Comparative analysis of barite and hematite used in water-based drilling fluid

To meet the future demands and tackling the challenges, the O&G industry needs more than just going for discovering the unproven hydrocarbon reserves. Technologies way beyond the available ones requires tremendous development, to achieve the objective of recovering oil. To overcome such shortcomings, there should be scope and facilitation of development and application of those researched and developed technologies. Ample of understandings has to be considered about the rheology of the drilling fluids that are being put to operation in reaching deep targets of oil. Selective designing of the drilling fluids holds a strong place of concern in achieving economic project results in the oilfields and shall be strongly emphasized upon, so as to achieve shortening of the non-productive time during operations. Mud additives contribute to the specific functions and properties to the drilling fluid, especially in case of rheological properties, which in turn attains multiple roles in the wellbore. The project work emphasizes only on three of the many available fluid additives – bentonite, barite and hematite; whose rheological characteristics were determined in varying operating conditions and compared among the other two. The base drilling fluid was ‘water + bentonite’. Fresh / Tap water was used, which had a density of 8.5 ppg (1.0185 g/cc). Drilling fluid samples having varying concentrations of mud weighing agents (5%, 10%, 15% and 20% of the total weight of the drilling fluid) were simulated and operated in the Fann viscometer to obtain the plastic viscosity, yield point and gel strength. Results attained from the experiments revealed that out of the two weighing agents, hematite had the highest degree of rheological parameters when kept in same concentrations.