Diverse Application of Unique High-Performance Water-Based-Mud Technology in theMiddle East

摘要

A high performance water based mud (HPWBM) system hasbeen used successfully to address a combination of drillingchallenges faced in the Middle East. Drilling problemsencountered in the area typically include shale instabilitythrough pressure transmission effects, swelling clay-stone, bitballing, drill-string accretion, differential sticking over tightgas permeable sands and down-hole losses.All these challenges can be very difficult to overcome withconventional water based mud (WBM) systems and can provevery expensive in terms of lost mud, lost down-hole tools, nonperformance rig time, side-tracks or ultimate failure to meetwell or section objectives.The HPWBM system was introduced to provideconsiderable improvement in WBM performance and alsoprovide an environmentally benign alternative to oil basedmuds (OBM) while emulating OBM drilling performanceattributes. Recent applications in the Middle East have provedthat the HPWBM system can be applied as an alternative toOBM, successfully achieving the objectives of the sectionswhile providing drilling performance comparative to OBM.This paper discusses the technical features of the HPWBMsystem, gives an outline of previous applications and presentsdetailed case histories of the more diverse applications of thesystem and its components in wells in the Middle East, whilecomparing performance to offsets drilled with conventionalWBM and OBM.