Pump pressure manipulation during MPD connection

Abstract

Over time the remaining oil prospects are becoming harder to drill and managed pressure drilling is a tool that can be used to reach target depth in depleted reservoirs or similar narrow margin scenarios. In any narrow margin drilling scenario, a critical part of the operation is going to be the tripping in/out along with the ramping of pumps. This thesis investigates the influences of pump ramping schemes during connections of new standpipe on bottom hole pressures by using a simulator called openlabdrilling developed by IRIS. The case study is conducted by using a matlab interface connected to the openlabdrilling simulator through their API and using a slight modification of the FlowSweep_BHPcontrol code allowed for automatic control of the choke opening with the PI controller that was included in the code bundle from openlabdrilling.