West Kuwait often requires drilling of challenging multilateral wells in order to delimit reservoirs, however several sidetrack wells occurred due to stuck pipes and consequent down hole equipment loss, in some cases with radioactive source. Borehole instability, more specifically in shaly section was common problem and consequent well geometry is also a decisive issue for further logging and completion.
A Hole Cleaning Monitoring Service was applied in the field, the service consists of cutting volume measuring equipment installed at each shale-shaker to measure cumulative bulk solids recovery while drilling, along with a sophisticated software application compensating for attached drilling fluid, converting mass to actual volume, and calculating expected volume based on ROP. The real-time delta is a direct indicator of hole cleaning efficiency and so can be accurately related to various drilling and hydraulics parameters in order to optimize drilling performance and preempt potential causes of NPT/ILT.
The service consistently identified various potential hole cleaning issues in sufficient time to take appropriate proactive preventative action.
This paper covers actual instances of how the service reduced potential NPT/ILT through identified and mitigated issues related to real time hole cleaning, drilling and hydraulics optimization, correct hole volume for cementing, effectiveness and efficiency of pill, stuck pipe avoidance.
As a result, operator was able to drill the well optimally saving 30% of the pill volume and 3.5 days of Rig time.
