Rheological impact and economic implications of partial to total substitution of imported bentonite clay for oil and gas
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ORIGINAL PAPER-EXPLORATION ENGINEERING
Rheological impact and economic implications of partial to total substitution of imported bentonite clay for oil and gas drilling operations in Nigeria Oghenerume Ogolo1,5 · Akeem Arinkoola1,2 · Samuel Osisanya1,3 · Frank Egede4 · Ternenge Joseph Chior5 Received: 2 June 2020 / Accepted: 21 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract In less than a decade, there have been two global meltdowns of crude oil price and the latest was caused by the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in 2020. This is expected to have a negative impact on the global economy, especially on those countries that depend more on the revenue from sales of crude oil. One of the measures that can be taken to survive this kind of situation in the future is to reduce the unit technical cost for producing a barrel of oil by using locally available materials. This research investigated a local clay sourced from Ropp in Plateau State, Nigeria, by considering its rheological characteristics and economic implications of using it for partial to total substitution of imported bentonite clay for oil and gas drilling operations. The local clay was termed as Ropp bentonite clay (RBC). Various spud mud samples were prepared by dispersing a mixture of imported bentonite clay (IBC) and RBC (0–100%) in 350 ml of water. Certain quantity (0–1 g) of polyacrylamide cellulose was added to the mud samples before rheological and physical properties were determined using the standard API procedure. An economic model was built to determine the cost implications of using any of the mud formulations at different consumption rates. The results show that IBC–RBC blend in the right proportion could save Nigeria 12 to 36% of the cost of bentonite clay used to drill wells in the country. Keywords Bentonite clay · Rheology · Water-based mud · Partial substitution of bentonite and economic implications Abbreviations IBC Imported bentonite clay PAC Polyacrylamide cellulose RBC Ropp bentonite clay RMRDC Raw Materials Research and Development Council UTC Unit technical cost
* Oghenerume Ogolo [email protected] 1
Department of Petroleum Engineering, African University of Science and Technology, Abuja, Nigeria
2
Department of Chemical Engineering, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomosho, Nigeria
3
Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE
4
Petroleum Training Institute, Effurun, Delta State, Nigeria
5
Petroleum and Gas Engineering Department, Nile University of Nigeria, Abuja, Nigeria
Introduction The oil and gas industry has been the main stay of the Nigerian economy for many decades (Afolabi et al. 2017). It was reported that the industry accounted for about 90% of foreign earnings and 70% of government’s revenue in 2017. In less than a decade, the industry has faced two global meltdowns of crude oil price which puts the economy of the country in a chaotic condition. One was the fall in oil price in 2015 due to the breakthrough in the production of shale oil, and the other is the c
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