Automatic control of managed pressure drilling

Abstract

Managed pressure drilling (MPD) has emerged as a powerful technology for safe and efficient drilling of hydrocarbon wells. However, it poses interesting control challenges that must be addressed before the anticipated impact. These challenges stem from the strongly multivariable nature of the problem, the presence of critical constraints, and the inherent uncertainty in both models and measurements. In this work we give a brief overview of managed pressure drilling, and make the case that model predictive control is a natural approach to controlling MPD. We demonstrate the proposed approach on an example of model predictive control application to dual-gradient drilling, a particular variant of MPD.