A newly introduced dry micronized weight material (MWM) designed to improve hydraulic pressure management while mitigating sag tendencies for drilling challenging extended- reach wells has been used successfully in recent Gulf of Mexico drilling projects. The application of the MWM while drilling narrow hydraulic windows, typically observed in deepwater wells, hasled to new breakthroughs in the ability to model and manage the physio-chemical interactions of extremely small weighting agents with the chemicals and base fluids that constitute non- aqueous fluid (NAF) systems. From these advances, it is now possible to design and utilize weighted fluids that are ultra- thin, and possess significantly lower viscosity than fluids using traditional weighting materials.
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