Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Downhole Drilling
Problems
2
Introduction
• Problems associated with the drilling of oil and gas
wells are largely due to the disturbances of earth
stresses around the borehole.
• These are caused by the creation of the hole itself and
by drilling mud/formation interaction.
• Thus, a hole is kept open (or stable) by maintaining a
balance between earth stresses and pore pressure on
one side and well bore mud pressure and chemical
composition on the other side.
• Whenever this balance is disturbed, well bore problems
occur.
3
Pipe Sticking
Stuck string:
• A string is said to be stuck when no free movement is
possible either in terms of reciprocation or rotation.
Free point:
• The part of string which is glued to the hole wall is called
stuck part and other part which is free is called free part.
The junction point at which stuck part end sand free
part of string begins is called free point.
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Mechanical Sticking
Key Seating
• Key seats, grooves in the
bore hole wall cut by
rotating drill pipe can stick
larger diameter collars
when tripping out.
Junk in hole
• Junk is any object in the hole
which is not desired in the
well.
Differential Sticking
• Differential Sticking is
one of the most common
causes of pipe stuck. It can
happen when there is
differential pressure
(overbalance pressure)
pushing a drill string into
filter cake of a permeable
formation.
17
Warning signs
• There are high over balance between wellbore and
formation. Especially, when there is highly depleted
formation, the chance of getting differentially stuck is so
high.
Remedies
Lost Circulation
• Lost circulation is the
significant and continuing
loss of whole mud to a
formation.
Occurrences
Lost circulation primarily occurs in:
• Unconsolidated or permeable formations
• Naturally fractured formations
• Zones containing induced fractures
• Cavernous or extremely vugular formations
• Wells experiencing mechanical problems such as shallow
casing leaks
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Mechanical Problems
• Mechanical problems such
as leaks in a surface or
intermediate casing string
may also result in lost
circulation even though
the operator may be using
proper mud weights and
following good drilling
practices.
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• Mud Considerations
• Finally, a drill
string gets stuck
due to hydro-
pressured shale
which accumulates
in the annulus
35
• Shale finally
falls into the
well and results
in stuck pipe
incident
37
Dog leg
• Dog legging is a severe
drilling problem.
• No hole is perfectly vertical
and any hole has a
tendency to spiral.
• An abrupt change in hole
deviation (inclination and/or
azimuth) results in
troublesome situation which
is commonly referred to as a
dogleg.
• Can cause pipe sticking and
lead to pipe failure
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Telescopic Holes
• Some times it is difficult to stick to planned casing
policies of the wells especially in exploratory wells.
• Casings sometimes do not reach the drilled depth and
have to be cemented with shoe much above bottom.
This leaves a large open hole from which a smaller
hole is drilled.
• In such wells, the annular velocity of mud falls abruptly
in reaching over from smaller to larger well bore.
• This leads to gradual accumulation of cuttings in the
transition zone. During tripping the cuttings fall into
hole resulting in severe pipe sticking.
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Preventive measures
Remedies
• Use of proper make up torque.
• Limits for reduction in diameter of tool joints and
swelling of box.
• Proper making up procedure.
• Limits on minimum bending strength ratio.
• Proper precautions pertaining to thinning out of tool
joint thread.
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Thank You