Uncertainty Evaluation of Safe Mud Weight Window Utilizing the Reliability Assessment Method

Tianshou Ma, Tao Tang, Ping Chen and Chunhe Yang
Additional contact information
Tianshou Ma: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Tao Tang: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Ping Chen: State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu 610500, China
Chunhe Yang: State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-31

Abstract: Due to the uncertainty of formation properties and improper wellbore stability analysis methods, the input parameters are often uncertain and the required mud weight to prevent wellbore collapse is too large, which might cause an incorrect result. However, the uncertainty evaluation of input parameters and their influence on safe mud weight window (SMWW) is seldom investigated. Therefore, the present paper aims to propose an uncertain evaluation method to evaluate the uncertainty of SMWW. The reliability assessment theory was introduced, and the uncertain SMWW model was proposed by involving the tolerable breakout, the Mogi-Coulomb (MG-C) criterion and the reliability assessment theory. The influence of uncertain parameters on wellbore collapse, wellbore fracture and SMWW were systematically simulated and investigated by utilizing Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, the field observation of well SC-101X was reported and discussed. The results indicated that the MG-C criterion and tolerable breakout is recommended for wellbore stability analysis. The higher the coefficient of variance is, the higher the level of uncertainty is, the larger the impact on SMWW will be, and the higher the risk of well kick, wellbore collapse and fracture will be. The uncertainty of basic parameters has a very significant impact on SMWW, and it cannot be ignored. For well SC-101X, the SMWW predicted by analytical solution is 0.9921–1.6020 g/cm 3 , compared to the SMWW estimated by the reliability assessment method, the reliability assessment method tends to give a very narrow SMWW of 1.0756–1.0935 g/cm 3 and its probability is only 80%, and the field observation for well kick and wellbore fracture verified the analysis results. For narrow SMWW formation drilling, some kinds of advanced technology, such as the underbalanced drilling (UBD), managed pressure drilling (MPD), micro-flow drilling (MFD) and wider the SMWW, can be utilized to maintain drilling safety.

Keywords: safe mud weight window; wellbore stability; reliability assessment method; uncertainty evaluation; collapse pressure; fracture pressure; pore pressure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/5/942/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/5/942/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:12:y:2019:i:5:p:942-:d:213062

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().