SUMHOLE DRILLING: WELLBORE STABILITY CONSIDERATIONS BASED UPON FIELD AND LABORATORY DATA

Abstract

Slimhole drilling is becoming an attractive option as it provides significant cost savings in the petroleum industry. Furthermore, many of the technical obstacles in adapting slimhole drilling for the petroleum industry have been addressed, such as rig modifications, small volume kick detection, drilling fluid design, etc. However, wellbore stability in slimholes is largely taken for granted, when it could potentially increase costs dramatically. In this paper, a review of the available information on the effects of hole size on hole stability is presented. Wellbore stability in holes of different diameters is discussed qualitatively based on published laboratory data and unpublished field data. The quantitative assessment of wellbore instability in slimholes is addressed using observations of instability in a well in which the far field stresses were measured.

The field data presented here suggest that slimhole wells are not more stable than conventional wells. The slimhole drilled in NSW shows that even using the most conservative prediction model, wellbore instability would not be predicted—instability was however, observed.