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.