Wellbore stability
Ken Kunze
Education: PhD Chemistry, Rice University Houston Texas, 1978
No. of years of oil field experience: 38 years, ExxonMobil, comprising assignments in Drilling and Completion research, as drilling engineer in Norway (6+ years), as lead drilling engineer for Skene in Aberdeen (2.5 years), and in varied planning and technology support functions (8 months in Melbourne for PNG planning). Most recently worked in Unconventional Resources D&C group.
What motivates me? Engaging in analysis of data to discover what the drilling situation is in any given area (data sleuthing).
What I am really good at? I enjoy approaching new field areas and projects through a review of available experiential data, logs, drill cuttings analysis, and field reports, in order to reveal potential problems such as wellbore stability and lost returns, slow drilling, formation damage, and high non-productive time costs. Once the major difficulties have been identified, detailed attention can be directed toward mitigation and avoidance methods. During my work in Drilling Planning and Unconventional Resources, I often had to draw from my technical background to assess potential operational difficulties in frontier or under-developed areas and identify the necessary technology. Examples include identifying geo-mechanical problems presented by drilling in Papua New Guinea. Also, as one of 5 initial members of our Piceance CO drill team, I reviewed well files and logs from nearly 50 previous “ad hoc” wells that experienced high wellbore-related NPT, and created a major part of the Well Design Basis document. More recently, I engaged in “data sleuthing” into Chinese well reports and logs to assess the costs and difficulties of remediating or abandoning hundreds of wells for a proposed joint venture EOR project at Renqui, China.
I am especially proud of establishing drill cuttings injection as standard technology within my company. Prior to the project I initiated within Esso Norway, this technology was new to the corporation, although it had become standard among other operators in the North Sea, Alaska, and the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, I became the Cuttings Injection Subject Matter expert, published a company manual, and assisted a variety of injection projects including those at Point Thompson AK, Sakhalin Island Russia, and Piceance CO.
My research and field experience with drilling fluids led me to become the Oil Based Fluid subject matter expert for my company, and chairman of the API sub-committee that standardized the use of the Activity Meter to measure the water phase activity of oil emulsion fluids, a property that is critical for wellbore stability and shale stabilization.
Papers published:
- Kunze, K. R., Romero, E. E., and Duck, S., “Colorado Drill Cuttings Injection Pilot Results”, SPE 151453, presented at IADC Drilling Conference and Exhibition, San Diego, CA, March 2012
- Kunze, K.R., and Skorve, H.: "Merits of Suspending the First Platform Well as a Cuttings Injector," SPE 63124, 2000 SPE Annual Technical Conference, Dallas, TX, October 2000
- Kunze, K.R. and Steiger, R.P.: "Accurate In-Situ Stress Measurements during Drilling Operations," SPE 24593, 67th Annual SPE Technical Conference, Washington, D.C., October 1992
- Kunze, K.R., Steiger, R.P., “Extended leakoff tests to measure in-situ stress during drilling”, Rock Mechanics as a Multidisciplinary Science, Roegiers (ed), 1991 Balkema, Rotterdam ISBN 90 6191 194X
- Chow, T. W., McIntire, L.V., Kunze, K. R., Cooke, C. E., “The Rheological Properties of Cement Slurries: Effects of Vibration, Hydration Conditions, and Additives”, SPE Production Engineering, November 1988 13936
- Kunze, K. R., “Obtaining and Verifying Quality Cement Blends”, SPE 15576, Presented at 61st Annual Technical Conference of SPE, New Orleans, LA, Oct 5-8, 1986
- Kunze, K.R. and Shaughnessy, C. M.: "Acidizing Sandstone Formations with Fluoboric Acid, " SPEJ (Feb 1983)
- Shaughnessy, C.M. and Kunze, K.R.: "Understanding Sandstone Acidizing Leads to Improved Field Practices, " JPT (July 1981)
Patents: U.S. Patent #4,648,456, “Method for Acidizing Siliceous Formations”, W. J. Lamb and K. R. Kunze, 1987