Weighted Spacer Design for Elevated Temperature Conditions to Mitigate Barite Settling by Identifying Suitable Viscosifier

Abstract

Any successful primary cementing operation at elevated temperature condition requires an efficient displacement of fluid surrounding the casing by cement slurry. In such conditions the cement slurry should be designed in such a way that it should be compatible with both cement and drilling mud. To achieve these requirements we designed the cement slurry with weighted spacer. Spacer is a barrier between cement & mud so that they should not mix with each other, also all these fluids should be incompatible inorder to avoid cement aggregation. The displacement efficiency during cementation is directly dependent on discharge rate, but however due to formation fracture pressure constraints, the discharge rate is limited, hence designing spacer becomes very crucial. This phenomenon becomes more pronounced at higher temperature as turbulent flow efficiency reduces due to the presence of weighting agent. The drive of the present work is to identify a suitable viscosifier to avoid settling of weighing agents in spacer and to maintain the stability of rheology admixture at elevated temperature condition. Laboratory tests were performed for compatible deformation and flow of matter with cement slurry-spacer-mud at temperature range (80-140°C) on a rotational viscometer as per the procedure of API RP 10B-2. The volumetric proportions of the cement slurry/spacer and spacer/mud admixtures were prepared with various ratios: 95/5, 75/25, 50/50, 25/75, and 5/95. Rheological compatibility of fluids (cement & spacer and mud & spacer) is evaluated by computing the R-Index Value (R) which is calculated by subtracting highest 100 rpm reading of admixture from highest rpm reading for an individual fluid for the given range of elevated temperature condition. The calculated R-Index Value can then be utilized to comment on fluid compatibility. After finalization of chemical compatibility, rheological hierarchy was achieved by incorporating the friction pressure loss with respect to discharge rate of an individual fluid for the given range of elevated temperature condition. The spacer system used achieved stable compatibility and efficient rheological hierarchy at elevated temperature cementing conditions. In addition, by comparing the results between the two different spacer systems, the role of hydration in attaining rheological compatibility is computed. This study will in turn prove helpful in figuring out the better spacer system which will play a vital role for better displacement and cementation quality.