Petrobras Develops Cost Saving Drilling

Latin American oil and gas company Petrobras has teamed up with US producer of automated test equipment, National Instruments, to develop a mud-gas separator for Under Balanced Drilling (UBD) applications.

Using National Instrument tools, Petrobras engineers have developed a UBD application capable of reducing the time it takes for a well to become fully productive in addition to eliminating the need for costly fracturing after the well is completed.

Petrobras says it has made savings of between $500,000 and $2m, depending on the size of the well and the cost of the potential fracturing job.

The mud-gas separator delivers a compact separation system, which responds quickly to variations in the pressure or flow rates from injected or produced variations in the dynamic systems.

UBD is a drilling technique that reduces the hydrostatic pressure of the drilling fluid, causing the pressure in the wellbore to be less than the formation pressure.