MPD Case and Trend-Study Operational Time Analysis

Abstract

Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) is a pressure control and management-technology that has been around for over a decade and that is believed by service providers to have the potential of highly in-creased use in the future. Despite this there is still a limited amount of acceptance and use of the tech-nology offshore by oil companies today, and operators want to see more detailed case studies and cost benefit analysis on MPD operations before they commit to using the technology.

There are not many MPD case studies available today, and the ones that exits focus exclusively on the positive effects of MPD and do not include the time required to install and test the MPD system before operations can take place. There are also few case studies available on multiple wells from the same field, and therefore a limited amount of information available on any effect that increased knowledge and experience among operators has on operations and results.

This report includes a case and trend-study on the MPD operations that have been performed at the two HPTH fields, Elgin and Kvitebjørn. MPD was used, with success, for different reasons and to different extents at the two fields.

At Elgin there are two wells that have been drilled using MPD mainly to manage influxes and losses. At Kvitebjørn there are five wells that have been drilled using MPD to maintain a constant bottomhole pressure. An analytic time analysis, based on the daily drilling reports from the MPD operations, has been conducted on each well on the main operations that were required for running the MPD opera-tions. The results from this analysis are included in the report.

The results from the time analysis show that installing the MPD system and training and testing for the MPD operations required a significant amount of additional time when compared to conventional drilling operations. The time analysis also included additional operations to installation and training and testing the MPD system. The results from the time analysis shows that also these operations created additional time compared to conventional drilling operations.

In total the results from the analysis show that performing an MPD operation requires a significant amount of time and that difficult drilling challenges should be present for making MPD a profitable solution for drilling a well.