From the previous article, you’ve learnt about overall of casing design process and in this article we are going to discuss about how to select casing setting depth. The selection of casing string and setting depth is based on formation pore pressure and fracture gradient of the well.
For the casing setting depth determination, pore pressure and fracture gradient are normally described in PPG (Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Pore Pressure and Fracture Pressure Plot
Kelly or Top Drive is the drilling equipment which transfer both rotational and compression force to the bit in order to make a hole. This vdo training demonstrates the basic understanding for kelly and top drive. Additionally, we add full transcript of this vdo in order to help people learn about this topic effectively. We wish you would enjoy watching and learning from this vdo.
Full Transcript of this multimedia training.
Many pieces of equipment make up our Rotary drilling rig. Part of it’s on the surface and part of its underground or subsurface. All the equipment has one main purpose, to put a bit at the bottom of the hole where it can drill or make holes.
To put the big on the bottom, rig crewmembers screw it into a special pipe. The pipe is called the Drill String. Crewmembers lower the drill string and attached bit into the hole. For the bit to drill, surface rig equipment has to rotate it unless it’s rotated by a mud motor. Equipment also has to put weight on it to force the bit’s teeth cutters into the formation. As the bit rotates, a circulating fluid has to take the drill cuttings away from the bit. Otherwise the hole would clog up. This fluid which circulates is called drilling mud.
4-way valves in the accumulator (Koomey) unit are used to control the position of Blow Out Preventer (BOP). Today we will go into the detail of 3 positions of 4-way vales in order to see how each position affects to the BOP.
Read more details about Koomey Unit here =>mechanism of Koomey unit.
When the valve is turned into the open position, it directs hydraulic pressure from the manifold into the BOP openning port therefore the BOP is in the open position. The hydraulic fluid in the ram closing chamber will return back to the reservoir tank. Figure 1 illustrates how the hydraulic pressure is lined up to open the BOP.
Figure 1 – Open position of the 4-way valve
After understanding the basic of each casing string run in oil wells, we will go into casing design overview. This article will give you general ideas of casing design.
The items below are design objectives for well constructions which drilling engineers must consider.
These objectives are generic and your wells may have additional objectives based on business needs.
Piper Alpha was basically a North Sea oil production platform, commencing production way back in 1976, run by Occidental Petroleum (Caledonia) Ltd, which initially started oil production and later gas production as well. Unfortunately, it was wrecked and demolished on 6 July 1988, by an explosion which triggered oil and gas fires. It resulted in a lot of destruction, including 167 casualties and only 67 men survived.
Occidental discovered The Piper Field in the beginning of 1973, following which Piper Alpha initiated production 3 years after. The platform was situated roughly 120 miles towards the north-east of Aberdeen. In the beginning, it only dealt in the production of oil however after a few years, in 1980 with new equipments being installed, gas production was facilitated. Piper Alpha was linked with the Flotta oil terminal on the Orkney Islands by a sub-sea pipeline that was further shared with Claymore platform. Gas pipelines of Piper Alpha linked it to Tartan platform and distinct MCP-O1 gas processing platform. In a nutshell, Piper Alpha had 4 prime transport risers: an oil export riser, the Tartan gas riser, the Claymore gas riser, & MCP-01 gas riser.
