Basra University For Oil And Gas (BUOG)

Kick Causes , Detection and

Prevention
November,24th ,2021,
Lecturer: Najah Saeed Abdulridha

[email protected] w w w. b u og. e du. iq

 Kick Causes
The hydrostatic pressure of the drilling fluid creates a barrier against formation fluid entering into the wellbore.
This is known as primary well control. For this reason, the pressure differential between bottomhole pressure and
formation pressure must be kept positive. This is referred to as an overbalanced condition.

• Overbalanced Condition in the wellbore

 Kick Causes
when the pressure differential between the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling fluid column and the formation
pressure becomes negative across the formation face, an underbalanced condition exists in the well. Formation
fluids enter the wellbore, resulting in a kick.

• Underbalanced condition in the wellbore

Kick Condition
Two conditions in the well bore are required for a kick to occur:
1. The pressure at the Face of the kicking formation must be greater than the pressure in the
well bore , and
2.The kicking formation must have sufficient permeability to allow flow into the well bore
 Kick Causes
In these Slides, we will discuss the situations which can cause wellbore pressure to be less than
formation pressure, leading to a kick. These situations include:

1. Failing to fill the hole properly when tripping (Not keeping the hole full)
2. Swabbing & Surging in a kick while tripping out
3. Overpressure (abnormal pressure) formations
4. Insufficient Mud weight
5. Lost circulation
6. Gas / oil / water cut mud
7. Ballooning or charging formation

Most Common causes for all Kicks

There is ONE condition that allows a kick to occur:
The pressure imposed in the wellbore becomes less than the pressure inside the formation
Currently almost 50% of all blowouts are attributed to a combination of causes (1)
and (2).
1. Not keeping the hole full during tripping
Failure to keep the hole full during tripping operations (especially when pulling the drill string out of the well) is one of the
most common causes of a kick. During Tripping Operations, as the drill string comes out of the well, the level of drilling fluid
in the annulus drops by a volume equal to the volume of drill string removed. If the fluid level is allowed to drop too far, the
hydrostatic pressure on the formation is reduced below formation pressure, which allows formation fluids to enter the
wellbore.
Note that the majority of all kicks worldwide occur during tripping operations.

When a length of pipe is pulled from the hole, the mud level will fall. As drill
pipe and collars are pulled out of the hole, a volume of mud equal to the volume of
steel which has been removed, must be added to the hole to keep it full.

The trip tank is then used to fill up the hole .If 1 barrel of steel is removed
from the hole, then using the trip tank, we have to add 1 barrel of mud.

The hole must be kept full at all times

1. Not keeping the hole full during tripping
1.Example: Not keeping the hole full
The effect removing 5 stands of DP from a 12-1/4” ID hole in 12 ppg
MW
2. Swabbing and Surging

 Running swab and surge prediction software will help to prevent those risks.
2. Swabbing in a kick while tripping out
 Bit balling
Bit balling is one of the drilling operational issues which can happen anytime while drilling. This issue can
cause several problems such as reduction in rate of penetration and surface torque, increase in stand pipe
pressure. Personnel may eventually need to pull out of hole the BHA in order to clear the balling issue at the bit.
Bit balling
How You Recognize the Bit Balled Up While Drilling ?

 Formation – Clay stone and shale has tendency to ball up the bit even though you use
highly inhibitive water based mud or oil based mud.
 Weight On Bit – High weight on bit will have more chance to create this issue.
 Hydrostatic Pressure in Wellbore – High hydrostatic pressure (pressure above 5,000 psi)
can induce bit balling issue in water based mud.
 Bit Design – Poor bit cutting structure and poor junk slot area in PCD bits contribute to this
issue.
 Hydraulic – Low flow rate will not be able to clean the cutting around the bit.
Trip Margin :
The use of a trip margin is encouraged to offset the effects of swabbing. The additional
hydrostatic pressure will permit some degree of swabbing without losing primary well control
The trip margin can be estimated :

Trip Margin Factor APL psi

––––––––––––––––– = –––––––––––––––––
(psi/ft) True Vert. Depth. ft

APL = Annulus Pressure Loss

A safety factor to provide an overbalance to compensate for swab pressure can be:
3. Abnormal Pressure

Check the Video in Educational _Video Topic

4. Insufficient mud weight
5. Lost circulation
Causes
5. Lost circulation
Prevention
6. Gas / oil / water cut mud
When the bit penetrates a porous formation, the fluids contained in the formation (gas, oil,
or water) escape and mix with the drilling fluid. This is called cutting of the drilling fluid.
Sometimes, swabbing also causes cutting of the drilling fluid.

Cutting drilling fluid (contaminating with low-density formation fluid) reduces the density of
the fluid in the annulus and causes a subsequent loss of hydrostatic pressure. If drilling fluid
cutting is identified to be occurring, proper steps should immediately be taken to remedy the
situation. Failure to recognize and deal with drilling fluid cutting can cause a kick.

What action you should take ?

Stop the Operation flow check the well ,and notify the supervisors
Gas Cutting
Strong-White Equation-In 1938
The following formula can be used to determine the bottom hole pressure
reduction due to gas-cut mud:
𝑴𝑾 − 𝑴𝑾𝒇) (𝟑. 𝟓𝟐𝟓𝒙𝑴𝑾𝒇)
∆𝑷 = 𝟏𝟒. 𝟕𝒙( 𝒙𝒍𝒏
𝑴𝑾𝒇 𝟏𝟎𝟎𝟎
Where :
• ∆𝑷 = Bottom hole Pressure reduction(psi)
• MW = Mud Weight uncut (ppg)
• MWf = Gas cut mud weight at flow line (ppg)
• D =Depth at which gas enters mud (ft,TVD)

Ex : Calculate the lost of hydrostatic when:

• Depth: 10,000 ft
• Mud Weight: 14 ppg
• Mud cut to: 10 ppg
7. Ballooning or charging formation
 KICK INDICATORS
There are a number of warning signs and indications, which alert the drill crew to the presence of a kick, or an
impending kick.

Kicks can be divided into two groups:

• Positive Indicators Of A Kick In Progress
 Flow from Well (pumps off)
 Increase in Flow from Well (pumps on).
 Pit Volume Gain
• Signs Of Approaching Balance/Under Balance
• Increase in drilling rate of penetration. (Driller and Mud Logger)
• Increase torque and drag. (Driller and Mud Logger)
• Decrease in shale density. (Mud Logger)
• Increase in cutting size and shape. (Shakerman and Mud Logger)
• Mud property changes. (Mud Engineer and Shakerman)
• Increase in trip, connection and/or background gas. (Mud logger)
• Increase in the temperature of the return drilling mud. (Mud Logger)
• Decrease in D-exponent. (Mud Logger)
KICK INDICATORS

Form More details check the Slides :

1_B_KICK INDICATORS
KICK INDICATORS

Indications That A Kick Is In Progress

Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Signs While Drilling
Kick Detection While Tripping

kick prevention while tripping is best performed by the use of a trip

tank to keep the hole full mud kick detection while tripping is done by
monitoring pipe displacement with a trip sheet and trained personnel
the trip tank is the most important device on the rig for kick prevention
and detection the use of a trip tank a good fluid level meter is the best
device to monitor the fluid column
Kick Detection While Tripping
 Re-circulating Trip Tank procedure Slides
is a small metal tank with small capacity about 20-40 bbls with 1 bbl
divisions inside and it is used to monitor the well. There are several
operations that we can use the trip tank to monitor the well as follows;

1. Trip Out Of Hole (TOOH): While tripping out of hole, the trip tank
is used to track volume of mud replacing volume of drill string. The
volume of mud should be equal to displacement volume of any kind of
tubular tripped out of hole.
2. Trip In Hole (TIH): While tripping in hole, the drilling string (bit, BHA
and drill pipe) is ran back in the hole, the trip tank must be use to keep
track volume gain. The expected volume gain should be equal to the
displacement volume of whole string.
3. Flow check: The trip tank is utilized to determine well condition in order to see if the
well is still under static condition.
Flow checks are performed to ensure that the well is stable. Flow checks should be carried out
with the pumps off to check the well with ECD effects removed. Flow checks are usually
performed when a trip is going to take place at the following minimum places:
• on bottom
• at the casing shoe
• before the BHA is pulled into the BOP’s
 Re-circulating Trip Tank
While Tripping Out of Hole (TOH), a trip tank pump will circulate mud into a bell nipple in order to
keep the hole full all the time and the over-flow mud will return back to the trip tank. Once every
stand is pulled, the mud volume in the well will decrease because the drill pipe is pulled out of
hole. Since the trip tank pump is always run while tripping, the annulus will be full all the time (see
figure below).
 The importance of trip tank is as follows
1. Provide sufficient hydrostatic pressure to prevent influx from reservoir. When TOH, mud
hydrostatic will be lost because mud volume must substitute drill pipe volume pulled out of hole. If hydrostatic
pressure decreases too much, influx from reservoir can come into the hole and make a trouble in well control.
For this reason, mud in trip tank must be filled into hole to maintain hydrostatic pressure.

2. Kick Indicator: Volume of mud from the trip tank is pumped in the hole can be an indicator
that relates to a situation occurring in wellbore as kick. If the volume of mud measured by trip
tank is less than the expected volume of drill pipe volume tripped out of hole, the suspect
problem is kick because volume of kick substitutes volume of mud

The industry standard on the Frequency of hole fill is :

 Every Five Stands of drillpipe and tubing
 Every Two or three stands of heavy-weight drillpipe
 And every stand of drill collars
1-1:Re-circulating Trip Tank

For More details check the Trip Tank and

Tripping procedure Slides
Flow Checking
Flow Checking
Slug Calculation
What is Slug?
Slug: It is heavy mud which is used to push lighter mud weight down before pulling drill pipe out of hole. Slug is
used when pipe became wet while pulling out of hole. This article will demonstrate you how to calculate how
many barrel of volume slug required for desired light of dry pipe.

 It is pumped to POOH with dry D/P

 Before POOH , Slug (High Weight Mud) is displaced to the D/S
 This will makes about 3 stand empty
 Pumped at casing shoe not at the bottom to avoid the POOH problems

Generally, slug is pumped to push mud down approximate 200 ft and slug
volume can be calculated by applying a concept of U-tube (See Figure below).
𝑆𝑙𝑢𝑔𝑤
• Pit gain = −1 𝑥 𝑉𝑆𝑙𝑢𝑔
𝑀𝑤

• Length of dry pipe = Gain in Pits ÷ Pipe Capacity

H.W :
• Before pulling out the hole , A slug pumped and chased by mud with return to the pit .the pumps were
stopped . The trip tank was lined up on the well. The top drive was then disconnected and the slug
allowed to fall.
• Well data :
 Well depth = 8000 ft.
 Drill pipe internal capacity = 0.0177 bbl/ft.
 Mud weight = 9.8 ppg ,slug weight=11.3 ppg , slug Volume in the string =20 bbls
 Calculate :
1. The mud Volume increase in the trip tank ?
2. Length of dry pipe

𝑆𝑙𝑢𝑔𝑤
• Pit gain = −1 𝑥 𝑉𝑆𝑙𝑢𝑔
𝑀𝑤

• Length of dry pipe = Gain in Pits ÷ Pipe Capacity

 Review of Capacity, Volume and Displacement
Volume
Is the space taken up by a solid object , for example a ball bearing or a brick ,Volume is measured in cubic
units , cubic feet, cubic inches, cubic meters

Capacity
Is the internal volume or amount of volume inside a container , for example a bottle a box or a mud pit (
Trip Tank) ,

Capacity can be measured in the same units as volume , or in liquid volumes such as gallons or barrels
 Review of Displacement
Displacement is the volume of mud that is expelled from the well when the drillstring or casing is run into the hole. Likewise,
it is the volume of mud required to fill the well when the pipe is pulled from the hole. Displacement normally represents only
the volume of the pipe.

 The mud inside the pipe is a capacity because the pipe fills with mud as pipe goes into the hole or during circulation. For
special situations such as when the bit is plugged or when “floating” casing into the well, the capacity must be added to
the displacement of the pipe.
 For example, 4.0 in OD, 14.0 lb/ft. drill pipe displaces 0.0047 bbl/ft. of mud as it goes into the hole. If 1000 ft of drill pipe
are run into the hole, 4.7 bbl of mud should be “displaced” from the hole. Conversely, when pulling out the same size drill
pipe, the well should take 4.7 bbl of mud for every 1000 ft of pipe removed to keep the hole full.

An estimate of the drillstring displacement can be made using the and of drill pipe and drill collars.

where = pipe outside diameter, and = pipe inside diameter, and the values of the Constant are the same as those for the
listed above for the Open Hole capacity.
A review of the formulae
 Formula For Pipe Capacity
Remember this for I foot of Pipe
Formula For Pipe Capacity
 Ex: Case#1: When pulling Dry pipe
How many stands would have to be pulled dry to remove a 50 psi overbalance and allow the well to flow?
• Number of stands pulled = ?
• Pipe displacement = 0.0075 bbl/ft , Pipe Capacity =0.0178 bbl/ft
• Average length per stand = 94 ft
• Casing capacity = 0.0729 bbl/ft
• Mud weight = 11.0 ppg
Solution :

Displacement Volume =

Pipe Pulled =

NOTE: The mud level drops in the annulus and inside the drill pipe.
 Ex: Case#1: When pulling Wet pipe
How many stands would have to be pulled Wet to remove a 50 psi overbalance and allow the well to flow?
• Number of stands pulled = ?
• Pipe displacement = 0.0075 bbl/ft
• Average length per stand = 94 ft
• Casing capacity = 0.0729 bbl/ft
• Mud weight = 11.0 ppg
Solution :

Displacement Volume =

Pipe Pulled =

NOTE: The mud level drops only in the annulus as both the metal displacement and pipe capacity are pulled out of the hole.