The fate of discharged drilling muds is an ongoing issue for offshore petroleum operators, regulators, the fishing industry and environmentalists. The problem is compounded by difficulties in measuring transient mud concentrations and in relating experience gained at one location to locations with different oceanographic characteristics. We use the benthic boundary layer transport model (bblt) ...

For three years we have used synthetic and field data to investigate the effectiveness of commercial refraction tomography codes on both simple and complex subsurface velocity structures, with the ultimate goal of determining the suitability of the method for karst problems. The results of these studies indicate that refraction tomography is able to resolve karst features under some conditions....

A model for the calculation of the spreading and deposition of drilling mud and cuttings has been developed. The calculations are based on a Lagrangian particle approach, which means that the properties of the discharge are represented by moving particles in the model domain. The initialization of the particles is based on the output from an Eulerian near-field underwater plume model. In additi...

Drilling cost optimization has always been an important issue in the petroleum industry. In order to save costs and create new markets for local materials, Ofo (D. micocarpum) and food gum (C. populnea) powders were evaluated in this study at high temperature as alternative to imported chemical additives in water based drilling fluid. The base mud composed of alkali beneficiated local clay, ach...

Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a utility theory based decision-making technique, which works on a premise that the decision-making of complex problems can be handled by structuring them into simple and comprehensible hierarchical structures. However, AHP involves human subjective evaluation, which introduces vagueness that necessitates the use of decision-making under uncertainty. The vagu...