A review of vegetable oils technical properties as enviromental friendly mud

Abstract

For decades, diesel has been used as oil based drilling fluid since it was proven in performance and worldwide availability. Yearly, world demand for oil and gas consumption will continue to grow and sufficient supply is an important key to sustain constant and improve economic development. As exploration of new well and drilling operation take place, there are the need for cost reduction without compromising the performance of drilling fluid and environmental effect. Unfortunately diesel has been found to be toxic and harmful to environment, due to the present of cyclic aromatic compound. This study will provide better understanding on the choices available for drilling operation particularly related to environmental friendly drilling fluid. This study focused on the processed vegetable oil; palm oil, corn oil, canola oil and soybean oil as potential substitute component for environmental friendly oil based drilling fluid. The physical and chemical properties on the processed vegetable oil were identified followed by determining the acceptable rheology properties of drilling fluid. Several field cases were selected based on similarity and comparison approaches in using environmental friendly oil based drilling mud. The cost related to produce mud was compared with conventional diesel and mineral oil mud. This study concludes that the use of vegetable oil as drilling mud is plausible, but not recommended.