Kick tolerance calculations for drilling operations

The future of oil and natural gas drilling is dependent on deep well drilling operations. Kick tolerance is a concept which is very important for the industry to ensure that the wells are drilled safely. Especially for natural gas wells one of the most important requirements in deep well engineering design is the kick tolerance calculations. The literature survey reveals that there is no global standard utilized for the kick tolerance calculations by any of the operators, drilling contractors or any other official institutions. It is obvious that the industry needs a reliable procedure for kick tolerance calculations not only for safer drilling but also optimized well plannings. In order to test the methodology a data acquisition process has been implemented to collect the data from the literature. A depth based novel kick tolerance calculation methodology that is based on iteration is introduced in this study, which easily identifies if any kick tolerance troubles are going to be encountered or not. The results indicate that with the introduced kick tolerance methodology the engineering teams can design the wells safely provided that the pore pressure and fracture gradient information belonging to the wells are accurate and available as needful. The study outputs the analysis for the well designers in regards to the depths that a well control incident can occur, which differentiates this research study from others by means of identifying the depth ranges for possible well control incidents. The utilization of the novel kick tolerance calculation approach provides an appropriate planning of drilling operations, safer drilling activities and improved capability of natural resource discoveries.