Collaborative New Technology in
Well
Construction. A New Avenue towards Lowering the Overall
Well
Cost
By
Moustafa E. Oraby and Ahmed El-Seginy
It is critical to any operating company to minimize the cost of well
construction in both exploration and development especially in deep-water
operations. The challenges in drilling environment require the state-of-the-art
new technology. The new technology is costly on the service companies to develop
and at the same time costly on the operating companies to apply. These two
conflicting factors require more collaborative efforts between the operating
companies and the service companies to properly apply the appropriate new
technology to reduce the overall AFE
well
cost. This approach, in turn, enables
the operating companies to cover the extra cost of the new technology. In this
paper, different
types
of integrated solutions using new technology in both
drilling and formation evaluation are discussed to show the applicability of the
concept. The faster drilling rate using the slickbore technology, the higher
Rate Of Penetration using the X-series bits and the proper mud design to control
the losses and enhance the drilling performance are illustrated. On the
formation evaluation side, proposed combinations of the LWD, Logging While
Drilling, and Wireline logging to eliminate the repeatability of information but
still provide the essential data is discussed. The combined LWD Acoustic,
Magnetic Resonance (MRIL-WD), the gamma ray and resistivity represent an
attractive replacement of the conventional radioactive combination. The wireline
logging will be optimized depending on the need of the formation evaluation. All
the above will not be complete without the capabilities of real time operation.
Sharing the data between the rig and the experts in their offices is very vital
technology in reducing cost, saving operation and speeding the operation
decisions. More ideas and technical combinations are discussed in the paper that
aimed to show that using such approach will reduce the
well
cost and at the same
time applies the up-to-date technology for better
well
construction and
evaluation.