Overview: Drilling Technology (February 2008)

Abstract

Overview An increasing number of superlatives are used to describe challenges that the drilling industry faces. Indeed, adjectives such as high, extreme, long, ultra, severe, or extra are used quite often to qualify the complexity of wells drilled today or that will be drilled in the near future. To name a few, one hears about ultradeep offshore, ultradeep drilling, ultraslim tools, very-extended-reach drilling, high-rate data transmission, ultrahigh torque connections, ultrahigh-strength steel, high-accuracy measurement, very advanced modeling, high-definition visualization, high-performance, and many others. Drilling becomes less and less conventional in terms of materials, techniques, data acquisition, and transmission systems and turns into unconventional or extreme drilling by use of new technologies and operating limits. Another observation is that the drilling industry attempts to combine and integrate several drilling techniques and methods, not only to overcome the difficulty and complexity of drilling deeper, longer, and in higher pressure and temperature in a severe downhole environment, but also to extend the production of mature or depleted fields. For example, it is not rare to combine coiled-tubing drilling with underbalanced-drilling methods, or an ultraslim rotary-steerable system with a casing-while-drilling (CWD) system. There is talk about combining CWD technology with expandable tubulars. In brief, complex-drilling challenges will find their economic and engineering solutions by mixing several high-level technologies. Papers presented on the following pages and in the additional reading illustrate these technology trends.Ultradeep or extra-long drilling requires increasingly higher-strength drillpipe and advancements in material to reach the target successfully and safely.Drilling technology must be accompanied with realistic and advanced modeling or laboratory experiments to obtain better benefit from and understanding of complex hydraulic and mechanical phenomena.New managed-pressure-drilling methods are required to compensate dynamic pressure in reservoirs having a low margin between the fracture- and the pore-pressure gradients. Drilling Technology additional reading available at the SPE eLibrary: www.spe.org SPE 110708 "Case Study: Drillstring-Failure Analysis and New Deep-Well Guidelines Lead to Success" by David R. Bert, SPE, BP plc, et al. SPE 107903 "Implementation of a Shock- and Vibration-Mitigation Process: Achieving Real-Time Solutions and Savings" by Goke Akinniranye, SPE, Schlumberger, et al. SPE 107547 "Improved Drilling-Process Control Through Continuous Particle and Cuttings Monitoring" by T.H. Omland, Statoil, et al. SPE 109530 "The Extraction of Mud-Stuck Tubulars Using Vibratory Resonant Techniques" by Ozzie Gonzalez, Vibration Technology, et al.