Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
In recent years, there have been considerable advances in the technology required
to drill a deepwater well and this has opened up new frontiers for exploration and
production. In particular, the Atlantic Margin to the west of the Shetlands on the UK
Continental Shelf, Norway, West Africa, Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico have seen
significant advances in the water depths that wells have been drilled and that fields
have been developed. As a result the number of drilling vessels a nd associated
equipment capable of operating in a deepwater environment has increased
significantly. Prior to the efficiency gains demonstrated through new equipment, and
associated work processes, safety issues were driving rig floor automation. Thus
75% of all operating areas became a subject of review w.r.t. performance
improvements.
In deepwater operations due to the increased distance required to transport material
and equipment from the drillfloor to the seabed and with increased day rate costs of
larger fit for purpose drilling units required. Rig efficiency is a prime candidate to
improve upon in order to reduce operating times and drilling costs.
Figure 1: Man hours breakdown, deepwater GOM.
Other
3%
Rig Up
14%
Safety
Haz Substance
Hand Tools
Manual
Dropped Object
1%
3%
Handling
Tongs
Pressure
(Mech. Failure)
& Slips
3%
5%
38%
Dropped Load
11%
Manually
Racking Pipe
18%
Trips
21%
towards being key drivers to delivering safety statistics to a more desirable level.
Equipment should be fit for purpose, operationally functional, simple to operate, with
critical spares requirements fully assessed.
Adequate deck load and deck space should be available to store complete riser together
with drilling tubulars, bulk, casing etc.
Tensioner capacity must be adequate to capably handle the maximum water depth at a
predetermined maximum mud weight.
Adequate power must be available to continue drilling while maintaining position in
rough weather.
Station keeping ability is required that must have considered the rigs stability
characteristics and anticipated operating environments.
10 or 12 point anchoring system are preferred, with high holding power anchors to suit
softer seabed condition.
Moonpool facilities to efficiently deploy and launch ROV and related sub sea equipment.
A planned Maintenance system to afford quality assurance of all equipment.
High pressure 7500psi circulating pipe work, 3 or 4 1600-2200HHP triplex mud pumps
to be able to clean the wellbore and the marine riser as required.
Large variable deck load, deck space, with good transportation capabilities are to carry
and transport all drilling tools and equipment in all work environments.
Adequate mud pit and reserve capacity > 5000 bbls recommended.
Efficient BOP and riser handling system
20 - 25 ft compensator preferably, Crown mounted and/or Active system
Adequate skidding areas and space for simultaneously handling sub sea trees, sub sea
equipment, in addition to normal drilling requirements
Satellite rig positioning capabilities ( To be used in spud / hole location )
A competent and experienced drilling team
Personnel
Experienced personne l are essential to ensuring and maintaining satisfactory
performance especially so, when performing non standard operations typified during
deepwater drilling operations.
Personnel requirements
Use specialists with local area knowledge and experience when considering;
Continuity and means to ensure the industry experts are available when required.
Proper scheduling, affording standby rates are means to ensure this.
Provide adequate training and development for essential personnel, i.e. rig site
training, pre-spud meetings
Provide a well documented drilling lessons learned dossier
Update dossier as lessons are learned to ensure organisational learning exists
Provide two sub sea engineers for running/pulling BOPs / risers, sub sea equipment
Provide two mud engineers when drilling top surface and intermediate sections.
Provide additional crane drivers, roughnecks and roustabouts during key
operations to ensure operational efficiency can be maintained, safely and
effectively.
Costs savings:
Operational activity
30 hanger
Drill 26 hole
20 casing
Drill 17 hole
Run 13 3/8 casing
Drill 12 hole
12 bit trip 1
12 bit trip 2
Run 9 5/8 casing
Drill 8 hole
8 bit trip 1
8 bit trip 2
Run 7 liner
Post logging wiper trip
Additional trips wiper/coring
Trip in
(ft)
Trip out
(ft)
Total trip
(ft)
4,000
4,250
4,250
5,850
8,250
10,100
5,840
5,700
10,000
10,000
12,700
15,300
18,000
18,000
18,700
19,300
20,000
20,000
4,000
10,000
4,000
18,000
12,700
15,300
4,000
20,000
19,300
20,000
17,500
20,000
9,840
15,700
14,000
28,000
25,400
30,600
22,000
38,000
38,000
39,300
37,500
40,000
40,000
Indeed pipe racking systems (PRS) have been demonstrated to trip at a 60-sec slipto-slip time, rarely (since the removal of the spinning chain) can a drilling crew trip
in/out at such a speeds, even in cased hole. Also unlike with a manual drill crew,
Pipe Racking Systems are now more flexible and adaptable in design to handle 6 5/8
drill pipe as easily as 4 -in. drill pipe and can produce consistent motions at speeds
exceeding operational requirements.
Pipe handling
Vertical pipe racking
Vertical pipe racking is certainly one of the newest technologies that have increased
deepwater capability, safety, and efficiency in new offshore rigs built in the last three
years.
They permit operations off the drilling critical path and enable expanded operational
efficiency options.
Figure 3: Vertical pipe racking system
An auxiliary opening in the rig floor other than the opening for the rotary table.
permits the makeup or breakout of stands of drill pipe or casing off the critical path of
drilling operations. Such patented process requires the rig to have the ability to hoist
the stand and transport it to the setback area without affecting well-center
operations. E.g. Varcos Foxhole system where doubles of 13 3 / 8-in. casing were made up in
the Foxhole during a rig move and racked vertically in the derrick ready to be run later in the
drilling program. When it came time to run the casing in the hole, only half the
makeup connections were required on the critical path and the casing string was
stationary for less time down hole, increasing the probability of a successful run.
More casing strings.
As the industry continues developing deepwater fields we see more and more
intermediate strings used in casing programs. A drilling rigs ability to make up and
rack back an entire casing string in sta nds of doubles or triples in a fingerboard
capable of racking a range of casing sizes provides significant efficiency gains for
the operator. Rigs capable of racking quadruple length casing stands can potentially
avoid an entire wiper trip by tripping in the hole with 135-ft stands of casing.
Running tubulars
Figure 4: Varco PRS systems
Figure 4
illustrates
When using a guide lineless system, the bit is set on the bottom without guidance
and the hole for the conductor is drilled. When running the conductor, observation by
ROV camera is used when stabbing the conductor into the hole. The wellhead on the
conductor will not have a PGB installed around it., but is equipped with a specially
designed guide funnel (with bulls eyes attached) to be used both when guiding bits
into the wellhead and when installing the BOP stack after having run surface string
and high pressure wellhead housing.
Drilling vessel and guiding systems.
The two types of drilling vessels used are either dynamically positioned vessels or
vessels moored on the deepwater drilling location. For depths ranging from 700m to
1500m, a vessel moored on location would need a chain-wire type mooring system. Here
even with maximum tension on the mooring lines, the mooring in such deep waters
would entail a wide movement amplitude for the vessel. The vessels ability to keep
a position over the sub sea wellhead would be wind and current dependent, and a
mooring line failure during bad weather would be likely to bring the vessel
uncontrollably away from its position over the sub sea wellhead and make it
necessary to perform an emergency riser disconnect from the BOP.
A dynamically positioned drilling vessel eliminate the risks of sudden drift-off during
drilling operations due to mooring line failure and should be able to keep its position
over the sub sea wellhead with a much higher reliability a nd accuracy independent of
weather conditions than a moored vessel could do.
A dynamically positioned drilling vessel is therefore obviously to be preferred for
deep water drilling operations. I.e. drill ship or semi-submersible drilling.
A semi-submersible rig will have better heave, pitch and roll characteristics than a
drill ship and may therefore have less downtime due to bad weather conditions. The
risk of personnel accidents due to heave, pitch and roll motions during the work
would then also be reduced. The final choice of vessel, however, must rest with the
operator and must also be based on evaluation in each specific case of riser
analysis, station keeping ability and equipment reliability.
The drilling system however to be used by a dynamically positioned drilling vessel in
deepwater should be a guideline less system. This eliminates the safety risk of
guidelines breaking and becoming entangled in the BOP stack during critical
situations, e.g. an emergency riser disconnect from the BOP in bad weather situations where
a sudden drift-off was imminent or happened.
Two factors exist for the safe and operationally successful use of the guideline less
system in deep water drilling;
1. accurate determination of the well position at seabed
2. utilization of ROV equipment and services.
Re-entry equipment.
Remote operated vehicles (ROV)
As already seen from the discussion above, ROV equipment and services will play a
key role in a deep water drilling operation with a guide lineless drilling system. (see
ROV section.))
Guide lineless wellhead equipment.
Sub sea wellhead equipment for guide lineless re-entry operations is manufactured
by Vetco, Cameron Iron Works, Hughes Offshore and Dril-Quip. he principal
difference between guide lineless and standard wellhead/guidebase designs is that
various types of guide funnel arrangement are used to guide tools into the wellbore
or the BOP stack onto the wellhead as opposed to using vertical guide posts and
guide lines.
Vetco developed the first guide lineless wellhead equipment for use with the drillship
SEDCO 445. The primary guidance feature of the Vetco system is a large truncated
conical funnel (called GRA frame and the O.D. of 156) installed around the 30
wellhead of the conductor.
The Cameron guide lineless design employs a smaller diameter funnel (45
diameter) to guide bits or casing into the wellhead and a large inverted funnel
(137"diameter) mounted on the bottom of the BOP stack to guide it onto the
wellhead.
The Hughes guide lineless system uses a single large funnel (112 diameter) to
guide bits or casing into the wellbore and the BOP stack over the wellhead. The
Hughes design is such that standard Hughes guideline-type equipment can be
converted to the g uide lineless configuration.
Dril-quip manufactured for their wellhead system various types of guide funnels to be
installed around the conductor wellhead for guide lineless drilling in accordance with
customer requirements. The general Dril-Quip system is shown in Figure 4 in this
section.
Temporary Guide Base (TGB)
There are different types of TGB that can be used when drilling in deep water.
For guide lineless drilling, however, there is no particular advantage in using a TGB
since there will be no guidelines back to surface. A TGB will take away the
advantage of using the cratering of the 36 hole as a stabbing guide when running
the 30 conductor. If the wellhead is out of vertical when the conductor is landed, a
TGB will also make it difficult/impossible to correct this by holding the wellhead
vertical while the cement sets. (The vertically of the wellhead is checked by a bulls eye
mounted on the wellhead and ROV observation of the bulls eye before and after cementing).
Permanent Guide Base (PGB)
In guide lineless drilling the standard type PGB with guidelines back to surface is not
used. As mentioned earlier, various types of guide funnel assemblies are used
instead.
Due to the long riser with buoyancy required to be used in deep water drilling
operations the wellhead housings can be exposed to high bending moments. To
reduce the stresses in the housings, the wall thickness of the conductor housing
should be at least 1.5.