| Popis: |
Through the years, significant advancements have been achieved with respect to well design, depths drilled, and overall drilling efficiencies. However, in spite of all of these advancements, one major consistent challenge facing the drilling community is the prevalence of downhole vibrations, with specific emphasis on lateral vibrations and shocks. These lateral shocks can be attributed to numerous drilling environmental challenges, and with the exponential increase in long reach laterals, well profiles, and formation changes, the increase in potential for significant shocks to cause damage to key bottom hole assembly (BHA) components is increased as well. To mitigate potential BHA damage, increase ROP, and provide a significant increase in bit life, a novel technology has been developed to tackle these challenges. This vibration dissipation and mitigation tool has proven performance in both land and offshore applications, providing marked improvements over previous conventional solutions. When using this technology in the Gulf of Mexico, ROP improvements yielding an excess of 50% as well as a substantial stick slip reduction were observed, ultimately reducing time drilled and overall drilling costs. The application of this innovative vibration mitigation and reduction technology is unique, especially in comparison to conventional solutions seeking to reduce vibration. Rather than seeking to simply absorb vibrations caused by drill string dynamics as with conventional solutions, this technology seeks to actively change the dynamics of the drill string to prevent these vibrations from ever occurring while offering a system for dissipating the residual vibrations. As this paper will demonstrate, this new technology has proven to successfully provide more control to the driller in applications once thought to be without a solution to such vibrational challenges. This paper will discuss the advantages of this formative technology along with providing case history and accompanying supporting run data to quantify the performance of this innovative technology. |
