Author(s)

Ali K. Darwesh, Thorkild Maack Rasmussen, Nadhir Al-Ansari

Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Lulea University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden.

Well control techniques are used in oil and gas drilling operations to control bottom hole pressure and avoid any fluid influx from formation to the well. These techniques are highly important near the pay zone in term of time. Controlling formation fluid pressure and thereby the formations behavior in a predictable fashion will help toward more optimized environmental friendly drilling operation. Time consumed to control the formation fluid pressure will range between few hours to many days. This paper discusses hydrostatic pressure distribution and changes near the pay zone for one oil blocks in Kurdistan, in the northern part of Iraq. Obtaining homogeneous increase in some drilling fluid properties will help the engineer to better interpret sampling of the lithological columns and reduce potential hole problems and operation time.

Fluid Pressure, Well Control, Drilling Fluid, Formation, Pay Zone

Darwesh, A. , Rasmussen, T. and Al-Ansari, N. (2017) Time Optimizing near the Pay Zone. Engineering, 9, 848-859. doi: 10.4236/eng.2017.910050.