Diagnosing Crossflow vs. Ballooning vs. Kick: Managed Pressure Drilling as an Interpretive Tool in Conflicting Pressure Regimes
Managed pressure drilling (MPD) is widely deployed to navigate narrow pore-pressure / fracture-pressure windows, but its highest value in the hostile wells may be interpretive rather than purely controlling. In conflicting pressure regimes, a single surface flow anomaly can be produced by a kick, an isolated loss, we...