Monitoring and control strategies to manage pressure fluctuations during oil well drilling

Abstract During drilling the mud flows through the drill string and exits through the choke valve. The mud density range has as constraints: pore pressure (minimum limit) and fracture pressure (maximum limit). In fact, annulus bottomhole (downhole) pressure needs to be higher than pore pressure, in order to prevent kick, and smaller than fracture pressure, for avoiding mud loss and formation damage. Experimental and simulation studies were implemented in order build a monitoring – diagnosing tool working together with a decision making routine based on an adaptive control scheme that employs gain scheduling. An experimental unit was built, presenting the most important characteristics of the drilling process. The transient nature of annulus bottomhole pressure is due to the process inherent disturbances: rheology, rate of penetration (ROP), kick and mud loss, which were all implemented at the experimental unit. The major objective of the present paper is using the experimental plant and a phenomenological model for implementing real time process automation, in order to assure drilling inside operational window, using in line measurements for flow and density disturbances under circulation loss and kick scenarios.