Drilling through or near substantial salt bodies in deepwater is often inevitable. Drilling expenses remain high despite significant practical and anecdotal drilling experience. The difficulties fundamentally relate to large uncertainties of in-situ stresses and pore-pressure below/near the salt. Well trajectories near the salt may encounter increasing lateral stresses. Drilling out of salt is often problematic in terms of mud loss and wellbore stability. High pressures are required in drilling the salt but the low strength/stress rock of the sub-salt “rubblized” zones require lower mud weights.
Knowing the sub-salt stresses, it is possible to consider optimizing wellbore trajectory and to consider various modifications to mud and casing programs by assessing the characteristics of sub-salt fractures. From the forecasted sub-salt stress environment, fracture length and orientation can also be evaluated.

ADVANTEK has built a two and three-dimensional model to efficiently estimate the stress field around salt environments based on features and dynamics of salt movement. Fracture extent during lost circulation is examined using the models. Novel solutions are formulated to determine the stresses and fractures near salt bodies of various shapes. Those solutions can provide quantitative analyses to the effects of a salt body on the sub-salt stresses.

Experience	Solutions/Services
Geographical Environments	Contact
Aberdeen Caspian Basin Equatorial Guinea	Karim Zaki Ph. 713.979.0377 Email: karim@advantekinternational.com