Modeling ultra-deepwater blowouts and dynamic kills and the resulting blowout control best practices recommendations
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In response to the drilling industry breaching new frontiers, specifically ultra-deep waters (5,000 ft or more of water depth), new blowout control measures are necessary. This paper outlines a study into the control of ultra-deepwater blowouts using the dynamic kill technique. 1 The study was conducted using a newly developed dynamic kill simulator, COMASim, to model blowout initial conditions and blowout control in simple wellbore geometries. The simulator was validated theoretically through textbook examples. 1 The simulation runs first entailed initial condition analyses of the various blowout conditions for an array of wild well conditions. Next, the simulator was used to determine the dynamic kill requirements to control these blowouts based on a range of relief well parameters. 1 The results showed that ultra-deep waters definitely have an effect on the blowing conditions due to the increased hydrostatic pressure of the water. Initial conditions were also significantly affected by the length of openhole section. 1 The dynamic kill requirements were adversely affected as the projected relief wells became longer. In addition to relief well parameters and blowout flowrate, the dynamic kill requirements were also related to the wild wellbore drillstring status. 1 This study has highlighted several key trends and interesting future research topics in the area of ultra-deepwater blowouts and control of these blowouts. 1 Copyright 2005, SPE/IADC Drilling Conference.
