BARITE SAG MEASUREMENT AND MANAGEMENT WITH NEW SETUP AND NEW FORMULATION DRILLING FLUID

Barite Sag is an oilfield term used to describe considerable variations while circulating bottoms up following operations such as tripping pipe and logging where the drilling fluid has not been circulating for an extended period of time. This may lead to problems such as lost circulation, well control difficulties and stuck pipe in oil industry. Since in high pressure deviated wells torque and drag is high in comparison to vertical wells, oil based muds are used for reduction of friction factor. High mud weight drilling fluid preparation with oil based muds increases solid content and may be creates some problems, for this reason in some oilfields such as Iran water base mud is used inevitably. In this paper, after setting up new experimental apparatus the effect of inclination and mud weight are investigated on barite sag in static condition. Main purpose of this work is management of barite sag due to using two new water based drilling fluid formulations. It is seen that barite sag potential reduced with these drilling fluids.

Keywords:

Barite sag , Mud weight variation , Weight material , Settling