Deepwater Horizon Incident VDO

Transocean demonstrates an excellent animated video of the Deepwater Horizon incident. This video will show you what was happened to the Deepwater Horizon rig’s BOP and there are a lot of things that you can learn from this VDO as sequence of the incident, deep water BOP stack configuration, why the BOP elements were failed, force of high flow velocity, etc.

Please click at the image below to see the full VDO.

Please give me your thought about this VDO.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Driller’s Method

Many topics of driller’s method have been taught on the drillingformulas.com and I would like to summarize about advantages and disadvantages of driller’s method.

Advantages  of Driller’s Method

 

• Circulation can be established right away so the bottom hole pressure will not increase much due to gas migration.

• Influx can be removed out of the well even though the rig does not have sufficient amount of weighting agent.

• Gas migration is minimized.

• Operation is quite simple when compared to weight and weight method.

• Calculation is simple and drill pipe pressure schedule is not required.

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Determine surge and swab pressure method 2 Calculation Example

This section will show to how to use the formula from the previous topic, surge and swab pressure calculation 2nd method , to determine surge and swab pressure. I still use the same parameters as I used for the first method of surge and swab pressure calculation so you can compare the result between method#1 and method#2.

 

The well information is listed below:

θ300 = 85

θ600 = 130

Hole diameter = 9 inch

Drill Collar = 6.25 inch

ID of drill collar = 2.5 inch

Drillpipe diameter = 5 inch

ID of drill pipe = 3.5 inch

Average pipe running or pulling speed = 250 ft/min

Drill Pipe Length = 12000 ft

Drill Collar Length = 800 ft

Current Mud Weight = 12.5 ppg

Well TVD = 9000 ft

 

Determine pressure loss around drill pipe

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Determine surge and swab pressure method 2

This is another method for calculating surge and swab pressure. With this method, there are 3 assumptions as follows:

 

• Closed ended pipe (plug flow)

• Laminar flow around drill pipe

• Turbulent flow around drill collar

How to determine surge and swab pressure with this method

1. Determine pressure around drill pipe

2. Determine pressure around drill collar

Note: The calculation methodology is different from the first method because both pressure losses are determined by separate set of equations.

3. Determine total pressure loss by summation of step 1 and step 2

4. Determine surge and swab pressure

 

 Determine pressure loss around drill pipe by following calculations

 

1. Determine fluid velocity around drill pipe

Where;

Vdp is the fluid velocity around drill pipe in ft/min.

Vp is pipe movement velocity in ft/min.

Dp is drill pipe diameter in inch.

Dh is hole diameter in inch.

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Determine surge and swab pressure for close-ended pipe

I would like to show more calculation about surge and swab pressure. In this article, I will show how to use the previous formulas (Surge and swab pressure method 1) to figure out surge and swab pressure for close-ended pipe (plug flow). The calculation concept is pretty much the same but I would like to show you how much difference between surge/swab if you have the close-ended pipe.

 

I still use the same data but this time so I can compare apple to apple with the previous calculation.

 

Example

 

The well information is listed below:

θ300 = 85

θ600 = 130

Hole diameter = 9 inch

Drill Collar = 6.25 inch

ID of drill collar = 2.5 inch

Drillpipe diameter = 5 inch

ID of drill pipe = 3.5 inch

Average pipe running or pulling speed = 250 ft/min

Drill Pipe Length = 12000 ft

Drill Collar Length = 800 ft

Current Mud Weight = 12.5 ppg

Well TVD = 9000 ft

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