Abstract
Along with the increasingly deep wells and long horizontal wells, the wellbore instability and formation damage undeniably becomes the biggest concerns during well construction. Sha 3 reservoirs in faulted B Depression, a low permeability exploration target zones, are highly fractured. Most of the wells with the barefoot interval length of over 2000m or even about 3500m were drilled under underbalanced conditions to improve exploration success rate. The exploration results were disappointing. Shale sloughing and borehole enlargement frequently occurred during the process of previous drilling, followed by some troubles including serious formation damage. Different kinds of drilling fluid techniques, including the nano-emulsion drilling fluid, polymeric alcohol and potassium formate, were tried to settle these problems with mixed results. Mineral analysis, shale dispersion and swelling test, and dynamic leakoff tests show that the solid particles mismatching well with the sizes of pore throats and the width of natural fractures and the high pH value of drilling fluids are two key factors triggered the borehole instability and formation damage. Based on the temporary shielding theory, the modified drilling fluids are developed by adding fibrous bridging agents and by decreasing pH value. Dynamic leakoff tests manifest that the modified drilling fluids are able to rapidly seal the micro fractures and pore throats and the percentage of regained permeability can reach more than 85%. Two experiment wells, a vertical well and a sidetracked well, located in an area of severe shale sloughing, were drilled with the modified drill fluids under micro overbalanced conditions. The results indict that the diameters of two boreholes are near-gauge, that the coring, well logging and completion operations are conducted very successfully, and that the well construction time is cut down by 50% compared with that of previous drilled wells.
