ADVANCES IN WELL DESIGN

Modern drilling technologies are emerging progressively to meet current challenges in well operations. Operators are going into much more complex environments, and drilling conditions become much tighter. Conventional well designs are no longer able to handle these new environments. The result is increased drilling costs, Non Productive Time, hole collapse, etc. While well engineers are worried by these developments, the busy schedule of most companies does not give room for delegating staff to proper study and research as to implement recent improvements into pre-drill plans. In some cases, economics may not favour adoption of new drilling methods as well. This work is a review of selected advances in well design available to oil industries today. Particularly emphasis was laid on the well design aspects of Drilling with Casing (DWC), Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD), Solid Expandable Systems, Air drilling and Geo mechanical Modelling for wellbore stability. To show the benefits of these advanced well design applications, case studies from different well operations have been presented. The yardstick for measuring these benefits is conventional drilling and well designs methods. While these results might not have covered all areas of improvements in well design, it is expected that this review will provide oil companies with an idea of trends in well design and areas for improving drilling performance at various operational levels. Hole problems will be minimised by such large margins that cost savings in drilling budget becomes significant. Reoccurrence of well problems may be minimised.