Biography

Currently some of the most challenging wells being drilled by our industry are located in deepwater zones in the GOM. Many of those wells are in water depths of 8,000 ft or more and some are targeting reservoirs around 30,000 ft and beyond.

Drilling engineers face many challenges while planning drilling and completion operations for such wells. There are not many rigs available to drill in ultra-deepwater, and even the rigs capable of operating in this environment may have limitations ranging from the maximum mud weight possible to be used, due to riser restrictions, to the hook load capability to run very heavy intermediate casings that will easily surpass one million pounds.

The well itself may present many problems including high pressure and high temperature formations, the need of multiple casing strings, unstable formations, hole cleaning, unexpected presence of tar zones, huge layers of salt, the need to underream, and difficulty obtaining an efficient evaluation.

This talk will present a practical experience on dealing with many of these problems while drilling and completing the Cascade and Chinook wells. The development of those prospects will have the first production wells in the lower tertiary in the GOM and also the first FPSO production system implemented in the United States.