Wait and Weight Well Control Method (Engineer’s Method)

I will give you overview about the wait and weight method on this blog post and some basic concepts and calculations will be described later.

Wait and Weight Well Control Method or someone calls Engineer’s Method is a method to control well with one circulation. Kill weight mud is displaced into drill string and kick (wellbore influx) is removed while displacing a wellbore.

Steps of the weight and weight method for well control are as follow:

1. Shut in the well.

2. Allow pressure to stabilize and record stabilized shut in casing pressure, initial shut in drill pipe pressure, and pit gain. If you have a float in the drill string, you must bump the float in order to see the shut-in drill pipe pressure.  Please read this following topic for float bumping procedure >Float Bumping Procedures To Get Shut In Drill Pipe Pressure

3. Perform well control calculations and following items must be figured out.

o Bottomhole pressure based on drill pipe pressure (Read more about it>Formation Pressure from Kick Analysis)

o Kill Mud weight necessary to balance the kick

o Drillpipe pressure schedule

o Maximum surface casing pressure during well control operation . (Read more about it > Maximum Surface Pressure from Gas Influx)

o Maximum pit gain during circulation (Read about it > Maximum pit gain from gas kick in water based mud)

4. Raise mud weight in the system to required kill mud weight. (Read more about it > Kill Weight Mud)

5.  Establish circulation to required kill rate by holding casing pressure constant.

6. Follow drill pipe schedule until kill weight mud to the bit.

7. Hold drill pipe pressure constant once kill weight mud out of the bit until complete circulation.

8.  Check mud weight out and ensure that mud weight out is equal to kill mud weight.

9.  Shut down and flow check to confirm if a well is static.

10.  Circulate and condition mud if required.

Reference book: Well Control Books