Newpark Drilling Fluids, which has long held a prominent position on the shelf, was reminded of those challenges with a recent 25,000-ft TD well drilled off the shelf in 85 ft of water. Newpark’s South Louisiana regional operations manager, Sam Smith, said the well generated bottomhole circulating temperatures (BHT) of 365°F, with pressures requiring a surface mud weight of 19 lb/gal.

1. World Oil / april 2013 PF–191
Originally appeared in the World Oil
®
April 2013 issue, page PF195.
Port Fourchon Supplement
Posted with permission.
Article copyright © 2013 by Gulf Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.
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While Port Fourchon is more closely
alignedwiththedeepandultra-deepwater
Gulf, players on the shelf are also contrib-
uting significantly to increased activity.
Despite today’s low, albeit rising, gas
prices, New Orleans’ McMoRan Ex-
ploration Co, Energy XXI, Apache and
others continue to construct wells that
are 20,000 ft and deeper along the Gulf
of Mexico shelf. Apache, for instance,
operated five shallow-water rigs during
the fourth quarter and saw its shelf pro-
duction reach 95,980 boed, represent-
ing a 7% quarter-over-quarter increase.
Apache was awarded 60 of the 66 blocks
that it bid on in the June 2012 Central
Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale, and now has
an interest in 666 blocks covering ap-
proximately 3 million gross acres on the
shelf, the operator said.
Today’s shelf activity is quite a reversal
for a drilling theater that essentially was
left for dead four years ago. Most observ-
ers credit McMoRan, which remains the
shelf’s most active player,
with bringing new life to it,
with its 2010 Davy Jones dis-
covery drilled to a blistering
29,000-ft TD.
“Of the six rigs we service
out of here, three are drilling
on the shelf,” said Port Four-
chon tenant Dwayne Reb-
stock, president and CEO
of Allport Services LLC. “It
was really drying up between
2008and2009,butnowcom-
panies are re-drilling and re-
entering old wells. The shelf
really hasn’t died off at all.”
Illustrating the shelf’s new
life is the number of once-
stacked jackups that are now being refur-
bished,allowingthemtoreturntoservice.
Ben Bordelon, executive vice president
of repair for giant Bollinger Shipyards of
Lockport, La., said in late January that the
company had overhauled three stacked
jackups over the previous two quarters,
with four more tentatively scheduled over
the subsequent two quarters.
“The shelf has struggled, but we be-
gan seeing an uptick in activity last year.
There’s so much optimism there, for sure,
and it’s encouraging to finally have a good
heartbeat in that market,” Bordelon said.
Tommy Fanguy, president of Hou-
ma’s Supreme Services & Specialty
Co., suggested that the shelf would be
an ideal proving ground for any com-
pany wanting to field-trial the very lat-
est in high-pressure, high-temperature
(HPHT) technology. “Between ex-
tremely high pressures and tempera-
tures, the shelf definitely poses a lot of
challenges. Most of the work there now
is workovers and P&A, but there’s some
potential for new development, if the
high-temperature and high-pressure
stuff takes off,” he said.
Newpark Drilling Fluids, which has
long held a prominent position on the
shelf, was reminded of those challenges
with a recent 25,000-ft TD well drilled
off the shelf in 85 ft of water. Newpark’s
South Louisiana regional operations
manager, Sam Smith, said the well gen-
erated bottomhole circulating tempera-
tures (BHT) of 365°F, with pressures re-
quiringasurfacemudweightof19lb/gal.
“We had to determine the equivalent
mud weight for both getting in and out of
the hole. We definitely ran a lot of labora-
tory tests for this well and, overall, it was a
very well-managed operation.”
Smith said the ultra-deep HPHT
wells that characterize shelf targets are
not the place for drilling fluid engineers
to learn on the job. “Our mud engineers
for this well averaged 15 years of experi-
ence,” he said. “For these ul-
tra-deep wells, once you get
past 25,000 ft, you're playing
in an entirely different envi-
ronment.”
The 400-day well, which
reached its targeted depth ear-
ly this year, required mixing
more than 50,000 bbl of oil-
based mud, which was run on
a closed loop drilling system.
“We had some folks working
overtime.”
Newpark operates two
yards in Port Fourchon with a
cumulative capacity of 40,000
bbl of water, oil and synthetic-
based drilling fluids.
Deepwatergetstheink,butdon’tcountouttheshelf
One of the near-shore platforms that contributed to a 7% increase
in Apache’s Gulf of Mexico shelf production during fourth-quarter
2012. (Photo courtesy of Apache Corp.)