ABSTRACT
Loss of well control is an increasingly low probability event due to the employment of proper drilling practices and design combined with industry wide controls and barriers. The final well-control barrier consists of a blowout preventer (BOP) which is a series of valves designed to seal around or shear off obstructions that might be present in the wellbore to provide a seal. Actuating these valves isolates the well from the drilling rig and the external environment. Although a properly functioning BOP reduces drilling risks, concerns still exist, particularly in sensitive environments. Additional well-control tools could further reduce risk to increase the safety of drilling operations and reduce the potential for impacts to the environment.
The paper describes a novel concept for well control that can be added to existing systems and activated if BOP valves fail to seal and isolate a well. The concept involves the injection of a liquid monomer and catalyst into the BOP stack below the leak point. The appropriate monomer and catalyst will rapidly polymerize to form a solid polymer plug capable of sealing off the well. Preliminary experiments have shown that dicyclopentadiene (DCPD) based resins catalyzed by Grubbs Catalyst Technology produce polymers that have the required properties to withstand axial stresses up to 15,000 psi and resist any significant extrusion or deformation. Likewise, reactivity studies have shown that the system can react quickly enough to match targeted residence times within the BOP stack. These results, along with recent experiments using a scale-model testing will also be discussed.