New technology for minimizing drilling hazards in deep water exploration: Advances in wellbore stability and pore pressure evaluation

摘要

Wellbore stability and pore pressure related issues in certain areas of India, especially in deep water blocks, often cause serious problems during drilling, logging and production operations. This paper discusses the most important deepwater drilling hazards related to borehole instability and pore pressure. In deep water, the difference between pore pressure and fracture gradient can become very small in the first hundreds or thousands of feet below the seabed. Using conventional well designs, this would require several casing strings to be set which on a land well would require only a surface casing.