The St. Petersburg Mining University, as part of its cooperation agreement with PAO Gazprom, has signed a contract for further research and development work. According to this document, scientists of the university will develop a special composition and technology of its injection into wells to isolate water inflow at the Kovykta gas condensate field. Today it is an extremely urgent task for the country because we are talking about the resource base for the Power of Siberia pipeline.
Reagents for well construction in conditions of polysalt aggression, i.e., in the situation when highly mineralized water complicates the drilling process, are used all over the world. Their function is to reach the complicated area and block it to protect the wellbore from fluid infiltration from the formation. Otherwise, it would be simply impossible to start production. The main difficulty in eliminating the problem is that due to various reasons (e.g., abnormal pressure and temperature, contact with aggressive media), compositions may turn into non-pumpable gel early or, on the contrary, fail to reach the required consistency. Such metamorphoses occur primarily in fields with special reservoir properties, such as the Kovytinskoye field.
“The existing water shut-off technologies are based on the same principle, which does not take into account the fact that the geology of deposits in Russia is unique. Therefore, our task is not only to develop a composition that will maximize the development of one of the world’s largest underground reservoirs of natural gas but also to create a universal recipe that can increase the fossil fuel extraction rate across the country,” says Andrey Kunshin, a research engineer at the Arktika Science Center at Mining University.
Now in the laboratories of the St. Petersburg higher education institution, studies of modern cement slurries, analyzing their drawbacks that complicate drilling and hold back production growth are going on. The near-term plan is to build a test bench for solving non-standard problems in the field of power engineering which at this stage has no analogues in the world (the project is at the phase of patenting). It is necessary for simulating the processes taking place at the bottom of the well. In particular, to simulate contact with formation fluids or to create additional pressure. This will make it possible to study the reaction of the new, improved composition when it gets into an unfavourable aggressive environment.
“The last phase of works will be the pilot testing at Kovykta field, which we are going to perform together with our colleagues from Gazprom VNIIGAZ Institute. Solving this scientific and technical task, for which we have twelve months, will reduce well construction time, reduce reagent consumption, and ensure the industrial and environmental safety of the work,” explained another representative of the Arctic Research Center, Dmitry Sidorov, a research engineer.
Gazprom's management chose St. Petersburg Mining University as a partner, and this was no chance. First of all, Russia’s oldest technical school has many years of experience of cooperation with the holding in a variety of activities: from surveys to improve the quality of drilling fluids to organizing additional professional training courses for current employees of its subsidiaries. And secondly, the level of instrumentation and laboratory facilities here is one of the best in Russia, which allows with a high degree of probability to count on achieving the expected result in the course of experiments.
“The infrastructure of the scientific centers operating at Mining University is constantly being modernized," says Mikhail Dvoinikov, director of the Arctic Center. “For example, over the last year, the university’s management purchased modern laboratory equipment, in particular, viscometers with the detailed setting of research conditions required to determine the viscosity of thick compositions and record digital parameters that change during the thickening process. This is necessary for predicting the behavior of solutions in the well. The instruments vary in their functionality and specifics. Some are suitable for measuring the viscosity of drilling fluids, others for thick gels, and so on. Studies are conducted, among others, on benches simulating real conditions, which were hand-designed by our specialists. They play an extremely important role in our work.
Thanks to investments from companies such as PhosAgro, Rosneft, Gazprom, SIBUR, and many others, the material base of St. Petersburg Mining University, which has always been developing, last year was transformed beyond recognition. The university has a new research centre for Problems of mineral and Technogenic Resources Processing, the Center for Digital Modeling, and the area of the Arctic Competence Center was just recently expanded by the commissioning of two additional rooms. They are equipped not only with unique equipment but also with functional domestic furniture, allowing to optimize the process of experimentation, because everything necessary for it is now “at hand,” from electrical outlets to special utensils.
One of the fundamental ideas behind the new concept is the separation of scientific and educational processes. Now scientists can stop worrying that the need to teach and prepare for classes on the schedule will distract them from their research activities. And the in-demand equipment at the most inopportune moment will be occupied by students (at the same time, well-equipped laboratories remain at each department, where the latter have the opportunity to work on their projects).
This does not mean that the doors of the renovated centres are closed to talented young people. On the contrary, they should become a point of attraction for all teachers, graduate students, and undergraduates involved in similar topics, and represent a space where strong scientific teams are formed, capable of solving the tasks set by both the state and the partner companies. The signing of the new cooperation agreement with PAO Gazprom is another confirmation that business considers this model very promising.
