Geography 2152F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Drilling Fluid, Blowout Preventer, Wellhead
4 Feb 2019
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An oil well is considered to be deep water at 1,000-4,999ft. In 2020, wells more than 400m below the sea surface will likely provide 10% of the world"s oil. The seafloor falls off the sloping continental shelf into the jumbled basin and range like terrain, with deep crayons, ocean ridges, and active mud volcanoes 500 ft high. More than 2000 barrels of oil a day seep from scattered natural bents. But the commercial deposits lie deeply buried, often beneath layers of shifting salt that are prone to undersea earthquakes. Temperatures at seafloor are near freezing, while the oil reservoirs can hit 400 degrees fahrenheit (build up bottled pressure). The drill pipe got stuck in the borderhole. Tools were sent down to find the stuck section (drillers had to back out and drill around the obstruction); drillers then had well-control problems; they flipped design parameters around.
