«Onshore and offshore oil and gas well construction»

On the problem of guiding a stopper well to the wellbore of a failing well during offshore drilling

UDC: 629.563(2)+629.563(3)+622.24
DOI: -

Authors:

¹ Gazprom VNIIGAZ, Moscow, Russia

Keywords: drilling in the sea, offshore drilling, offshore well construction, offshore, open flow

Annotation:

In case of occurrence of an uncontrolled oil blowout offshore and the impossibility of bringing the well under control using standard technical means, there used a radical method of preventing the blowout – construction of a special stopper well, which is drilled inside the wellbore of the failing well and allows for the well to be stopped by injecting high-density killing fluid. Guiding the wellbore of such a well to the wellbore of the failing well is accomplished by using geophysical instruments – active or passive magnetic rangefinders. The use of rangefinders requires the presence of metal in the wellbore of the failing well – it could be either a casing, string, or a tubing. The author of the article considers one alternative method of guiding a stopper well to the wellbore of the failing well to eliminate the blowout. The bottomhole of the stopper well should pass into the zone above the production casing string shoe of the emergency well, within the interval of stable, impermeable rock formations.

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