Effectiveness of Lost Circulation Materials (LCM) in Strengthening Fractured (or Faulted) Formations

ABSTRACT: Faulted and fractured formations are regularly encountered during drilling operations in both onshore and offshore environments. While these formations do not always create issues, their impacts can be significant when lost circulation events or weak casing shoes are observed. In this paper, we present two distinctly different case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of our lost circulation materials (LCM) deployment strategy for faulted or fractured formations. Our first case study shows how we successfully strengthened a weaker than expected casing shoe set in a tight (impermeable) but highly fractured formation by at least 1.5 ppg in an onshore setting; while our second example will focus on how we successfully cured and strengthened a massive lost circulation event when we drilled through a fault zone within a depleted reservoir in an offshore environment. These successful LCM treatments have demonstrated the robustness of our evidence-based LCM selection and deployment strategy against fractured and faulted formations.