Performance Drilling—Moving Beyond the Basics The industry's continuous push into harsher and more-challenging drilling environments, in terms of formation types, depths, and well profiles, presents several performance challenges. Performance drilling is accepted widely as one of the enablers that will help reverse the high-cost implications of this trend. Consequently, the drive to understand the basics, as it relates to this realization, has preoccupied the industry for some time now. This effort, which has focused primarily on elements such as rock mechanics and failure mechanisms, bottomhole-assembly (BHA) design, drilling mechanics and hydraulics, and the operational environment, has proved highly beneficial. Extensive amounts of data have been collected as a result of this focus. Additionally, several performance-enhancing tools and processes have been developed. Having deepened our understanding of the basics, we now must question data to reveal how and why events occur—successes as well as failures. Through this process, we must identify trends, behaviors, and relationships. These observations must be explained because we have the basics. We cannot expect to improve, and effectively confront our looming challenges, when we merely recycle the basics. Performance-improvement objectives will be met only if we turn data into action-able information. There are tools to help design and understand BHA performance. In addition, there is agreement on the different vibration modes. Field data clearly establish the need for different bit technologies and for different drive mechanisms [e.g., positive-displacement motor, rotary-steerable-system (RSS) "push the bit," or RSS "point the bit"]. Contrary to what computer programs and models sometimes tell us, reality must always be considered as an option. We have the data and the understanding—now we need to move beyond the basics. Bit Technology and Bottomhole Assemblies additional reading available at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org IPTC 11945 • "State-of-the-Art BHA Program Produces Unprecedented Results" by David C-K Chen, SPE, Halliburton, et al. SPE 119375 • "Roller Reamers Improve Drilling Performance in Wells Limited by Bit and Bottomhole-Assembly Vibrations" by Steven F. Sowers, SPE, ExxonMobil, et al. SPE 119302 • "Experimental Study of MSE of a Single PDC Cutter Under Simulated Pressurized Conditions" by Navid Rafatian, SPE, Schlumberger, et al.