Effect of drilling muds and cuttings discharged to the enviroment

Abstract

The offshore drilling process uses drilling fluids and generates waste fluids and cuttings. Drilling fluids used in offshore driling operations are water based drilling fluids (WBF), oil based fluids (OBF) and synthetic based fluids (SBF). The wastes generated in the largest volumes during drilling oil and gas wells are drilling muds and cuttings. Several options to manage offshore drilling wastes were presented in this paper such as offshore discharge, offshore downhole injection and onshore disposal.