Field based parameters like initial mud weight used for drilling, mud weight increment and problems per well were used to analyze wellbore instability, identify different instability mechanisms and design safe mud weight window for drilling horizontal wells. These parameters were used first on the drilling data of vertical wells to develop the procedure for the analysis of wellbore instability and identify the mechanism of instability. The developed procedure was then applied to the drilling data of directional wells to show the dependence of mud weight on the inclination and azimuth of the well. Finally, the procedure was applied to horizontal wells data along with the concept of critical washouts to infer the safe mud weight window. The safe mud weight window is validated on another set of drilling data showing 90% success rate.

Keywords:
hole enlargement, directional well, instability, drilling fluid property, horizontal well, safe mud weight window, drilling operation, mud weight, mechanism, enlargement
Subjects:
Wellbore Design, Drilling Operations, Drilling Fluids and Materials, Wellbore integrity, Drilling fluid selection and formulation (chemistry, properties)
Copyright 2005, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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