Continuous Circulation System:A Key to Non-Stop Drilling

During drilling operations, it is obvious that a considerable amount ofmoney is spent on drilling related problems; including lost circulation,stuck pipe, and excessive mud cost. In order to decrease the percentageof non-productive time (NPT) caused by these kind of problems, theaim is to introduce Continuous Circulation System (CCS) which wasdebuted with commercial successes offshore in Egypt and Norway.Over the past few years managed pressure drilling (MPD) has made itpossible to drill reservoirs which has a narrow window between poreand fracture pressure gradients. Cycling the mud pumps off and on forconnections affects the pressure and it is a major problem for MPD.This paper presents how was CCS developed in drilling industry andreduced these problems in order to its advantages rather than MPD.Then its applications is investigated and compared the performance ofdifferent companies, which are used CCS method on various rigs. Atlast, compability of continuous circulation system in Iran is checked toappreciate how can CCS improve drilling industry in west Asia.

Keywords:

Drilling , Circulation System , ECD , MPD