Drilling Fluids, Inc.

TECHNICAL SERVICES NEWSLETTER

Volume X, Number 2 April 21 , 2006
WHAT DO YOU WANT IT TO BE?

1. Phenolphthaylene can be used to; a) detect
coffee in the mud, b) detect clean mud after
cement drill out, c) detect cement returns
when cementing casing, d) both b and c.
2. Background gas should be limited to; a) 10
units, b) 30 units, c) 200 units, d) none of the
above.
3. Water with 22 ppb GEO Gel has a density of;
a) 8.5 ppg, c) 8.6 ppg, d) 8.8 ppg, e) 9.0 ppg.

ANSWERS ON PAGE 4
bulb, knocking the bottom out of demand for kero-
sene for lighting. Thus began one of the first of
many oil field recessions.
Kern county entered the oil producing regions
in 1899 with the discovery of the Kern River oil
field. The first well was drilled with a hand auger
on a low bluff by the banks of the Kern River. Soon
Kern County was the top oil-producing region in
the state.
EARLY OIL IN CALIFORNIA
T
he first commercial oil production in California
may have been in Kern County. In a canyon
near McKittrick are the remains of hard rock min-
ing shafts for the recovery of oil. These were dug in
1860 and probably provided oil for a refinery that
made kerosene and lubricating oil. By 1866 6,000
gallons per month was being shipped in five gallon
cans. By 1867 transportation costs drove the com-
pany out of business.
In 1861 the first oil well in California was
drilled by hand in Humboldt County. More mines
were dug in Ventura county near Ojai in 1866 in an
area called Sulphur Mountain. The brothers of rail-
road baron Leland Stanford were the operators.
That same year the first steam-powered rig in Cali-
fornia drilled an oil well not far from the oil seeps
at Sulphur Mountain.
It wasnt until 1875 that the first commercial oil
field in California was discovered at Pico Canyon
in Los Angeles County. The boom was short lived
as two years later Tomas Edison invented the light
If money is your hope for independence
you will never have it. The only real secu-
rity that a man can have in this world is a
reserve of knowledge, experience, and
ability.
-Henry Ford-
GEOLOGY STUDENTS EXAMINING THE MCKITTRICK OIL SEEP
TECHNICAL SERVICES NEWSLETTER VOLUME X NUMBER 2 April 15, 2006
PAGE 2
point of picking up water or solids which will dam-
age the quality of the mud. Excess water or solids
will be deducted from the credit at the end of the
well anyway so it doesnt serve the customers need
to pick up junk since he has to pay for the transpor-
tation anyway.

PROBLEMS WITH WATER
Excessive water in OBM can be a serious prob-
lem. It can acts as a viscosifier, requires excessive
treatments of emulsifiers and can, when in very
large quantities, cause the mud to flip.
Water droplets help to viscosify OBM. They
also increase the density, and by maintaining a high
or controlled salinity prevent the formation from
absorbing water and swelling. Addition of fresh wa-
ter from the surface or formation water will in-
crease the viscosity and decrease the effectiveness
of the mud.
Treatment of OBM is made on a per barrel ba-
sis. Any addition of water, oil, solids or Barite must
be fully treated with emulsifiers and Lime. Taking
on additional water from the formation requires ad-
ditional chemical treatments to maintain the stabil-
OI L BASED MUD
(Continued on page 3)
OIL BASE MUD

MATERI AL I NVENTORY
Oil based mud (OBM) inventory is handled just
like the inventory for any other well with one ex-
ception. The liquid mud that is in the pit or in the
hole remains in inventory.
In order to find daily liquid mud inventory you
have to take the pit volume, the hole volume and
any storage mud on location and add them all to-
gether. Each day there will be changes in the total
and the difference is reported as usage.
Usage can also be referred to as loss. It is help-
ful to the customer to break down losses into its
component parts. In general, those parts are losses
to the formation (seepage of lost circulation), losses
to cuttings, leaks at the surface from equipment,
and unrecoverable volume.
Losses to the formation can only be inferred af-
ter all losses on the surface are calculated, what
ever is left must have been lost to the formation. If
it is a slow loss we call it seepages. If there have
been visible reduction or loss of returns we call it
lost circulation.
Losses to cuttings range from as little as 0.5
bbls of mud per bbl of new hole to 1.0 bbls per
bbls. The smaller the cuttings the higher the loss
will be. Finer shaker/flowline cleaner screens will
result in greater losses and better mud quality. Mud
cleaners throw away a lot of mud for the volume of
solids discharged. Running a centrifuge is even
more severe but may be essential to keep the den-
sity down. A centrifuge should not be used on a
weighted system to control viscosity.
Mud lost when working on the mud pumps,
losses from leaking centrifugal packing, leaking
mud pit gates, losses to the cellar, and mud on the
rig floor that is not caught by a catch pan are all
possible surface losses. Most of these losses can be
controlled by careful planning by the rig personnel.
Some losses at the surface are unavoidable. These
losses may be substantial and should always be re-
ported.
Mud left in vacuum trucks, storage tanks and in
the mud pit when it is emptied are all forms of un-
recoverable loss. It is important to make every ef-
fort to get all the volume out of a tank but not to the
LVT-200
TECHNICAL SERVICES NEWSLETTER VOLUME X NUMBER 2 April 15, 2006
PAGE 3
OI L BASED MUD
(Continued from page 2)
ity of the emulsion.
The ratio of oil to water in OBM is called the
oil/water ratio (O/W). The O/W can be anywhere
from 80/20 to 90/10 under normal conditions.
Rarely is the O/W intentionally higher or lower
than those parameters. While evaporation can cause
the O/W to increase, moving toward 95/5, this can
be treated with the addition of fresh water. When
the O/W starts dropping the problem must be ad-
dressed. When it reaches 50/50 it is critical and at
40/60 the mud is in danger of flipping. This
means the mud becomes oil- in-water instead of wa-
ter-in-oil. The particle wetting becomes wrong and
the barite can all fall to the bottom of the pit and
hole. This must be avoided at all costs.
The retort results are the only answer to what is
happening with the water in the mud. Whole mud
chlorides may change, but to accurately assess the
source of the change an accurate retort must be run.
The cure to an increase in water is usually an in-
crease in mud density. This must be carried out as
quickly as it would if the problem were an influx of
gas.

CHANGE OVER
Changing from water based mud (WBM) to
OBM is not a simple matter. It requires planning
extra equipment. The more open hole is involved
the more difficult it will be. Large amounts of
WBM wall cake can be expected after a changeover
of OBM in a well with a long section of open hole.
To protect the OBM from being contaminated
with water and experiencing extreme viscosity in-
crease a spacer or series of spacers should be run.
Each well is unique in this regard but in general
an oil spacer, made of the base oil, is run ahead of
the OBM. The higher the density of the mud at the
time of the changeover the more difficult this be-
comes. Straight oil weighs only 6.8 ppg and a long
annular displacement of oil will adversely effect the
hydrostatic pressure. This may require doing the
changeover on the choke to maintain constant bot-
tom hole pressure.
Changing back to WBM from OBM is pretty
much the same, requiring as a minimum a substan-
tial oil spacer. Wall cake problems are not as pro-
GEOWEBSITE www.geodf.com

T
he GEO website which can be found online at
www.geodf.com has gone through some major
changes. The basic look has been modernized (see
the illustration of the home page). We have also
gone through the links and identified ones that are
nor working properly. You should notice that all the
Newsletters are now ac-
cessible.
We are also in the
process of replacing most
of the tables to make
them more accurate and
easier to read. Write ups
about our facilities, ser-
vices and products have
been upgraded as well.
Some additional products
are being entered into the
data and more will be
added as requests come
in from visitors to the
site.
nounced as when the changeover is to OBM.
With any changeover the critical point is when
the new fluid reaches the surface. Determining the
point at which the changeover is complete and the
fluid coming out should be returned to the pit is im-
portant and not easy. Often, mud weight can be
used to detect the spacer fluid when it arrives. A
good stroke count estimate and circulating time
should be used as a backup and to help know when
to look most closely.
If the changeover to OBM is stopped too soon,
OBM contaminated with WBM will be incorpo-
rated into the system damaging the O/W. If the
changeover is allowed to run too long commercially
valuable c) detect cement returns when cementing
casing will end up in the sump. When changing
back to WBM the OBM is captured for storage and
reuse. Cutting off the changeover too soon results in
valuable OBM ending up in the WBM, while wait-
ing too long allows water to contaminate the OBM
which is being saved for another usage. Determin-
ing the change from one mud type to the other can
be based on density or external phase..
TECHNICAL SERVICES NEWSLETTER VOLUME X NUMBER 2 April 15, 2006
PAGE 4
A N S W E R S T O W H A T D O Y O U W A N T I T T O B E ?

1 . c ) d e t e c t c e m e n t r e t u r n s w h e n c e m e n t i n g c a s -
i n g
2 . d ) n o n e o f t h e a b o v e . I t d e p e n d s o n t h e f o r m a -
t i o n s b e i n g d r i l l e d .
3 . c ) 8 . 6 p p g
New Shaker Screen Designation

T
he American Petroleum Institute (API) has
come out with a new way to designate shaker
screens. In the past the D-50 cut point was used.
This refers to the size in microns (m) of particles,
50% of which will pass through the screen and 50%
are retained on the screen. The new designation
uses the D-100 cut point, an absolute go/no- go
measurement.
Shaker screen sizes are used to reflect the mesh
of the screen cloth. Mesh refers to the number of
wires (or openings) per inch. If all wires were the
same thickness then this might be an accurate way
to rate screens but the wires used in screens are of
varying thicknesses even with the same mesh (see
Figure 1).
The new method takes standardized particles
and a standard sized piece of the screen to be tested,
and measures the smallest size particles that are re-
tained. A new chart (see Figure 2) was developed
which assigns a new API screen number to screens
based on a standardized test with a piece of the
screen in question, measuring the D-100 particle
size.
The API Subcommittee 13 Task Group consid-
ered other testing methods, including:
1. Sieve analysis with different types of me-
dia. Aluminum oxide was chosen because
of repeatable results, low cost of the mate-
rials, and ease of use.
2. Wet sieve analysis was tried but it required
more equipment and was more difficult
and expensive to perform.
3. Establishing a standard shaker body and
using a standard mud was tried. This intro-
duced too many variables and was re-
jected.
4. A method to obtain a cut point curve was
suggested. What one must understand is
that cut points vary with any solids control
devise. Any variation of either quantity or
quality of the components of the standard
mud will yield different results.

After evaluating
all the variables in
screened solids con-
trol equipment it was
clear the only cer-
tainty was that the
screen openings
would remain the
same regardless of
the equipment. A
method to describe
the openings was
therefore chosen for
screen testing.
This new desig-
nation should make it
easier to compare
screens from differ-
ent manufactures. It
does not, however,
allow you to say with
any certainty what
the actual cut point
will be for any par-
ticular combination of shaker screen,
shaker device, mud system and flow rate.
Manufacturers will continue to push their equip-
ment as having that unique edge due the equipment
design.
D-100 separation, api number
D-100 API screen
Separation, ? m number

>462.5 to 550.0 35
>390.0 to 462.5 40
>327.5 to 390.0 45
>275.0 to 327.5 50
>231.0 to 275.0 60
>196.0 to 231.0 70
>165.0 to 196.0 80
>137.5 to 165.0 100
>116.5 to 137.5 120
>98. 0 t o 116. 5 140
>82. 5 t o 98. 0 170
>69. 0 t o 82. 5 200
>58. 0 t o 69. 0 230
>49. 0 t o 58. 0 270
>41. 5 t o 58. 0 325
>35. 0 t o 41. 5 400
>28. 5 t o 35. 0 450
~25 4 Desilter cone cut point
Figure 2
0.0139 inch
wire diameter
0.0556 inch
wire diameter
0.0247 inch
wire diameter
1 inch 1 inch 1 inch
* Mesh count remains constant while opening size varies as the wire
diameter changes
Cons t ancy* of mes h count 8 MES H
Figure 1