Novel Methods and Test Apparatus for Comprehensive Characterization of Oil and Gas Field Fluids and Additives

Abstract

Abstract Currently available API test apparatus and methods though provide good guidelines in drilling and drill-in fluid design, they often unable to provide comprehensive fluid and additive characteristics for various application scenarios. This is due to the inability of the current API methods and apparatus to provide application specific information for trouble free drilling and production of oil and gas resources. Moreover, no other industry methods and apparatus are suitable for specific characterization of fluids or additives used for oil and gas field applications. Hence, the industry needs novel test apparatus and methods for comprehensive and better characterization of oil and gas field fluids and additives for trouble free drilling and production operation. This paper describes several novel methods and test set up for comprehensive characterization of oil and gas field fluids and additives for various application scenarios. Experimental results indicate that the newly developed methods and apparatus provide valuable information on mudcake cleaning and cleaning fluid efficiency, spotting fluid performance, quality control and quality assurance of various sized bridging materials for non-damaging drill-in fluid design, inhibition durability of shale inhibitors to prevent time dependent borehole instability and resilient characteristics of LCM products to improve sealing and plugging efficiency of seals and plugs formed by LCM pills or slurries. The methods introduce several application specific index parameters to provide useful technical guidelines for superior fluid design and appropriate additive selection for trouble free and economic drilling and production operation. The methods will play an important role to discourage the use of trial and error methods in some oil and gas field applications and thus expected to improve the success rate significantly.