Systematic Strategies to Conquer the Technical Challenges to Successfully Deliver the First 15,000 Ft Lateral Well in an Unconventional Drilling Operation

Abstract The paper addressed the main technical challenges encountered while drilling the first extended reach 15,000 ft lateral well in an unconventional drilling project. A series of systematic strategies was proposed during the planning phase and precisely implemented during the operation. The success of the well delivery established the best practice that will lay a solid foundation for the future operation to drill the extended reach lateral wells. For the 15,000 ft lateral wells, limited weight transfer, excessive torque, high pumping pressure, high bottom-hole-circulation-temperatures (BHCT), and the limited drillpipe margin of overpull are the major challenges for drilling and tripping. While casing buckling is the key challenge to deliver the casing to bottom. In order to overcome these challenges, well profile optimization, detailed torque and drag simulations, and optimized mud management procedures were applied. A high operational torque casing string was selected and air-floated to successfully deliver it to the bottom. The optimized well profile helped reduce the torque and drag, enhanced the weight transfer to improve the drilling performance, and assisted in running casing to bottom. The BHA with high temperature tolerance reduced the risk of failure and enabled the well to be drilled to TD in one run. The optimized tripping procedure helped overcome the drill pipe tension limitations at TD. A special mud management system with low rheology and low gravity solids (LGS) optimized the hole cleaning efficiency and surface pump pressure, improving the drilling, tripping and casing running process. Floatation of the production casing, the specially designed centralizers, and an optimized mud system led to reducing the buckling tendency of the casing and reduced the required rotation intervals to run the casing string to bottom successfully.