This paper was prepared for the 48th Annual Fall Meeting of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME, to be held in Las Vegas, Nev., Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 1973. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be copied. The abstract should contain conspicuous acknowledgement of where and by whom the paper is presented. Publication elsewhere after publication in the JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY or the SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS JOURNAL is usually granted upon request to the Editor of the appropriate journal provided agreement to give proper credit is made.
Discussion of this paper is invited. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society of Petroleum Engineers Office. Such discussion may be presented at the above meeting and, with the paper, may be considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines.
A new weighting material based on synthetic iron oxide has been developed. Early laboratory tests with this material indicated that although up to API specification for barytes, it nevertheless failed to give a satisfactory performance test under the conditions stated by OCMA. Further investigations showed that particle size distribution and total surface area had to be controlled to achieve the most satisfactory performance and also suggested that a new performance and also suggested that a new specification might well be required for any weighting material.
Until now ground barytes with a specific gravity of 4.2 has been the most common weighting material for drilling fluids. The demand of the free world is now approx. 2 million tons per year corresponding to 55% of the total barytes production. The USA used 1.2 million tons per year barytes drilling mud grade in 1972. Because of increasing drilling activity one can expect a considerable growth in barytes consumption in the next few years. In some of the new exploration regions outside of the USA it may prove difficult to obtain sufficient high quality barytes.
In the past numerous trials have been undertaken to substitute barytes with other heavy metal compounds with specific gravities higher than 4.2. None of these materials however proved successful, because the price was too high, the required amounts were not available in sufficient quantities or else the properties in drilling muds showed properties in drilling muds showed disadvantages. Weighting materials such as galena, lead oxide, natural iron oxide or barium carbonate have only been used to a limited extent.
A new weighting material, FER-O-BAR+), based on synthetic iron oxide; has now been introduced. This material is a) generally applicable, b) available in sufficient quantities, c) produced with constant quality, d) comparable with barytes price.
The properties of the new product are described below.
