Affecting factors research on the risks of deep water drilling operation in West Africa

Because of the high investment and high risk characteristic of drilling operation in deep water, pre-drilling risk evaluation was completed for the deep water Well - JDZ-2-1 in West Africa, it has significant benefits for emergency response. The influences of thunder storm, hurricane, wave, tide, fog, water depth, submarine ocean current, shallow geologic hazards, gas hydrate, abnormal pressure, narrow pore pressure/fracture pressure window and earthquake to the deep water drilling operation are covered in this paper. The real natural environment and geologic conditions of JDZ-2 Block was also considered when build up and evaluate the integrated risk hierarchical structure of drilling operation by using the Analytical Hierarchy Process（APH）method as per the normal component parts of conventional drilling operation in deep water. According to the analysis results, the influence of different factors to drilling fluid are significant and has the highest risk, the risk of drilling operation, coring operation and logging is lower. This analysis and research provided good reference for the selection of risk associated measures.