Drilling fluids touch just about everything in the
drilling process.
We're here to d the drilling process and
drilling fluid concepts
to provide a deeper understanding of our industry.
In each episode, we'll share information, talk to
interesting people and maybe share a few stories
along the way. Welcome to the flow line.
A production of Aes drilling fluids, brought to
you by Matt Off and Justin Goatee.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of
the flow line. Matt and I are here.
It's another... Caught and humid day in Houston,
Texas. Matt, how's everything in your world, buddy,
you were on a world win the last
24 hours, but you're back in the saddle.
Yes.
Airports are tiring when your flight gets delayed.
But
I got some rest. Yeah.
All as well if I can think straight
and
effectively participate in this podcast. So
everybody hang with me. This will be the
true test when masks tired stressed out to
the about to go on vacation, so he
just can't wait, see if he can knock
out a good podcast up, episode which I'm
pretty confident in but we'll let the audience
decide. Matt, we've picked a good topic today.
It's 1 that I think you could probably
handle.
It's something you probably know a lot about,
and that's gels,
and not the ones that you put in
your shoes are on your nails, but rather
the 1 that is in drilling fluids. Is
that correct? That is. Do you put gel
on your nails? No. I do not, sir.
Okay. I was just curious. I haven't seen
you, like, flash fingers whatever, but I was
like, okay. You look for Justin.
Nowadays, man. I mean, you never know. I
mean, I am a fan of getting, and
I even hate to say the name, Manic
here, which I typically do myself, but when
you go to the nail salon and you
get someone kinda cleaning up the old cuticle
situation and may sip on a a nice
mimo. It's pretty relaxing. To but it's not
something I do very often in fact, I've
probably done a handful of times in my
life. Are you a manic your pedicure care
kinda guy or what?
No. None of that. I was like I
don't even do massage. I don't like people
touching me.
Thing is I've heard, wow, it feels really
good just to get cleaned up and have
somebody else Yeah. It's like, rest nice. Yeah.
I mean, you gotta get past some of
your friends might make funny you slash the
un uncomfortable of being the only male and
a nail salon at 1 point, but
Yeah. You know, My friends make fun of
me plenty without
manic... That's not the deterrent. I don't think.
I get it. Anyways.
Gel on your nails, gel in your mud.
Yeah. Exactly. All that said, Matt, let's talk
about gels. It's something that doesn't get a
lot of attention when you're reading a mud
report. It's not the first you look at,
but it's certainly something that can have an
effect on your drilling fluids. Something that definitely
does need to be paid attention to, Matt.
So how would you first and foremost describe
what gels is inside your system.
The 3 word answer is static attractive forces.
So when I am not circulating...
The fluid kind of wants to set up
or,
like jelly. When you're stirring it, think about
how we measure it. Right? So we share
it we're stirring stirring stirring, we stop. And
then we wait a certain period of time.
We turned the to the 3 Rpm reading,
and we just look at the maximum deflect
deflation. And that maximum deflect deflation is further
than what your 3 Rpm reading gonna be
because the fluid has had a chance to
kinda set up and thicken on its own.
And we wanna see not only
how those things are setting up, but do
they get higher and higher over time?
This property is called Fix trap as a
matter of fact. Mh so fun word for
the day. But these are fluids that form
that gel structure when they're static and then
under sheer their fluid. They flow readily.
We're measuring these things and reporting on them,
and that's because the state can be insightful
either
on
contamination or treatment or there could be a
number of reasons we're gonna get into about
why we wanna talk about Jail.
Yeah. No. That's a good, matt. 1 of
the big buzz. A lot of times people
throw on our 2 buzz words is, oh,
your gels are progressive. That's why you're having
XYZ
issues. But I don't think a lot of
people understand why or how that happens. Because
you could describe what progressive gels is. So
progressive gels...
Our gels that get higher and higher over
time. So normally on a motor report, you
might have your 10 second, your 10 minute
and your 30 minute gels.
But imagine that there's a dramatic increase between
your 10 second gel and your 10 minute
gel. Usually your 10 minute 30 minute might
be a little closer together, but If your
10 minute is 3 times your 10 second,
that's very progressive. That means the fluid is
really kinda setting up when you leave it
be. Right. Okay. So then what about you
going deeper down that rabbit hole? What about
flash gels?
This is a term I had not heard
of. Or I didn't remember hearing of it.
But I came across it, so I thought
I would
share... This is when you're initial... Like, your
10 second your 10 minute,
are really close together, maybe even the same.
I guess with the idea here is that
they set up very quickly, and then they
don't they don't think in any further.
The fluid doesn't set up any further after
that. So kind of an interesting term, and
sometimes we see this in fluids where
your 10 second might be an 8, and
then your 10 minute might be a 9,
and your 30 minute might be at 10.
And those are all really close together.
Yeah. Okay. And then 1 that's more familiar
to a lot of folks probably is flat
gels. Yeah. So flat gels, the idea here
is that you have a very minimal increase
in gel strength over time.
So a big part of these sort of
what people were calling Clay free,
low clay, whatever I polymer eric, whatever you
wanna call them, those systems is that they
had a flat gels,
flat
where you didn't see a big increase in
gel
progression over time. Systems that was a really
important factor to look at, especially in deep
water.
Okay. Do you think a lot of times
when people look like is that? Well, not
to go into that? Well, maybe we'll say
that for another topic for another day. I
was gonna talk about the actual need for
flat gels and if there's an actual benefit
in unconventional, but we've talked about that a
lot. So I'll drop that little nugget search
it. And if you have any questions, let
us know, maybe, we should do another episode
on that again. I think we can tie
into it here because...
Basically, flat gels are non progressive, so they
don't continue to build. And the issue with
progressive gels is,
let's say you come out of the hole,
and then you go to break circulation, and
you're going to search the well with pressure
as you kick on the pumps and break
those gels. Right? Mh.
When you do that, you risk breaking down
the formation.
Same thing with surging and swab the well.
Let's say the fluid gets really thick, and
then you start pulling the Dha out of
it, because you're not circulating
what happens. This is the reason a lot
of times we may stage in and break
circulation periodically is we wanna break down those
gels
as we get further into the well or
out of it so that we don't have
a huge pressure surge or a thickening effect
of the fluid And then another 1 people
tend to forget about is cement this placement
efficiency, especially in like a horizontal.
We know horizontal are not perfectly horizontal. They
un a bit. And you wanna push all
that mud out of the way. But if
it's got highly progressive gels,
what's very possible is you'll have some of
that thick buds, sitting there, you go to
circulate, and it's not pushed around or stirred
up, and then you go to pump cement
and you have channel because the Cement passes
right over it too because it's sitting just
been sitting for so long that it's so
thick
that it stays there. And then really progressive
gels can each you in other ways, you
know, like, just trying to get a good
separation with solids control or even ae irritation
of the mud just because it's thicker. Yeah.
It's clear that it can cause some issues,
but Matt, how would you explain how it
actually happens in the first place? Well, a
lot of it is a result of
contamination. There are different ways for it to
happen, but a big accumulation of find solids
has a lot of service area, seeing you
can get some attractive forces there.
Sometimes there can be,
to elevate gels.
Very progressive gels is usually a sign that
you need to d dilute above all else.
And like a lot of things in the
motor poor, you'll probably see higher fluid loss,
You know, your plus vis scottsdale probably be
elevated, but your gel progression will be very,
very high as well.
You brought up a good point is this
dilution, especially in water based mud if it's
hot. A lot of people don't realize how
much dilution you need to keep your mud
hydrated, especially in a, like a high gel
mud.
That's 1 way to fall. If you fall
behind on dilution, you can get some extremely
progressive gels, which might alarm you, but the
reality is you just don't have enough fresh
water in the system. Yeah. I mean, that's
a very common scenario that you see is
people are
too afraid dead water, and by the time
you realize how far behind you are.
You're much really thick. Yeah. Yes. For sure.
So flat or fragile. Can you elaborate on
that profile of gels? Yeah. So it's interesting
because trying to find a working
definition or a technical definition is a bit
funny and as much as
Way way back When. I won't get into
specifics, but there's actually a lawsuit between 2
service companies
because 1 said, hey, you sort of infringe
on some things. And the other 1 said,
well you never defined what fragile was,
and it turned out no. Fragile was not
defined.
It was better than a conventional system,
But how all of these system works regardless
is they rely more on a polymer network.
So polymer fluids as opposed to Clay based
systems, either an oil or water based
tend to have a flat profile because those
polymers
sort of build good suspension, but those bonds
break under share pretty readily,
and then saying okay, well, relative to my
treatment, what is the definition of flat. The
only thing
really I've seen where somebody actually published these
are our expectations came from Bp in an
Sp paper a few years ago, which is
worth a look because they sort of explained
why they see the value and in the
systems and it was overwhelmingly deep water, and
they looked at both
properties
of the plastic vis
40 degrees was less than 2 and a
half times plastic, a hundred and 20 degrees,
for example. Right? So the reality didn't fluctuate
as much. 40 But
the other thing is
that they had very specific definitions for gels.
So the 10 second had to be less
than...
1.7
times the 10 minute
across all temperatures,
and the 30 minute gel should be no
less than 1.3
times the 10 minute. And then all gels
at 40 degrees, you need to be less
than 1.2 times what they were at 01:20.
Now okay. What you see there is...
Okay. My 10 second can't be more than
70 percent more than my 10 minute. Right?
Those are pretty close together. That's a pretty
narrow
lane.
It's achievable, but it's mostly achievable through
clean mud. Mh.
That's right. When in doubt, make sure your
mud is... Clean and you won't have to
worry about all these gel issues, which,
again, can be very problematic. And let's talk
a little bit about elevated gels and not
to be mistaken fe clean excess gels because
you do need a degree of elevation in
your gels for
what? Well, suspension and whole cleaning. Right? 1
of the things... Let's go back to the
cement scenario where you want to thin the
fluid for better displacement and you wanna reduce
the gel progression. What you'd find is that
a lot of times there's a temptation to
go overboard.
And, yeah, your gels aren't progressive, but they're
also too low.
Now you might have risk of, like,
sag or settling.
So you want some initial gel strength,
to suspend and maybe help in pull cleaning
under areas of low shea because these fluids
picking up under scenarios of Low shea think
about trips or logging or things like that.
You don't want 0 gels.
You don't want wanna be progressive, but you
do want them to have a number to
them. Right? And that's something you sort of
have to optimize for. Got it. So then
on the opposite end of the spectrum,
low gels, what might be going on there?
Well, this is where under areas of low
flow. You have no suspension. Think about water.
Water has really low gels. Do we consider
that a good thing? Well, depends on our
operation, we drill with water, No problem. But
if we're collecting a bunch of cutting and
we turn off the pumps, so we were
trying to drill with a weighted system,
we have to have polymer something in there
or all that material would fall off, when
we made a connection. So
not too low, not too high. Gold locks.
Right? So what are the best gels, Matt?
Like, how would you describe an ideal gel
profile?
I think I like that flat gel description
where it's like, okay, They set up really
quickly,
but then they break really readily.
My 10 second, really fast. I see a
number. Let's say it's 10 and then
it stays 10 over time.
Versus let's say I had 5 in my
10 second and 10 is my 10 minute.
That's where you're seeing progression. So something that's
somewhat flat, but sets up quickly and breaks
readily Got a minimal impact on pump pressures.
That's great. I mean, it's simple, and it's
a great way to look at it, but
oftentimes it can be tricky to get there.
But again, good conversation. It's 1 that doesn't
nearly poke his head out often, but what
it does, it can be problematic. But fortunately,
There's typically quite an easy solution if your
gel start to get out of whack. Hopefully,
this has been entertaining and educational if anyone
has any further questions, let us know. Matt,
any closing last words before we get back
to buddy. I'll just to add for further
entertainment value.
The reason I... Started thinking about this episode
was because I was teaching a customer school
and kind of mumbling through this slide. The
theme of this week has been being really
tired. Started I was in Midland. I slept
terrible, and I was going through this presentation,
which I've given a number of times before,
and I felt like it took extra time
to make sure everybody understood
the slide
because I kinda me through it and I
was like, maybe we should just do a
podcast step episode where I slowed down a
little bit and circle back. So
Well, maybe in the next episode, you can
share a little bit about your experience in
Midland at Mud school. And, yeah, again, I
think these are really great at what we're
doing. But with that being said, folks is
the end of this... Episode if you have
any questions, thoughts,
concerns, debate topics,
let Matt know he loves that stuff. You
can reach him on Linkedin or if you
wanna hang out and Chatter or debate with
me, you can also find me on Linkedin,
or if you do have a good question
all seriousness, please reach out either on Linkedin
or you can reach us at the flowing
podcast at aes flu dot com. Some of
the best episodes come from good questions or
in this case, when Matt's is giving a
presentation, and he feels like he needs to
spend a little bit more time on something.
Obviously super exciting. We'll do it on the
flow line. With that being said, everyone, Enjoy
your summer. Stay cool and have fun. Take
care.
Thanks for listening. Please tune in next week
for another exciting episode of the flow line.
And remember, may your returns always be full
and your trips always smooth.
Views expressed in this program belong to participants
and not their employees.
The program is for informational purposes only and
cannot take the place of seeking professional advice.
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