Zissis Moschovidis; Ronald Steiger; Xiaowei Weng; Matt Frankl; Ahmed Abou-Sayed; Carole Fleming; Steve Wolhart; Buddy McDaniel; Allen Sinor; Steinar Ottesen; Terry Herbert; Chris Wright; Norm Warpinski; Reid Beechef; John Dudley; Dick Zinno; Oktay Akhmed
Presented at Vail Rocks 1999, The 37th U.S. Symposium on Rock Mechanics (USRMS), Vail, Colorado, June 1999.
The Mounds drill cuttings injection field experiment
Abstract
This paper describes the data acquired during a comprehensive, joint-industry field experiment to improve the understanding of the mechanics and modeling of the processes involved in the downhole injection of drill cuttings. Disposal of {kill cuttings is of importance from both economic and environmental perspectives. The paper provides the field setting where the experiment was conducted, the formations selected for injection, the technical scope of work, the series of experiments conducted, and data acquired. The project consisted of three phases completed in 1998: drilling of the injection well and two observation wells, conducting about 20 intermittent cuttings-slurry injections into each of two disposal formations while imaging the created fractures from the observation wells, and coring through the imaged disposal zones by sidetracks from one of the observation wells.