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NUBCOUNEM
1 6% RES SAFETY MARGI S
c+ST mms ARE CAPTURED
By Heather Douglas
"The hottest places in hell are reserved
for those who, in times of great moral
crisis, maintain their neutrality." Dante
Alighieri (1265-1321), Dante's Divine Com-
edy: The Inferno (published 1472).
t's no secret the deeper the well, the
hotter the temperature and the higher
the downhole pressure. Unlike Dante's
The Inferno, the oil and gas industry has
ignored moral neutrality, and instead,
focused on worker safety, while plumbing
the depths of the Earth's abyss.
It's also no surprise these wells -- usu-
ally natural gas from deeply buried shales
or shallow, steam heated heavy oil --
encounter downhole temperatures of 150
to 180 degrees Celsius or more, and pres-
sures of 20 to 80 million Pascal (mPa). Not
only do these wells stretch conventional
equipment specs, but each poses a spe-
cial challenge to worker safety -- during
drilling and production testing operations.
Canadian producers have been drilling
high-temperature, high pressure (HTHP)
wells since the 1960's while drilling in
northern British Columbia and southern
Northwest Territories. HTHP wells were
also encountered in late 1970s, when
drilling companies explored offshore
Newfoundland and Labrador. Back then,
the engineers worried how to control
kicks -the invasion of reservoir fluid
into the wellbore - and ultimately blow-
outs. The engineers routinely calculated
maximum volumes, formation fluid flow
rates, peak temperatures, and pressure
rates for a worst-case scenario, so they
could order the appropriate number of
blow-out preventers, upgraded chokes,
extra safety valves, kill lines, and pres-
sure sensors. The extra equipment was
costly, but gave workers more tools to
prevent offshore disasters.
Today's onshore deep shale wells are
different. Operators have the benefit of
using mud coolers to lower the tempera-
ture of the drilling mud to provide safer
drilling conditions for roughnecks and
reduce costs to their bottom-lines. When
mud is circulated in a wellbore, the mud
coolant system balances the different
heat transfers so the bottom-hole is
cooler than the formation temperature
while the top-hole is warmer. The ampli-
tude of this deviation, and the tempera-
ture difference between the lower-most
and the top, depends on the mud flow rate.
CANADIAN MUD COOLERS
Mud Cooling International Inc. (MCII),
launched in December 2010, is a family-
owned business conveniently head-
quartered in Calgary, AB. It is the only
Canadian firm supplying mud coolers to
well sites on this side of the border - the
competition is American-based - and
every (MCII) unit can be quickly mobilized
to a far-flung location.
According to Ed Fercho, MCII'S vice
president, marketing, each mud cooler unit
is a closed loop system "Each unit has an
excellent run-time capacity and consists of
double-plated Alpha Laval AM20 low LMTD
(log mean temperature differential) and is
made of titanium alloy, to minimize corrosion.
The heater exchanger plates are spaced to
allow circulation of the fine drilled solids."
THE ROUGHNECK I MAY 2017 17
 Cooling happens when the ethylene
glycol fluid flows through the coolant side
of the heat exchanger. Andrew Fercho,
MCII's president and CEO, says, "The low
LMTD design of the systems allows the
active drilling fluid to hold steady within 10
15 degrees of the current ambient tem-
perature. The coolant fluid is circulated
through a fan coil fluid/ambient air heat
exchanger by a centrifugal pump."
Temperature is controlled by a ther-
mostat in the cold drilling fluid stream
return line, Fercho Jr. adds. It modu-
lates a bypass valve in the fan coil heat
exchanger loop. This keeps the active
drilling fluid temperature in the suction
tank at 45 to 55 degrees Celsius where
returning drilling fluid, at the shaker, is
greater than 65 degrees Celsius. "It's
simple. We put cooling mud down and
pull hot mud out, recycle it, then put the
cooling mud down again." Reducing the
bottom hole temperature, by using a
cooled drilling fluid, results in less tool
failures and eliminates heat stress failure
of well bore formations.
UNITS USED EXTENSIVELY
Today, MCII's cooler units are used by
operators drilling deep shale gas wells, in
northeastern British Columbia (in areas such
as the Horn River Basin), as well as Lloyd-
minster area heavy oil and Fort McMurray
SAGD (steam-assisted gravity drainage) oil
sands operations. Each unit has an excellent
run-time capacity. Operators have, also,
successfully used these coolers in the
Pointed Mountain, Fox Creek, Obed, Nor-
degg, Ricinus, Burrnis, and Coleman areas.
MCII's cooling system offers a
number of benefits:
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Lowers the risk of flash points for oil-
based drilling fluids;
Provides another line-of-defense for crew
safety by preventing hazardous burns;
Lowers evaporation rates and
reduces hydrocarbons released into
the atmosphere;
Ensures greater accuracy whenever
downhole measurement devices
(MWD) or logging tools are used
because it reduces thermal stress;
Lessens the usage of additives; and
Increases the life of elastomers or pack-
ers to prevent leakage from the well.
The Fercho's are proud of the stellar
safety record their cooling units have
achieved. "Every one of our units has an
excellent safety record. None has suffered
any incidents while operating," Fercho Sr.
reports. "Our people are fully certified and
stay on-site 24-hours a day, until the drilling
program is finished. We set up the equip-
ment and remove it from site."
MCII helps the producer's bottom-lines.
"Our units enable companies to reduce the
number of days it takes them to drill a
well," adds Fercho Sr. "By adding a cooler,
a major operator shortened its program
by four to six weeks in NE B.C. where daily
operating costs can exceed $100,000."
Many producers are fans. MCII's client
list includes Shell Canada, Nexen-CNOOC,
Chevron, Apache, Imperial Oil, and Quick-
silver Resources Canada drilling in NE B.C.
and MEG, Husky, and Shell for heavy oil
and oil sands operations.
Plumbing the over-heated zones above
hell is safer, thanks to MCII's mud cooling
system. Neither the producers nor the
roughnecks have a reason to suffer either an
existential crisis or maintain moral neutrality.