Abstract
This paper presents drilling and completion fluids design for drilling long lateral / horizontal wells in a North Kuwait field and its field application on well RA-492, RA-493 and RA-499. The offset wells were reviewed to identify the issues from drilling a challenging trajectory through troublesome reactive formations that showed serious wellbore stability issues and stuck pipe incidents.
The customized drilling and completions fluids system was designed for different intervals, taking the following objectives in consideration:
Improved hole stability through stressed and reactive formations
Enhanced hole-cleaning efficiency at critical angles
Minimized risk of stuck pipe across depleted formations with high porosity and permeability
Minimized / no induced losses to formation by utilizing unique wellbore-strengthening technique
Minimal damage to reservoir section during drilling phase
Near-wellbore damage remediation during completion phase
This paper describes the customized drilling and completions fluids performance as compared to offset wells. A comprehensive engineered approach addressed the challenges of drilling horizontal wells by using a revolutionary bridging technology to strengthen the wellbore and improve wellbore stability to reduce nonproductive time (NPT) related to losses, stuck pipe, etc. This paper also describes the completions fluids design to minimize reservoir damage and utilize Mesophase technology to remediate near-wellbore damage and improve reservoir producibility. The lessons learned on these wells were incorporated in drilling subsequent wells to continue improve on performance.
