OPEN HOLE GRAVEL PACKING WITH JATROPHA ESTER BASED FLUIDS

For the past years, mud engineers had been running the gravel packing completion with two
types of drilling fluid which are oil based drilling fluid while on the top part of the well and then
switching to water based reservoir drilling fluid (RDF) when they reach the target zone. Even
though it is a weU-known fact that oil based drilling fluid has many advantage, the engineers do
not want to take the risk of doing something that is irregular. However, the usage of oil based
RDF for gravel packing completion is increasing nowadays due to the increasing number of
successful gravel packing completion project over the years. This brings an opportunity to look
at the potential of a RDF which is based on Ester-based fluid produced from the Jatropha oil.
Since Jatropha oil has untapped potential for being a RDF, I decided to see if it is applicable for
gravel packing completion. There will be many parameters to look at but this project wilJ be
focused on one of the important aspect in gravel packing completion which is the fonnation of
filter cake. The filter cake that will be produced when the fluid meets the surface of a porous
medium needs to be cleaned before the completion is considered complete. This is because the
filter cake will disturb the porosity of the gravel packing and will cause drop in productivity. The
main purpose of this project will be to produce the filter cake by running the Jatropha Esterbased
fluid through a dynamic filter press machine. After that, a cleanup fluid (acid or surfactant)
will be used to clean it and see if it is possible to destroy the filter cake. This parameter is very
important because if the filter cake that is produced by the Jatropha Ester-based fluid is too thick
and cannot be cleaned, then its potential for gravel packing application would be lessen.