Drilling Engineering Case Study

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Executive Summary Drilling engineer has the most important job in ensuring maximum oil recovery as well as profit with cost-effective and time efficient drilling operation. One of drilling engineers‟ responsibility is well planning. Well planning is crucial as it determines the future of the well and hence requires an integration of engineering principal, cooperate or personal philosophies and experience. Drilling Engineer also has to ensure drilling operation conducted with minimal amount of problem such as tool stucked, fluid lost and lost of circulation. Problems may cause non-productive time (NPT) and it is a big loss to the company. Thus, it is clear that planning an operation with the latest technology and extensive understanding…show more content…
They are the formation pressure gradient and fracture gradient. The formation and fracture gradients are very important in determining the pore pressure and fracture pressure in certain depth, in order to figure the optimum mud design, cementing design and casing design. Theoretically, formation pore pressure is defined as the pressure exerted by the formation fluids on the walls of rock pores. Generally, two types of formation pressure are recognized. They are normal pore pressure and abnormal pore pressure. On the other hand, fracture gradient is defined as the minimum total in situ stress divided by the depth. The drilling fluid and cement slurry will not fracture the formation only if the designed weight of drilling fluids and cement slurry do not exceed the fracture gradient. So, the accuracy of estimating the formation fracture gradient is very important. From the pressure data obtained in the exploration wells, the predicted pore pressure and fracture pressure are tabulated in appendix 1 The reservoir follows the abnormal pressure trend, which means the reservoir is abnormally overpressure or under…show more content…
Based on offset well information iii. Based on formation pore pressure and formation fracture gradient to develop minimum and maximum mud weight range iv. Consideration of any lost circulation zone v. Consideration of the maximum overbalance across the depleted zones and specific requirements to minimize the risk of differential sticking vi. Consideration of hole stability requirement The effectiveness with which a drilling fluid performs its necessary functions depends on its composition and on various physical and chemical properties. Generally, a drilling fluid can be classified according to its principal fluid phase, i.e., water, oil or gas. Frequently, the terms water base and oil base are used to distinguish drilling fluids that have a liquid as the principal component. The mud is design to suit the formations drilled in order to prevent problem that may occur in during the drilling operations, such as loss of circulation, blowout, swelling and so forth. Special additives are prepared; mud density is designed to withstand formation pressure and not to exceed the formation fracturing pressure. Table below shows the different types of additives and their functions used to design the best mud required. As shown in table

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