UBD Applications in WELLFLO - A History

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UBD APPLICATIONS IN WELLFLO - A HISTORY

Using gas-liquid mixtures as drilling fluids has now become relatively common, especially in
under-balanced drilling (UBD) operations, where it is necessary to maintain close control of
hydraulic pressure gains and losses to maintain the underbalanced condition at the bottom of
the well. On the other hand, the application of multiphase flow technology to the analysis of the
flow behaviour of such drilling fluids is a relatively recent development; Butler and Gregory
(1995) published one of the first papers on this subject. The use of these fluids, coupled with
the stringent requirements of maintaining control of the down-hole pressure, has spurred the
development of computer software capable of applying multiphase flow hydraulics to the
modelling of these wells.
SPT Group Limited (formerly Neotechnology Consultants Ltd. or Neotec) of Calgary, has now
been involved in such development for more than ten years. Over that period, numerous
modifications have been made to SPTs well design and performance analysis software module
WELLFLO to enable it to better handle the peculiarities of drilling applications. These
developments, which represented a classic evolutionary process, were all carried out in close
cooperation with drilling companies involved in UBD operations, and from the outset,
WELLFLO has been used by those companies to engineer their UBD projects. Such
companies as Weatherford, Northland, Halliburton, Nowsco-Fracmaster, Schlumberger, Blade
Energy Partners, Flow Drilling, Deutag, Impact Engineering, Leading Edge Advantage, Frontier,
Exxon Mobil, Shell, PDO, BP, and Kufpec, have all since acquired licenses.
In fact, this development process culminated in the release in the Fall of 1999 of a completely
new, enhanced, and redesigned version of the software, marketed as WELLFLO, which has
been written in C++ and is fully compatible with Windows NT/ME/2000/XP. While this new
program is heavily based on its predecessor, SPT has also used the opportunity to improve the
look, feel, capabilities, and calculation accuracy of the software, while preserving the technical
competence and reliability that the company has become known to provide.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the nature of the flow of gas, liquid, and gas-liquid mixtures is not
much different in drilling operations than what one encounters in typical production and injection
wells. The adaptations to our software have thus not required substantive changes to the
calculation engine, but rather, to the variety and differences in the description of the geometries
and the complications associated with commingling of production fluids with the drilling fluids.
Many of the required modifications addressed the use of terminology that is more familiar to
drilling engineers as opposed to production engineers. Thus, modifications were required to
address differences in the way that flow rates, velocities, and physical characteristics of the well
are normally expressed. For the most part, however, improvements to the calculations have
simply occurred in the course of our on-going commitment to the development of multiphase
flow technology for all applications.
SPT (formerly Neotec) is not a newcomer to simulation of well hydraulics. The company was
incorporated in 1972 as a technology and consulting company; the first commercial release of
Neotecs pipeline hydraulics software PIPEFLO came in 1974, which was followed by
WELLFLO in 1976. Since then, these products have been used, and validated, in every
hydrocarbon producing area in the world. A classical dilemma for software developers,
however, is that most of the validation information that they receive is only anecdotal. Our
clients frequently report, in a qualitative way, their successes and satisfactions for particular
projects, but hard data are very difficult to obtain. This is always a problem for technology
validation, but a software developer is frequently at one or two arms lengths from the ultimate

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client, thus compounding the difficulties. Obviously, any formal documentation of the reliability
of the software is useful, especially if it can be also used to confirm the best procedures to use
from among the many published multiphase flow calculation methods that have been published
or made available.
SPT (formerly Neotec) has undertaken a number of in-house studies using published data to
test the procedures contained in WELLFLO. For example, pressure drop predictions have been
compared to published data from the BP Forties field in the North Sea (Asheim, 1986); the
agreement varied somewhat, depending on the particular multiphase flow model that was used,
but it was particularly good when using the procedures recommended by SPT for oil-gas flow.
Later validation using data from Govier and Fogarasi (1975), which included measurements
from 102 gas-condensate wells, again demonstrated the reliability of our recommended
procedures, this time for gas-condensate systems. Documents detailing these formal
comparisons are available on request from SPT.
Over the years, SPT's (formerly Neotecs) reputation for software reliability has been such that
the regulatory body in Alberta, the AEUB (previously the ERCB), accepts calculated results
from WELLFLO for prediction of sulphur release rates under blow-out conditions for Alberta
wells. This is a requirement of the regulatory and reporting responsibilities of producing
companies in Alberta.
With the additional use of WELLFLO for UBD studies came a corresponding requirement for
formal validation of this application. Although there was substantial anecdotal validation from
our client base over the past six years, formalized comparison of predicted results with field
measurements to date have been limited. Results of one such study have been reported by
Smith et al (1998). Recently, however, we were fortunate to be provided with a set of data from
field tests conducted by Mobil Oil Indonesia. A paper by Smith et al (2000), detailing the
correlation of results by a variety of methods to the measured data was published at the 2 nd
North American Conference on Multiphase Technology held in Banff, Alberta in June, 2000 and
again at the IADC meeting in Houston in August of the same year. Agreement between the
measured and predicted pressure losses were in the order of 6.5% when using SPT's (formerly
Neotecs) recommended procedures for drilling applications. This average accuracy was
achieved for the 51 sets of measured data that have been evaluated to date. Circulation fluids
included water-natural gas, diesel-natural gas, and diesel-nitrogen. An additional paper
presented at the Banff conference by Dr. G. A. Gregory detailed a WELLFLO calculation
procedure for modelling the counter-current heat transfer that occurs in a drilling operations,
and this, in turn, gave results which showed good agreement with measured data also from the
Mobil Indonesia pilot study.
Following the release of WELLFLO, we started conducting an active development program in
cooperation with our software clients to add new capabilities and options to the software to
improve its usefulness to engineers involved in UBD planning and operations. In fact, SPT
(formerly Neotec) soon released a new product, WELLFLO Rigsite, developed especially for
those not typically involved in the detailed planning of a UBD well but who wish access to a
quick and easy hydraulics tool. WELLFLO Rigsite simplifies the process of selecting
appropriate options and technology for UBD flow modelling yet uses the identical calculation
and output processing of its big brother.
Special thanks is extended to the many UBD specialists who kindly provide helpful suggestions
for improvements to the software. SPT is especially grateful to Stu Butler, previously with Shell
UK, and Bob Teichrob of Flowdrilling, who gave us our start in this area. We are also very

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grateful for the continuing feedback from Adrian Steiner of Northland (Precision Drilling), Pat
Brand of Blade Energy, Tim Wiemers of Halliburton, and Jeff Saponja of Weatherford as we
pursue our development.
References
Asheim, H., "MONA, An Accurate Two-Phase Well Flow Model Based on Phase Slippage",
SPE Prod. Eng., p. 221, May (1986)
Butler, S. D., and Gregory, G. A., "Multiphase Flow Considerations in Underbalanced Drilling of
Horizontal Wells", Proc. of the 7th Int. BHR Conf. on Multiphase Production, Cannes, France,
June (1995)
Govier, G. W., and Fogarasi, M., "Pressure Drop in Well Producing Gas and Condensate", J.
Can. Petrol. Technol., Oct. (1975)
Smith, S. P., Gregory, G. A., Munro, N., and Mugeem, M.,"Application of Multiphase Flow
Methods to Horizontal Underbalanced Drilling", Proc. of 1st North American Conf. on Multiphase
Flow, sponsored by BHR Group, Banff, AB, June (1998)
Gregory, G. A., "Wellbore temperature profile calculations for Underbalanced Drilling
Applications", Proc. of 2nd North American Conf. on Multiphase Flow, sponsored by BHR
Group, Banff, AB, June (2000)
Smith, S. P., Gregory, G. A., and Brand, P.R., "Application of Multiphase Flow Methods to
Underbalanced Drilling pilot test data", Proc. of 2nd North American Conf. on Multiphase Flow,
sponsored by BHR Group, Banff, AB, June (2000)

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