservoir management plan.
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• Why runs casing?

o To prevent the hole from caving in
o To prevent water migration to producing formation
o To control pressures during drilling
o To provide an acceptable environment for subsurface equipment in producing
wells
o To enhance the probability of drilling to total depth (TD)
Blowout Prevention
• If the mud fails to control the pressure, oil and gas begin coming to the surface during
the drilling process.
o We call this a kick.
• If action is not taken, the well fluids will begin coming out of the hole in an
uncontrolled manner.
o We call this a blowout.
• Blowout Preventers (BOPs) are our final safety barrier during drilling and are used to
control kicks & prevent blowouts.
• Blow Out Preventer is our SECOND barrier just in case the first barrier (drilling
mud) fails to keep the reservoir fluids from coming to the surface.
• Basically, a pressure-containing device that sits on top of the wellhead. Can be ‘open’
or ‘closed.’
• A BOP can close around the drill pipe and seal off the annulus, or it can even
shear/cut the drill pipe and completely isolate the well
Risers
Two broad classes: riser for drilling operations and riser for production operations
• Drilling risers are a conduit from the drilling vessel to the wellhead on the ocean floor
to transmit the drilling mud and to serve as a guide for the drill string.
• Production risers are pipes through which oil is pumped from the subsea system to the
deck/platform or any vessel.
Drilling Challenges
Before we start drilling, we have 5 main problems to solve:
1. We have to break up the rock.
2. We have to remove the rock.
3. We have to prevent the hole from collapsing.
4. We have to prevent water, oil or gas from entering the wellbore (aka influx which can
lead to blowout out)
5. We must do all this safely without harming the environment or seeing what’s going
on downhole.

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