1.

0 Introduction
1.1 Experiment Background
In producing crude oil from a reservoir, located thousands of feet in the earth's must, a
production hole needs to be drilled and later completed to form a conduit between the
reservoir and surface. The success of drilling a production hole does not depend solely on the
capability of the stale-of-the-art drilling equipments, but it is also found to be relied on the
chilling mud used. In the drilling activities, drilling mud is usually used to remove cuttings
from the borehole, to prolong bit's life, to minimise fluid loss, to control well pressure.
Drilling mud should be able to impose sufficient hydrostatic pressure, normally in the
range of 250 psi to 450 psi higher than the formation pressure. Failure to produce the
expected hydrostatic pressure will initiate the influx of formation fluid a phenomenon
commonly known as well kick - which may lead to blowout.
In order to increase mud weight to a predetermined value, barite - the principle
weighting material used in the petroleum industry - added into the mud. Barite is the
commercial name for barium sulphate - an inert substance .Barite reserves could be found in
many places the likes of Tatman River of Terengganis , Cini Lake of Pahang, The
consumption of barite in the Malaysia petroleum industry is around 20.600 tonnes annually.
1.2 Objective
The objective of this experiment is to study the effect of weighting materials on mud
properties.
1.3 Scope of experiment
The main purpose of drilling fluids is to determine whether it is capable to function as
required (referring to American Petroleum Institute, Recommended Practice for Standard
Procedure For Testing Drilling Fluids (API RP 13B), Dallas, Texas). Mud properties which
are compulsory to determine are:
a)

Mud density (ppg)

b)

Plastic viscosity (cp)

c)

Apparent viscosity (cp)

d)

Yield point (ib/100ft2)

e)

Gel strength (10 sec and 10 minutes)

f)

Ph

g)

Filtration (cc) for 30 minutes

h)

Mud cake thickness

i)

Volume basis and Weight basis calculation on mud

Appendices
SAMPLE CALCULATION
Plastic viscosity, p = 600 300
= 3.0-2.5= 0.5 cp
Apparent viscosity, a = 600 / 2
= 3/2 = 1.5 cp
Yield Point, Yb (Ib/100ft2) = 300 -p
= 2.5 0.5 = 2.0 cp
Average mud cake thickness = (3.98 + 4.23 + 3.89 + 4.08 + 4.32) mm / 5
= 4.10 mm
Weight basis :

Rearranging the equation:

6.0 Suggestion

There are few errors that we encountered while conducting the experiment. One of it is, due
to the adhesive force of the water drops on the beaker, when transferring the mud from one
beaker to another it will cause the small depletion of the total volume. Hence, to avoid it we
need to ensure that the measuring cylinder/beaker is dry and clean up before using. Also,
since the testing of the mud characteristics takes a long time, furthermore with only two
hours time for the drilling laboratory period, makes the work become a hassle. Thus, from
the total mud, it needs to be divided among all team member so that the testing can be done
simultaneously. Besides that, when taking a reading in any measurement, let the same person
do it because to avoid the parallax error due to ones vision.