Kick Prevention and Well Control Drills: Practice the Close

A kick is a warning that the pressure balance in the well is gone. It can be controlled in minutes if the crew recognizes it and acts, and it becomes a blowout in minutes if they do not. The difference between the two outcomes is not luck. It is practice, and the record of that practice.

The early signs are the whole game

Most kicks are detectable before they become dangerous. The flow check shows flow when the pumps are off. The pit volume rises. The drilling break changes the rate of penetration. The return flow changes. Any one of these is a signal, and the crew's training is to act on the signal before the situation matures. The well control and kicks guide on this site explains the physics of the kick; the drill is where the physics becomes a reflex.

The crew that waits to confirm the kick is the crew that loses the minutes. The crew that shuts in on the first reliable sign is the crew that controls the well. The drill builds the reflex, and the reflex is the whole difference.

What the drill has to include

A well control drill is a sequence, and every step is someone's job. The driller recognizes the sign and calls it. The crew does the flow check. The decision is made to shut in, and the shut-in sequence runs: the crew closes the annular or the rams in the right order, the choke operator takes the choke, the pit and pressure readings get recorded, and the well is reported to the office and the company man.

The drill record carries the date, the crew list, the timings, and the results. Federal rules under 30 CFR Part 250 require documented well control drills on the Outer Continental Shelf, and land operators run the same discipline because the drill is the training either way. The record is what proves the crew practiced, and it is what the auditor asks for first.

Why drills go stale

The drill becomes a routine when the answers get passed around. The crew knows what is coming, the flow check is a formality, and the drill is a rehearsal with the script in hand. The fix is the same fix the H2S article on this site describes for gas drills: vary the scenario, surprise the crew, and grade the response. A drill where the kick comes as a surprise is training. A drill where everyone knew it was coming is a meeting.

The BOP side of the drill is covered in the BOP stack testing article: the equipment is only half the system, and the crew is the other half. The drill connects them, and the record of the drill connects both to the auditor.

The practice pays on the day

The operators who run tight well control programs can point to the day it paid: the flow check that caught the kick at three barrels, the shut-in that took four minutes instead of the industry standard of ten, the well that never became a story. The crews who drilled monthly can tell that story. The crews who drilled at certification time cannot, and nobody wants to find out which kind of crew is on the well when the flow shows.

The choke operator owns the circulation

Once the well is shut in, the choke operator runs the circulation that brings the kick under control: the choke position, the standpipe pressure, the casing pressure, and the drill pipe pressure all have to be read and recorded on the kill sheet while the well is circulated. The choke operator's job is the one that is hardest to practice at a tabletop, and the one the drill has to include with the pumps actually running.

The kill sheet is the record: the pressures, the volumes, the timing. The well control kick sheet on this site is the field version, and the drill is where the crew learns to fill it under pressure, so that the real event is the second time they have done it.

If the well control drills on your operations are quarterly and unrecorded, book a working session with the OpsFlo operations team. Book a call here to keep drill records and crew certifications current, and use the well control kick sheet to standardize the flow check on every rig.