The world is dependent on the production of oil and gas, and every day the demand
increases. Technologies have to keep up with the demand of this resource to keep the
world running. Since hydrocarbons are finite and will eventually run out, the increasing
demand of oil and gas is the impetus to search for oil in more difficult and challenging
areas. One challenging area is offshore in ultradeep water, with water depths greater than
5000 ft. This is the new arena for drilling technology. Unfortunately with greater
challenges there are greater risks of losing control and blowing out a well. A dynamic
kill simulator was developed in late 2004 to model initial conditions of a blowout in
ultradeep water and to calculate the minimum kill rate required to kill a blowing well
using the dynamic kill method. The simulator was simple and efficient, but had
limitations; only vertical wells could be simulated. To keep up with technology,
modifications were made to the simulator to model directional wells. COMASim
(Cherokee, Offshore Technology Research Center, Minerals Management Service, Texas
A&M Simulator) is the name of the dynamic kill simulator. The new version,
COMASim1.0, has the ability to model almost any type of wellbore geometry when
provided the measured and vertical depths of the well.
Eighteen models with varying wellbore geometry were simulated to examine the effects
of wellbore geometry on the minimum kill rate requirement. The main observation was
that lower kill rate requirement was needed in wells with larger measured depth. COMASim 1.0 cannot determine whether the inputs provided by the user are practical;
COMASim 1.0 can only determine if the inputs are incorrect, inconsistent or cannot be
computed. If unreasonable drilling scenarios are input, unreasonable outputs will result.
COMASim1.0 adds greater functionality to the previous version while maintaining the
original framework and simplicity of calculations and usage.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/2703 |
| Date | 01 November 2005 |
| Creators | Meier, Hector Ulysses |
| Contributors | Schubert, Jerome J. |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | 864043 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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