POLYPROPYLENE GLYCOLS SURFACTANT AS ADDITIVES DRILLING FLUID FOR INJECTION WELL IN LPLT AND HPHT ENVIRONMENTS

This research is carried out to form a new formulation of drilling fluid for injection well that can be use for both high temperature high pressure (HPHT) and low temperature low pressure (LPLT) environments using non-ionic polypropylene glycol (PPG) based surfactant as an additive.
Usually for drilling wells, oil based mud are more favorable to be use because it can increase lubricity, enhance shale inhibition, and has great cleaning abilities with less viscosity. Oil based mud also withstands greater heat without breaking down. But due to its composition, oil based mud cannot decompose easily and often cause environmental issues. Therefore, having water based mud with surfactant additives is a good option to explore the potential of other drilling fluid that can be as efficient as oil based mud.
The laboratory work will be carried out to find the application of PPG in drilling fluid in which the focus will be on the improvement of LPLT and HPHT stability of conventional polymer, suspending agent (Xanthan Gum) and filtration reduction agent (PAC-LV) along with the existence of PPG based surfactant. This research will be divided into two stages and two phases in which the two stages are testing the concentration of PPG with and without presence of PAC-LV while the two phases are to determine the best concentration of PPG in mud samples and compare it with PETRONAS fluid bench mark.
Rheological and filtration properties of the drilling fluids will be conducted using standard testing apparatus, viscometer and API filter press respectively. It was observed after hot rolling at elevated temperature, mud with 0.57% PPG surfactant still maintaining high viscosity and proved to have lower fluid loss compared to the base mud. Besides, the improvement on the rheology properties was observed due to stabilization of the suspending polymers by the polyglycol system. These results showed that PPG has the potential to be use in LPLT and HPHT drilling environments.