Petroleum Engineering Commons^™

Comprehensive Evaluation Of Self-Healing Polyampholyte Gel Particles For The Severe Leakoff Control Of Drilling Fluids, Lili Yang, Chunlin Xie, Tian Ao, Kaixiao Cui, Guancheng Jiang, Baojun Bai, Yongwei Zhang, Jun Yang, Xingxing Wang, Weiguo Tian

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation has been a serious problem to be solved in many drilling practices during oil, gas and geothermal well drillings. Many materials have been developed and evaluated for the purpose. However, their performance to plug severe leakoff is very limited. Herein, an injectable self-healing hydrogel based on polyampholyte with sulfonated and quaternary ammonium functionalities (P(MPTC-co-NaSS)) was developed and comprehensively evaluated to prevent the severe loss of fluids to formation. By incorporating cation-π (π is for aromatic residues) interaction, the hydrogel shown self-healing property and robustness in severe environment (temperature, salt) by comparison with other hydrogels merely consisting of cation-anion …

Data–Driven Decision–Making For Lost Circulation Treatments: A Machine Learning Approach, Husam H. Alkinani, Abo Taleb T. Al-Hameedi, Shari Dunn-Norman

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation is an expensive and critical problem in the drilling operations. Millions of dollars are spent every year to mitigate or stop this problem. In this work, data from over 3000 wells were collected from multiple sources. The data went through a processing step where all outliers were removed, and decision rules were set up. Multiple machine learning methods (support vector machine, decision trees, logistic regression, artificial neural networks, and ensemble trees) were used to create a model that can predict the best lost circulation treatment based on the type of loss and the reason of loss. 5-fold cross-validation …

Mud Loss Estimation Using Machine Learning Approach, Abo Taleb T. Al-Hameedi, Husam H. Alkinani, Shari Dunn-Norman, Ralph E. Flori, Steven Austin Hilgedick, Ahmed S. Amer, Mortadha Alsaba

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation costs are a significant expense in drilling oil and gas wells. Drilling anywhere in the Rumaila field, one the world's largest oilfields, requires penetrating the Dammam formation, which is notorious for lost circulation issues and thus a great source of information on lost circulation events. This paper presents a new, more precise model to predict lost circulation volumes, equivalent circulation density (ECD), and rate of penetration (ROP) in the Dammam formation. A larger data set, more systematic statistical approach, and a machine-learning algorithm have produced statistical models that give a better prediction of the lost circulation volumes, ECD, …

The Effect Of Testing Conditions On The Performance Of Lost Circulation Materials: Understandable Sealing Mechanism, Montri Jeennakorn, Mortadha Alsaba, Runar Nygaard, Arild Saasen, Olav Magnar Nes

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation materials (LCMs) are added to drilling fluids to mitigate lost circulation (LOC) problems. Designing the fluid requires a good understanding of sealing mechanisms and all the parameters affecting the sealing performance. Laboratory testing apparatus is the key concept for LCM evaluation ensuring successful treatment. The high-pressure test cell containing fracture discs is an effective tool among the broadly designed apparatus. A variety of formulations has been developed from the LCM physical properties. Recently, the testing conditions such as the slot wall angles, and the fracture disc thickness were found to have significant effects on the evaluation results. However, …

The Effect Of Wellbore Circulation On Building An Lcm Bridge At The Fracture Aperture, Ghassan Alshubbar, Runar Nygaard, Montri Jeennakorn

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Different laboratory experimental setups with slotted disks, simulating fractures' apertures, have been used extensively to formulate effective loss circulation materials (LCM) recipes. The amount of fluid loss and sealing pressure have been used as the evaluation criteria. The question still remains is how valuable these tests are when LCM fluids are circulated in the wellbore to stop losses. The main objective of this work is to study the effect of the annular fluid flow on building an LCM bridge at the fracture aperture. To address the objective, a fluid loss apparatus has been developed to mimic wellbore circulation. Tapered slotted …

Updated Criterion To Select Particle Size Distribution Of Lost Circulation Materials For An Effective Fracture Sealing, Mortadha Alsaba, Mohammed F. Al Dushaishi, Runar Nygaard, Olav Magnar Nes, Arild Saasen

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents a new criterion to select particle size distribution (PSD) for an effective fracture sealing. The method was developed based on a comprehensive laboratory investigation that was conducted to determine the relationship between effectiveness of different lost circulation material (LCM) treatments in terms of the sealing efficiency and PSD. The results were compared with the current selection methods, which were developed to enhance the bridging capabilities for drill-in fluid, to investigate their applicability in designing effective treatments for fracture sealing. A statistical investigation was carried out to develop new criteria that suggest PSD based on the expected fracture …

Investigation Of Lost Circulation Materials Impact On Fracture Gradient, Mortadha Turki Alsaba

Doctoral Dissertations

"Lost circulation is a challenging problem to be prevented or mitigated during drilling. Lost circulation treatments are widely applied to mitigate losses using a corrective approach or to prevent losses using preventive approaches, also known as "wellbore strengthening". The disagreement among the different wellbore strengthening theories and the lack of understanding the strengthening mechanism resulted in the absence of a standardized method to evaluate the effectiveness of lost circulation materials (LCM) for wellbore strengthening application.

An extensive experimental investigation was performed by constructing a high pressure LCM test apparatus to investigate the effects of different parameters on the sealing efficiency …