Drilling Fluid Design for Hydrate Well

Gas hydrate research in the last two decades has taken different directions ranging from
ways to understand the safe and economical production of this enormous resource to
drilling problems. Gas hydrates are ice-like structures of a water lattice with cavities,
which contain guest gases. Gas hydrates are stable at low temperatures and high
pressures. The quantity of energy trapped in gas hydrates all over the world is about
twice the amount found in all recoverable fossil fuels today[ I]. Thus, a careful drilling
practice used in conjunction with a drilling fluid is a must to evade the various problems
encountered in the course of a drilling operation through gas hydrate formation.
This report contains five chapters which are the introduction, literature review
methodology, results and discussions and the conclusion. In the first chapter, the
introduction explains about the background study, problem statement and also the main
objectives of the project. The main objective of the project is to design a drilling fluid
for hydrate well. The second chapter of this report stated the theory and literature review
of the gas hydrates and drilling fluids. This report concentrates around the literature
review on the history of hydrate research, properties, characteristics, types of structure
for hydrate, and the stability of gas hydrates. The literature review is taken mostly from
journals of many previous studies about gas hydrates formation encountered during
drilling operation. Next, the third chapter explains about the methodology of the project.
Under the methodology section, the author includes a project activities flow chart and
also explains about the tools required to execute the project. The related equipment for
the test procedure involves mixer, mud balance, viscometer, HTHP and API filter press.
The mud properties such as density, plastic viscosity, yield point, ~el strength and
filtration rate will be measured through the exPfriment in the laboratory. This project
will be carried out in two semesters. The milestone for the project work is presented
nicely in a Gantt chart. Lastly, the conclusion statfs the planned activities for the project
and its feasibility within the scope and time frame.