Analysis of Ballooning Effects During Drilling of High Pressure High Temperature Wells

Abstract

Abstract The operational margins in high pressure high temperature (HPHT) wells are often very small. Therefore, it may be critical to separate between ballooning effects and responses from having a kick, or having a mud loss. We present a new analytical model for the density-pressure-temperature dependence for drilling fluids.1 By coupling this to a temperature model for the circulating fluid temperatures,2 we can study the temperature effects on return mud volume variations. In the application of the model we simulate a North Sea well to study the effect of transient temperature behavior.