Oil drilling for dummies. Cyberleninka is here to help.
Bloomberg vs. Rosnedra. Calculating the drilling fluid volume for all of Russia.
Oil drilling for dummies
If you know absolutely nothing about oil extraction, you need to start by reading this article on Habr.
There are wonderful articles about drilling fluids on Wikipedia: one on the Russian Wikipedia (ours) and one on the English one (theirs)*.
More on drilling fluids: in simple terms, for insiders, for specialists.
Circulation systems for drilling fluids, just so you can see what they look like.
Books:
- F.D. Baldenko. Calculation of Drilling Equipment
- Team of authors. Typical Problems and Calculations in Drilling
- A.Yu. Dmitriev. Fundamentals of Well Drilling Technology.
This book is a bachelor’s degree course in «Oil and Gas Well Drilling» condensed into 216 pages.
The author deserves an award for the best textbook!
And now for some eye candy: catalogs of drilling fluid reagents from Mirrico and Schlumberger.
Oil and gas terms. Encyclopedia of Oil and Gas. Gazprom Glossary.
Largest drilling contractors in the world:
Cyberleninka is here to help
This time, I was able to quickly identify the necessary source articles in the Cyberleninka library.
Unlike the list I prepared for the project on Microbiological Food Contamination, there will be no summaries of the articles here.
You should start with this article: Development of drilling techniques and technology until the mid-20th century
Articles about drilling fluids:
- Basic technological indicators and composition of drilling fluids obtained from clays of the Navbakhor deposit
- Chemical composition of water-based drilling fluid filtrate as the most important quality indicator
- Improvement of drilling fluid compositions for drilling wells in complex thermobaric conditions
- Optimization of drilling fluid composition under hydrogen sulfide aggression conditions
- Highly inhibited drilling fluid
- Development of drilling fluid composition for directional well drilling considering rheological parameters of the fluid
- Research of antifoam reagents in drilling fluid composition
- Inhibiting properties of chlorine-potassium drilling fluid
- Inhibiting additives for obtaining silicate drilling reagents
- Emulsion drilling fluids — development trends in technology
- Research on the influence of emulsion drilling fluid composition on their indicators
- Assessment of drilling fluid phytotoxicity using cereal crops as an example
- Justification for using lightweight drilling mixture for drilling low-pressure formations
- Research on properties of peat-alkaline solution for drilling wells in clay rocks
- Polysalt biopolymer drilling fluid for well construction at deposits with terrigenous reservoir in Eastern Siberia
- Technology for cleaning and recycling drilling fluid
- Improvement of drilling fluid systems based on alcohol and hydrocarbon base to improve product quality
- Research on phase evaporation process in hydrocarbon-based drilling fluids
- Drilling fluids for drilling directional and vertical wells
- Research on barite-free drilling fluids
- Justification for application and research of gas-liquid mixture compositions for well washing under abnormally low formation pressure conditions
- Engineering-geological classification of drilling fluids for drilling
Articles about foam control in drilling fluids:
- Research on the influence of various reagents on foam destruction and foam prevention in drilling fluids
- Application of foams and foam plastics for increasing well casing
- Research of antifoam reagents in drilling fluid composition
- Operating parameters when developing technology for drilling wells with self-destructing foam based on «SP composite»
- Foam-forming compositions for obtaining foams with controlled destruction times
- Properties of sulfanol obtained from low molecular weight polyethylene
- Foam — a source for increasing oil recovery in a flooded reservoir
- Obtaining, researching properties and application of new emulsifiers
- Chemical reagents for drilling fluid treatment
- Antifoam agent for polysalt drilling fluid
- Microphotographs of drilling foams as a means of expanding the information component in scientific research
- Drilling reagents from domestic raw materials
- On the application of new compositions of surface-active substances for creating a foam-forming reagent
- Development of a low-toxic foam composition with controlled destruction times and the change of its parameters when introducing rock cuttings
- Modification of lignosulfonates of drilling washing fluids during operation of oil and gas wells at deposits in the Republic of Bashkortostan
- Well damper
- Structural features of gas-liquid mixtures
- Influence of geological factors on the composition of foam reagents for drilling exploration wells
- Development of a fundamental technological scheme for obtaining granulated self-destructing foam composite
Bloomberg vs. Rosnedra
In early January 2024, articles began appearing online stating that Russia had set a record for oil well drilling in 2023.
A total of 28,100 kilometers were drilled!
For comparison, the railway from Moscow to Vladivostok is 9,289 kilometers long.
There are quite a few such articles, but the most surprising thing is that they all cite the American agency Bloomberg as the source of information.
I can’t explain this fact—why does a foreign agency know about the greatest achievements of our drillers, while Rosnedra knows nothing?
Picture 1. A search for the «record for drilling oil wells» on the official website of Rosnedra,
Russia’s subsoil agency, yields no results, highlighting the information gap mentioned in the article
Calculating the fluid volume for all of Russia
Nevertheless, the record set by our drillers is known (thanks to Bloomberg).
Just for fun, let’s estimate the volume of drilling fluid needed for all the new wells drilled in Russia in 2023.
We’ll grab the drilling fluid volume calculator from this page, which is useful for a rough cost estimate, including expensive chemical additives.
Picture 2. An online calculator estimating the volume of drilling fluid needed for all 28,100 km of wells drilled.
The result, nearly 6 million cubic meters, forms the basis for the subsequent calculations in the article
6 million cubic meters
How much is that? Who the hell knows.
We need to convert it into something more familiar, like railway tank cars.
The capacity of a standard four-axle tank car is 60 tons, and its volume is 60 cubic meters.
Let’s pour 6,000,000 cubic meters of fluid into standard tank cars. That gives us 100,000 tank cars of fluid.
Now, let’s remember that the density of a clay-based fluid is greater than water, which gives us, as a ballpark figure, 120,000 tank cars.
Let’s do one last conversion. If we line them up end-to-end, what would the total length be?
The length of a tank car between its couplings is about 12 meters.
Multiply 120,000 tank cars by their 12-meter length, and you get 1,440 kilometers of continuous tank cars.
From Moscow to St. Petersburg—and back.
So, in the end, I browsed the internet, read 50 pages of books, processed all the links using my new workflow, and started to analyze everything I’d learned and read.
*The author intentionally uses a colloquial and grammatically incorrect word in the original Russian text («ихней» instead of «их») for stylistic effect, to create a more informal tone.
Foam suppressants in drilling fluids. Moscow Pre-Professional Olympiad for Schoolchildren.
1. Vote with your head, not your heart—or you lose. Calculations, risks, and comfortable conditions. Final case selection→
2. Hello, Defoamers: a case study on accessing foreign resources, Moscow libraries, and teamwork→
3. Oil drilling for dummies. Cyberleninka is here to help.
Bloomberg vs. Rosnedra. Calculating the drilling fluid volume for all of Russia→
4. Foam and its formation processes.
Composition of drilling fluid and the causes of foaming→
5. Drilling fluid components→
6. Types of defoamers and their impact on foam formation in drilling fluids.
An analysis of silicone defoamer components→
7. Performance requirements for silicone defoamers in drilling fluids: selecting fillers and emulsifiers→
8. Optimal component ratio and process parameters for the production of a polydimethylsiloxane-based defoamer→
9. Manufacturing process for a polydimethylsiloxane-based antifoam.
Trial formulations for stability testing→
10. Physical and chemical operating conditions for drilling fluids.
Featuring alkyl sulfates and lignosulfonates→
11. Unused material from a case study: a collection of online Info on defoamers→
Other articles about my school projects→
This article in Russian→