Development of directional capabilities to an ultradeep water dynamic kill simulator and simulations runs

摘要

The world is dependent on the production of oil and gas, and every day the demandincreases. Technologies have to keep up with the demand of this resource to keep theworld running. Since hydrocarbons are finite and will eventually run out, the increasingdemand of oil and gas is the impetus to search for oil in more difficult and challengingareas. One challenging area is offshore in ultradeep water, with water depths greater than5000 ft. This is the new arena for drilling technology. Unfortunately with greaterchallenges there are greater risks of losing control and blowing out a well. A dynamickill simulator was developed in late 2004 to model initial conditions of a blowout inultradeep water and to calculate the minimum kill rate required to kill a blowing wellusing the dynamic kill method. The simulator was simple and efficient, but hadlimitations; only vertical wells could be simulated. To keep up with technology,modifications were made to the simulator to model directional wells. COMASim(Cherokee, Offshore Technology Research Center, Minerals Management Service, TexasA&M Simulator) is the name of the dynamic kill simulator. The new version,COMASim1.0, has the ability to model almost any type of wellbore geometry whenprovided the measured and vertical depths of the well.Eighteen models with varying wellbore geometry were simulated to examine the effectsof wellbore geometry on the minimum kill rate requirement. The main observation wasthat lower kill rate requirement was needed in wells with larger measured depth. COMASim 1.0 cannot determine whether the inputs provided by the user are practical;COMASim 1.0 can only determine if the inputs are incorrect, inconsistent or cannot becomputed. If unreasonable drilling scenarios are input, unreasonable outputs will result.COMASim1.0 adds greater functionality to the previous version while maintaining theoriginal framework and simplicity of calculations and usage.