Determination Of Safe Mud Weight Windows For
Drilling Deviated Wellbores: A Case Study In The
North Perth Basin
Author(s)
K. Le & V. Rasouli
Abstract
Drilling non-vertical wells, which is commonly used to enhance production, in
particular in unconventional reservoirs with very low permeability, is subjected
to rock mechanics related issues namely wellbore instabilities. Drilling in the
same formation but with different deviations and at different directions would
not result in similar response in terms of rock failures. This is due to the rotation
of the induced stresses around the wellbore wall along its trajectory. The type of
instabilities that the formation experiences around the wellbore is a function of
formation’s mechanical properties and the status of in-situ stresses. It is clear that
none of these natural parameters can be controlled or changed during drilling
operation. However, the density of the mud weigh which is used to drill the
wellbore could be optimised in order to mitigate or stop wellbore instability
issues in the form of tensile failure or fracturing in case of using high mud
density or shear failure or breakouts when a low mud weigh is used. Therefore, a
safe mud weight window (MWW) can be determined for optimum drilling in
terms of having the least issues related to wellbore instabilities. This MWW will
change as the wellbore deviation changes.
In this paper, the concept of constructing the rock mechanical model (RMM)
which includes the rock mechanical properties as well as in-situ stress profiles is
briefly presented. Then the RMM output corresponding to vertical well
Arrowsmith-1 which is a shale gas well drilled in the North Perth Basin of
Australia will be used to calculate the safe MWW for drilling wellbores in
different azimuth and deviation in the field. The results indicate how the MWW
changes as a function of wellbore trajectory.
Keywords: wellbore instability, mud weight windows, breakouts, fracturing, insitu
stresses Arrowsmith-1.
Keywords
wellbore instability, mud weight windows, breakouts, fracturing, insitu
stresses Arrowsmith-1.
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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