Drilling upcoming wells in prospective areas of the Middle Magdalena Valley basin in Colombia requires knowing the drilling risks associated with wellbore instability events, in order to anticipate actions to mitigate or evade them, preventing non-productive times (NPTs) and increase in well costs. To achieve this, a comprehensive drilling evaluation of thirty-eight key wells has been performed, which include the visualization and classification of main drilling events related to geomechanics, the recognition of their potential root causes, the statistical analysis of these main events, and the qualitatively risk assessment on account of the definition of severity versus probability of occurrence of each main event by formation, providing clear understanding of mitigation plans, lessons learned and best operational practices for upcoming wells. The events evaluated in each well corresponded to those related to geomechanics, such as restrictions while drilling or logging operations, chemical instability, stuck pipe, mud losses and fluids influx.
Historically, the Middle Magdalena Valley (MMV) basin in Colombia has been one with the most important production contributions from Cenozoic petroleum systems exploited in different fields, and currently it has the option of incorporating reserves from the exploitation of unconventional deposits of Cretaceous formations. The drilling of wells over more than 50 years allows establishing an important source of information that can be used for well planning in prospective areas. Drilling upcoming wells in prospective areas of MMV basin requires knowing the drilling risks associated with wellbore instability events, to anticipate actions to mitigate or evade them, preventing non-productive times (NPTs) and increase in well costs. Taking that into account, this paper presents a comprehensive drilling evaluation that comprise an integral approach that has been applied in thirty-eight key wells in MMV basin.
