Blowout and Well Control Handbook
Providing the most up-to-date techniques and tools for blowout and well control, this comprehensive guide reviews specific situations along with detailed procedures to analyze alternatives and tackle problems.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Blowout and Well Control Handbook
Chapter Seven: Relief Well Design and Operations
The industry has long considered the relief well option a last resort in well control. The problems are obvious. Even with the best surveying techniques, the bottom of the hole was unknown to any degree of certainty. The ability to communicate with the bottom of the hole was very limited and most often governed by the principle of trial and error. However, relief well technology has advanced in the past 10 years to the point that a relief well is now a viable alternative. Modern technology has made intercepting the blowout a certainty and controlling the blowout from the relief well a predictable engineering event.
HISTORY
ULSEL AND MAGNETIC INTERPRETATION INTRODUCED
On March 25, 1970, a blowout occurred at the Shell Oil Corporation Cox No. 1 at Piney Woods, Rankin County, Mississippi. [1] The well had been drilled into the Smackover at a total depth of 21,122 feet and cased to 20,607 feet. The well flowed at rates estimated between 30 and 80 million standard cubic feet of gas per day plus 14,000 to 20,000 barrels of water per day.
The hydrogen sulfide concentration in the gas stream made the gas deadly toxic to humans and, combined with the saline, produced water deadly corrosive to steels. Shortly after the well kicked on the morning of the disaster, the blowout preventer stack rose and fell over, releasing a stream of gas and invert oil-emulsion mud. Within minutes the well ignited and the derrick fell. The well had cratered.
This combination...
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